Huskies eliminate Redmen

Cody Thornton scored twice, including the game-winner, as the Saint Mary's Huskies rallied from an early two-goal deficit to beat the McGill Redmen 4-2 at the Canadian university men's hockey championship Friday.

Scott Brophy and Justin Munden also scored for the Huskies, and Colby Pridham added two assists for the third-seeded Atlantic champions. Saint Mary's improved to 1-0 and will meet the Manitoba Bisons (1-0) in the Pool B finale on Saturday, with the winner earning a spot in Sunday's final of the Cavendish University Cup.

No. 4 Lakehead took on No. 6 Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres in Pool A action later Friday.

Maxime Langelier-Parent and Christopher Longpre-Poirier gave No. 2 McGill (0-2) an early two-goal lead, but for the second-straight game, the Redmen could not hang on and were eliminated from the tournament.

Thornton made it 2-1 at 13:38 of the first and Brophy tied things at 9:25 of the second.

Thornton, of Woodstock, Ont., gave the Huskies their first lead just over a minute later before Munden scored on the power play at 14:07 for a 4-2 lead after two periods.

"There's no question that our game plan was to forecheck, take the body and pressure them as much as possible," said Huskies coach Trevor Stienburg. "I thought we did a real good job of it in the first 10 minutes but I won't lie to you, I was a little concerned when we fell behind 2-0."

McGill blew a 4-1 third-period lead to Manitoba on Thursday, losing 5-4 in overtime.

"It was very frustrating as we had a good lead early in both games," said Langelier-Parent. "We killed ourselves with penalties."

Neil Conway made 22 saves to pick up the win, while Hubert Morin stopped made 22-of-26 saves in defeat.

McGill finished 0-for-4 on the power play, while the Huskies finished 1-for-5.