Walsh wows against former team and other takeaways from OUA hockey

Toronto, Ont. (49 Sports, Ben Steiner/Richard Coffey) – With massive distances covered and highlight-reel games against former teams, the latest round of OUA men’s and women’s hockey did not disappoint in the slightest.

With the season's quarter mark now passed in men’s hockey, teams are already starting to make their way to the top of the conference standings, while some are just coming out of their shells under new coaches. Meanwhile, the women’s season appears more open than initially expected through the first couple weeks of play

MHKY: Gryphons riding three-game win streak

It has been a tough few years for the Guelph Gryphons since taking home the Queen’s Cup, but the start of the 2023-24 season, most notably the latest round of games, shows that the program is turning the corner towards contention.

After dropping their first two games to Nipissing and Brock, the Gryphons have hit their stride in the last three, posting wins against Laurier, RMC, and Queen’s. Although the former pair may not be as high on the list of Queen’s Cup contenders this season, Guelph’s efforts were dominant nonetheless, showcasing their potential return to the OUA elite.

Against Queen’s, the result came down to a near coin flip -- a 7-6 result on home ice. However, the last few years of Gryphons’ hockey likely would not have seen a team able to go toe-to-toe with the Gaels’ offensive talents of Jonathan Yantsis and Dalton Duhart, among others.

This year’s Gryphons have leaned on forward Nolan DeGurse and Luke Kutkevicius to drive things on the scoring side. At the same time, Tristan De Jong, Liam Ham, and Jaxon Camp play critical roles as transitional defencemen.

In the crease, third-year netminder Tanner Wickware has taken on the starter's role in stride, posting a .909 save percentage through four games while making 35 saves against Queen’s.

Through it all, they’ve played a more composed game and look like they approach opponents with more structure under new head coach Josh Dixon than in the past few seasons.

As well they have the second-best powerplay percentage in the OUA West at 26.9%.

Guelph still has a long way to go, yet their team game and ability to attack evenly with Queen’s showed they could be in the conversation heading into the final stretch before the holiday break.

MHKY: Concordia’s perfect season comes to an end

The Concordia Stingers couldn’t maintain their perfect season through the third week of the year, yet they weren’t helped by the distance in their schedule.

While the Stingers dropped a 2-1 game to the Nipissing Lakers, they had one of the longest travel weekends that any Canadian university hockey team can take on. The group travelled from Montreal to Toronto for a Friday night game before packing up quickly to make it to North Bay for an afternoon game against Nipissing.

In total, the weekend saw nearly 1,200km in travel for Concordia, the rough equivalent of the distance between Montreal and Prince Edward Island. Fortunately for them, it will be the longest trip they have to take this season.

Still, the Stingers put forth two strong efforts, picking up a 4-3 victory over the Toronto Varsity Blues on Friday night with a pair of goals from Charles-Antoine Paiment, and additional tallies from Samuel Desgroseilliers and Isiah Campbell.

One worry moving forward, however, is the team’s penalty kill, currently the worst in the OUA. The team has conceded six times on 16 shorthanded occasions, including three goals against in their latest two games.

So far, however, the season has gone well for Concordia, who will hope they can return to their winning ways at home this weekend against the lone perfect team in the OUA, the Brock Badgers, as well as the aforementioned Gryphons.

WHKY: Madelyn Walsh makes a statement return to Toronto

It was a mixed weekend overall for the Brock Badgers, as they got outmatched in the second half of their back-to-back – a 5-0 home opener loss to Nipissing. On Saturday, though, the Badgers walked into Varsity Arena and picked up their first win in Toronto since 2017 with a 3-1 victory over the Blues.

The key performance for their win came from a familiar face to the Blues faithful in defender Madelyn Walsh. Walsh was a stalwart on the backend for Toronto for three seasons between 2019 and 2023, picking up four goals and 19 points in 60 regular season games. After transferring to do her master’s at Brock, Walsh picked up the only goal in Brock’s 1-0 win over Laurier on opening weekend before adding a pair in the first period against Toronto on Saturday.

For the Badgers, they struggled to generate consistent offence overall a season ago, finishing tied for 10th with 41 goals, and they also lost their previous top-scoring defender in Paige Cahoon. With those facts in mind, a continued run of strong play from Walsh would be an asset.

After a tough start to their second season in their new home, the Badgers get a second crack at it when the Windsor Lancers head to Canada Games Park on Friday before they take the trip up the QEW to York to play the Lions on Saturday.

WHKY: Struggling power-play sinks TMU early in the season

The OUA East has been the division of haves and have-nots through the first two weekends, as three teams have at least one win and three sit with none. So that is to say that the TMU Bold are not alone in their early season struggles, but they are alone in one unique issue: no team so far this season is scoreless through as many chances with the extra skater.

With no power-play goals through their first 19 attempts, the Bold have struggled to find offence early in the season, which showed on the weekend. The team had the extra skater six times in their game against the Mustangs, but could only get one five-on-five goal past Emma Catalano. Western, meanwhile, hung four on TMU in the second, including a shorthanded goal, to win 4-1.

The following night against Windsor, the Bold had four shots to go on the powerplay and blanked each time, including an opportunity that they failed to convert while down 3-1 with less than five minutes to play in the third before immediately taking a penalty. The Bold scored on four-on-four, but fell 3-2 to the Lancers to drop to 0-3 to begin the season.

TMU gets two shots to break out of their slump on the upcoming weekend. First, a visit on Friday comes from the other 0-3 team in the East, the Ontario Tech Ridgebacks. One of those teams will finally get their first win of the year, but if it isn’t TMU, they’ll get a second chance when the Guelph Gryphons (who sit in last but also a four-way tie for third) head to Mattamy Athletic Centre.