X-Men skate to 5-3 win over Tommies

The StFX X-Men skated to a 5-3 win over the St. Thomas Tommies Friday evening in Fredericton.

The X-Men led 2-0 after 20 minutes of play, despite being outshot 14-8 in the opening frame.

Brandon Hynes opened the scoring at 4:37 for the X-Men from Josh Day and Rob Slaney, while Ryan Fortune scored his first goal of the season at 9:56 from Brad Cuzner and Murdock MacLellan.

The Tommies pulled to within a goal as Yuri Cheremetiev notched a power play marker at the 11:26 mark of the second period. Brendan Childerley assisted.

Blake Gal re-established the X-Men's two goal lead at 15:20 from Jarrad Struthers and Nathan Chiarlitti, but the Tommies came right back up ice and Childerley scored 23 seconds later. Randy Cameron and Sawyer Hannay had the helpers.

The X-Men had the edge in second period shots at 13-7.

With a 3-2 lead after 40 minutes, Struthers netted an insurance marker for StFX 5:30 into the third period from Chiarlitti and Day.

Cuzner added an empty net goal at 18:13 from MacLellan, though the Tommies came back to score with 39 seconds left on the clock. Matt Bissonette (Stephen Sanza and Marc Andre Levesque) scored the final tally for the home team.

The X-Men outshot the Tommies by a 36-32 margin as Morgan Clark made 29 saves in the StFX net for the win. Jonathan Groeneyde turned aside 31 pucks in the losing effort for the Tommies.

With the win the X-Men (12-12-3) currently sit in fifth place in the AUS conference with 27 points and one game remaining on the AUS schedule. With Saint Mary's (13-14-0) sitting one point behind the X-Men in sixth place and only a single point separating the third and fourth place Aigles Bleus (16-11-0, 32 points) and Panthers (14-10-3, 31 points), the final pairings for the upcoming AUS playoffs will be determined on the final day of the season.

The X-Men travel to Charlottetown for a 7:00 pm game against the Panthers on Saturday night, while the Huskies will play at St. Thomas.

UNB (23-3-1, 47 points) and Acadia (21-3-3, 45 points) will battle it out for first place in Wolfville, NS, while Moncton plays at Dalhousie. Both the Tigers and Tommies have been eliminated from AUS playoff contention.

UNB and Acadia will have first round byes, while the remaining four teams (Moncton, UPEI, StFX and SMU) will play best two-of-three quarterfinal series, starting the week of Feb. 18th.

Complete AUS playoff schedules will be posted online Monday at www.atlanticuniversitysport.com.