Hassam Munir, Sports and Health Editor
Featured image courtesy of York Lions
After an amazing turnaround in the 2015-16 season, the Lions men’s hockey team fell to the UofT Varsity Blues in the third and final game of the first round of the Ontario University Athletics playoffs. For a team that lost all five of their last five regular season games in the 2014-15 season, the arrival of new head coach Chris Dennis proved to be a complete gamechanger.
Dennis, who is a York alumnus himself, previously served in various roles with the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Marlies. Before he joined the Lions last summer, he was serving as an assistant coach with the Leafs. His depth of experience may explain his success in taking the Lions from the lowest spot in the OUA West Division standings to the highest one in the course of just one season.
At no point in the entire season did the Lions lose more than two consecutive games, and they finished with the best record in the OUA West Division standings for the first time since the 2008-09 season. The Lions also improved from being 10th place in power play percentage and ninth place in penalty killing percentage in 2014-15 to being ranked third and second in the special teams categories in 2015-16, respectively.
On the ice, defenceman Derek Sheppard led the Lions in scoring with 30 points and his teammate, forward Trevor Peterson, followed just behind him with 29. Chris Perugini was the team’s outstanding netminder this season, recording a 14-11 record, a 2.31 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage.
The Lions’ bouts with the Varsity Blues began in the first round of the OUA playoffs on February 17th when they shut down the Varsity Blues on home-ice by a score of 5-0, carrying over that momentum to end their regular season. This spectacular win gave the Lions an advantage in the best-of-three contest.
The Varsity Blues tied up the odds in the second game when they narrowly edged the Lions with a 3-2 victory. The emotional roller coaster game was hard-fought by both teams, but the Varsity Blues had both the home-ice advantage and the desperation of a team that would be eliminated from the playoffs if they lost the game.
In the tie-breaking third game, the Varsity Blues were all over the Lions, sustaining their pressure on the Lions’ end of the ice and defending their own end determinedly. The Lions stayed in the game until the very end, trying to take away the Varsity Blues’ steady lead, but in the end the Varsity Blues won by a score of 4-1, taking their second victory of the series and knocking the Lions out of the playoffs.
Notwithstanding that disappointing result, the Lions’ performance throughout the season was the best in recent years, and under the guidance of Dennis, there may be more where that came from in years to come.
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