GUELPH, Ont. - The Guelph Gryphons men's hockey team (17-9-2) will open the 2012-13 OUA playoffs against their rival Laurier Golden Hawks (14-12-2) tomorrow night in the OUA first round best-of-three playoff series.
Game 1 of the series will be played in Guelph at the Gryphon Centre on Thursday (Feb. 14) at 7:30 p.m. Game 2 will be played Saturday (Feb. 16) at 8:00 p.m. in Waterloo at the Waterloo Recreation Complex. If a third game is needed the series will return to the Gryphon Centre on Sunday (Feb. 17) for a 7:30 p.m. puck drop.
Gryphon home games will be webcasted LIVE at
http://www.ssncanada.ca/games/ and live stats will be available on the gryphons.ca website
here
The Gryphons wrapped up their regular season finishing fourth in the OUA West while the Golden Hawks enter the contest as the fifth ranked team.
The Gryphons are 2-1 over the Golden Hawks during the regular season with wins of 6-2 (Oct. 27) and 2-0 (Nov. 24) before
falling recently 3-0 (Feb. 7).
The two teams last met in the playoffs in 2010-11, where the Gryphons took the three-game quarterfinal series 2-1. All three games would be needed in this series and the Gryphons stole their wins on the road to advance to the semi-finals where they eventually fell in two games to Western.
Rookie center
Andrew Bathgate (Georgetown, Ont.) ended his first regular season campaign with the Gryphons with 16 goals and 16 assists for 32 points to lead the Gryphon scoring and finish third in OUA rookie scoring. Veteran speedster
Matthew Lyall (Richmond, Ont) has come on as of late for the Gryphon offence to finish the season with nine goals, 17 assists for 27 points.
Nicklas Huard (North Bay, Ont.),
Jon-Thomas MacDonald (Niagara Falls, Ont.) and
Brett Appio (Bolton, Ont.) all scored 20 points or over this season.
Between the pipes, Gryphon goalie
Andrew Loverock (Elmvale, Ont.) has stepped in and done a stellar job following the departure of Brandon Maxwell. The third year has played in 15 games with a 0.912 save percentage.
For the Golden Hawks, rookie Trent Hawks has closed out his first year with impressive numbers. He finished the regular season with three goals and an assist including a goal in Laurier's 3-0 shutout over the Gryphons last week. He finishes the regular season with 23 points, ninth in rookie scoring. The teams leading scorer is Tyler Stothers who tallied 26 points this season (11G, 15A). Golden Hawks goaltender Ryan Daniels holds a 0.920 save percentage in 27 games played this season.
