Hockey X-Men drop two on the road

The hockey X-Men dropped two games on the road this weekend with an 8-3 loss to UNB Friday night and a 5-3 loss to UPEI Saturday.

The X-Men had defeated UNB last weekend at home, but the Varsity Reds got revenge on their own home ice, opening the game with four consecutive unanswered goals. Kevin Henderson scored a first period goal while Justin Dacosta, Dustin Friesen and Jonathan Harty scored second period markers.

Brett Morrison got the X-Men on the board with a power play goal late in the second period though Hunter Tremblay scored before the period ended to establish a 5-1 lead for UNB after two.

Kevin Undershute and Brett Robertson scored third period goals for X and Bretton Stamler, Dion Campbell and Jimmy Cuddihy rounded out the scoring for UNB who had eight different players hit the back of the net.

The Varsity Reds out shot the X-Men by a 36-25 margin and Derek Yeomans earned the win in nets with 22 saves. X-Men netminder Danny Battochio had 28 saves in the losing effort.

On Saturday night in Charlottetown, the X-Men out shot the home town UEPI Panthers 40-29 but came out on the short end of a 5-3 game. Panthers goaltender Jhase Sniderman had 37 saves in the win while Battochio was again faced with the loss for StFX.

Panthers center Justin Donati scored two early first period goals just over a minute apart to establish an early 2-0 lead for UPEI. Brett Robertson scored at 13:11 of the second period to pull the X-Men to within one, but the Panthers widened their lead again with a goal off the stick off Vince Scott 1:39 into the third frame.

Brett Morrison and Jeff Caron scored for StFX to even the game at 3-3 but the lead did not last long as Donati scored his third goal of the game, and the eventual game winner, on the power play. Howie Martin added an empty net goal for the Panthers to secure the 5-3 win. The X-Men were 1 for 10 on the powerplay.

With the two weekend losses, the X-Men drop to 3-4-2 and currently sit in 8th place in the AUS standings with 8 points. They will host 7th place Dalhousie (3-5-0) Wednesday at 7pm at the StFX Keating Centre then travel to Acadia Saturday night (6-2-1) to face the third place Axemen.