UNB blasts Brock in University Cup quarter-final

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The University of New Brunswick Reds remain on a collision course with destiny, just two steps away from a dream perfect 38-0 season, which would culminate a run that would most certainly rank them as the greatest Canadian university men’s hockey team of all-time.

At 2 p.m. on Saturday, the top-ranked and unbeaten Reds will face the Toronto University Metropolitans in semifinal action of the University Cup with a date in Sunday’s championship game at stake.

UNB, the defending University Cup champion with nine national men’s hockey titles in its storied history, set up the opportunity that would ultimately trump them all with another dominant performance on Thursday at the site of the old Maple Leaf Gardens.

That was a 4-0 blitz of the University of Brock Badgers in the quarter-final round that was not nearly as close as the score indicated.

The Reds, 30-0 in regular season action and now 6-0 in the playoffs, fired 16 of the game’s first 18 shots and were full value for a 2-0 lead on first-period markers from Cody Morgan, who netted the national championship winning goal a year ago in Charlottetown for UNB, at 6:01 and Kade Landry, a power-play effort, at 17:12.

It took an excellent performance from Brock goaltender Connor Ungar, named U Sports rookie of the year Wednesday, to even keep it close, as he registered 41 saves. Ungar’s efforts kept the Badgers in it before the Reds sealed the victory on a pair of goals by Benjamin Corbeil in the final three minutes of the third period.

UNB, now unbeaten since Game 2 of the 2023 Atlantic University Sport championship series against Saint Mary’s, smothered whatever attack Brock, the No. 8 seed, attempted to muster and Sam Richard, last year’s University Cup most valuable player, made 12 saves for the shutout.

Richard, the second-year netminder, stretched his current University Cup shutout streak to 121 minutes and 29 seconds, dating back to the final moments of last year’s semifinal victory over the Universite du Quebec at Trois Rivières Patriotes. He made three saves in the first period, five in the second and four in the third.

But the potential opponents that lie ahead in UNB’s path toward history will not be easy foes.

For example, Toronto, which defeated Calgary 2-1 in double overtime Thursday evening, upset the Reds in the opening round of the 2022 University Cup, their Atlantic rivals from Moncton played them tight in the conference final in a pair of games that were not secured until late UNB empty net goals and the Universite de Quebec Patriotes own five University Cup titles of their own.

That’s just three of the remaining six teams.

On Friday the seventh-seeded University de Moncton Aigles Bleus take on the second-ranked Patriots in the third of the four quarter-final contests.

UdeM finished second in the AUS at 16-11-3 this past season and clinched a berth in the Nationals with a sweep of the St. Francis Xavier X-Men in the semifinal round of the conference playoffs.

Then came narrow losses to UNB in the conference title.

The winner of the UdeM/UQTR contest will face the winner of the game between the University of British Columbia and McGill (which takes place Friday at 8 p.m.) in Saturday’s other semifinal (Saturday at 8 p.m.).

The gold medal game is slated for 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the UNB women’s hockey team, seeded third at the U Sports women’s national championship, is set to open the quarter-final round at 10 p.m. on Friday against the sixth-ranked University of Toronto Blues in Saskatoon.

The Reds, the three-time defending Atlantic University Sport women’s hockey conference champions, were second in the conference during the season but finished the playoffs strong with series wins over Saint Mary’s and St Francis Xavier, the last coming in double overtime of Game 2 of the final at the Aitken Centre last week.

In Saturday’s semifinal round, the winner of the UNB/Toronto quarter-final will take on the winner of the UBC/Montreal quarter-final, that takes place at 4 p.m. on Friday.

The opening faceoff for the U Sports women’s hockey championship is slated for 9 p.m. ADT on Sunday.