CANISIUS COLLEGE ATHLETICS
TORONTO, O.N. — Toronto used four different goal scorers and a 34-save shutout from Alex Bishop to post a 4-0 victory over Canisius in a collegiate hockey exhibition contest Saturday at KeyBank Rink at Harborcenter.
Despite holding a 34-18 shot advantage for the contest, the Golden Griffins were unable to solve Bishop, who posted a game-best 15 saves during the opening period and made 12 stops during the third.
Kyle Clarke, Nathan Hudgin, Max Lindsay and Ryan Kirkup accounted for the four goals from the Varsity Blues.
Clarke staked Toronto to a 1-0 lead just 84 seconds into the contest when he intercepted a Canisius clearing attempt and beat Griffs netminder Tucker Weppner with a shot from the middle of the slot.
The Varsity Blues doubled their advantage less than a minute into the second as Hudgin found the back of the net from the bottom of the right faceoff circle after Toronto forced a turnover deep in the Griffs zone.
Lindsay made it a 3-0 lead with a power-play tally at the 6:18 mark of the second before Kirkup closed out the scoring with a little less than six minutes remaining in the middle period with a shot from below the goal line that hit Weppner and found its way into the goal.
Head Coach Trevor Large‘s Postgame Comments
“Exhibitions are different; they don’t typically have the flow of a normal game as we’re dressing a lot of players. I saw a lot of things we did well tonight. I saw speed and skill. I saw a lot of good effort, especially early on. We found some things that we need to work on, but that’s typical for an exhibition.
“We possessed the puck a ton tonight. I was not surprised to see that. That’s something we’ve talked a lot about and we’re building upon from last year. We had the puck, our speed and skill were there, but we need to get in around the net more for those second and third-chance opportunities.”
Up Next
• Canisius opens the 2018-19 regular season Oct. 12-13 at AHA foe Holy Cross.
• The Griffs and Crusaders open their two-game set with a 7 p.m. contest before wrapping up the series the following day with a 5 p.m. finale.