LANGLEY, British Columbia– The Trinity Western Spartans dropped a 8-2 decision to the visiting Mount Royal Cougars Saturday night at the George Preston Arena in Langley, B.C. The loss moves the Spartans to 0-3-1-0 on the season, while the win improves the Cougars to .500 at 2-2-0-0.
 
TWU's Berk Berkeliev (Calgary, Alta.) made 36 saves in the loss, while MRU's Jackson Berry made 22 saves to record the win.
 
AS IT HAPPENED
The Cougars found the back of the Spartans net twice in the opening period to put TWU in the early hole. MRU's Jared Power opened the scoring at 13:21 on the power play and then the Cougars Connor Bouchard made it 2-0 with a goal at 16:52.
 
TWU's Michael Spafford (Saskatoon, SK) made it a one goal game at 3:04. But MRU answered with two quick goals at 5:13 and 6:51 by Kyle Walker and Ethan Regnier to put the Cougars up 4-1.
 
The Spartans Jeremy Klessens (Red Deer, Alta.)  had a nice top shelf goal at 14:21 to cut the Cougars lead to 4-2. However, Koby Morrisseau answered for MRU at 18:02 to make the score 5-2 for the Cougars after 40 minutes of play.
 
Mount Royal put the game away with three third period goals to make the final 8-2 for the Cougars. MRU's Nolan Yaremko scored at 6:10. Josh Tarzwell followed up at 7:17 and Tim Gould finished the scoring at 19:07.
 
QUOTABLE
TWU Head Coach Ben Walter
I think it is a little bit of a wake-up call for us. If we don't want to work and we don't want to battle, if we are going to be soft and lose every puck battle this is what is going to happen. And it doesn't matter who we are playing against. It doesn't matter what league we are in or how many years we have been playing. If you don't work it gets really difficult. So that is the lesson from tonight. We have to consistent in our effort otherwise it is going to be tough."
 
Notable performance:
Josh Bruce, is coming off an injury and I thought he kept it going and he worked as hard as he could all night. And it showed and it was evident.
 
NOTABLE
• The Spartans finished the night 0-5 with the man advantage, while the Cougars finished at 1-2.
• The Cougars outshot the Spartans 44-24
• TWU Michael led the Spartans with seven shots on goal, while Blake Stevenson led the Cougars with six shots on goal.
• Eight different Cougars found the back of the goal tonight.
 
UP NEXT
The Spartans return to action on Friday and Saturday, October 14-15 when they will travel to Edmonton to take on the Alberta Golden Bears. Both games can be seen live on Canada West TV.
 
About Spartan Athletics
As official members of U SPORTS, the Spartans currently compete in 13 sports in the Canada West conference, including women's and men's soccer, volleyball, basketball, hockey, cross country and track & field, as well as women's rugby sevens. TWU also competes as an independent team in men's rugby. Since TWU entered U SPORTS in 1999, the Spartans have won 13 U SPORTS team championships and 32 Canada West team championships.
 
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