Canada West men’s hockey final: Mount Royal wins in OT,forces Game 3

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It’ll come down to a one-game showdown Sunday night to decide the 2025 Canada West men’s hockey champion.

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The Mount Royal University Cougars have forced a Game 3 in their best-of-three championship series with the host University of Saskatchewan Huskies following a 2-1 overtime win Saturday night before a Merlis Belsher Place record-setting 3,013 fans.

“I thought we deserved it,” said Mount Royal coach Bert Gilling. “We killed all those penalties. We killed the five-minute major going into overtime. We had a lot of things going against us. That bench and that room, they just stuck together and, it’s like whatever obstacle was there, we kept pushing and playing. We weren’t on our heels. We played on our toes. That was a hard-earned victory and I’m really proud of my group.

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“We’re not surprised. Everyone else seems surprised. Again, we’ve got a pretty fricken good hockey team here and I think we’re proving it. We’ve bounced back, we responded. We had 22 wins this year. That’s four years in a row where we had the leading scorer in the league. We’ve had national (U Sports award winners) players in the league.

“It’s good that people are taking notice. There’s a lot of good things in our program right now. The heart and dedication and effort that we played with tonight should make an impression, too.”

Clay Hanus scored at 8:52 of overtime to give Mount Royal the win Saturday.

“I’ve got all the confidence in the world in our group there,” said Hanus. “They’re going to be fully capable of what (Sunday) brings. I think we’re going to be fully ready and fully prepared. We’re going to ride this high into (Sunday).

“(Sunday) is going to be a good one.”

Teague Patton scored with 4:44 left in regulation to force OT.

Trevor Wong had the lone goal for Saskatchewan, which went 0-for-3 on the power play and got out-shot 32-24, including a 9-1 disadvantage in the overtime frame.

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The Huskies were down to three centers after losing Liam Keeler to a check to the head late in the third period.

They’ll need to re-group in a hurry. Game-time Sunday is 6 p.m.

“It’s a Game 7,” said U of S head coach Brandin Cote. “We had one last weekend. We’ve been a part of a few here since I’ve been here. Those ones are hard when you’re on the losing end of them. I thought (Game 2) was a very well played game by both teams. It was tight. Both teams are probably getting a little banged up and tired. That’s just a part of playoff hockey.

“It sucks. We came close there. They found a way. Give them credit. They stuck with it. A seeing-eye shot on the first one to tie it and then they killed off that five-minute major, which was huge obviously for us — we would have liked to end it there; we had a couple of good looks but it just wasn’t clean enough and they pressured hard. That sort of how it goes.”

With Keeler out, the Huskies will dip into their reserves for Game 3.

“That’s why we have lots of extra guys,” said Cote, whose team was already without forward Ben Tkachuk and Chase Bertholet.

“We have extra guys who are more than capable of playing. We’re going to look at sort of who fits in where and gets some guys in there ready to play.”

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“We’ve got to wipe it clean right away. You’ve got to have a short memory here. We’ve got to get re-focused and re-set. Our group has responded every single time that we’ve faced any sort of adversity this year. We’ve come back with a big effort.”

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