MHKY Final Preview

Article by Brian Swane, special to CW

March 1, 2024 - The UBC Thunderbirds have been waiting a long time for their first Canada West men’s hockey championship. More than half a century, in fact.

Few can appreciate the persistence of the T-Birds, although the Calgary Dinos might have a pretty good sense of it. After all, the Dinos went more than a quarter century between titles before finally capturing the Dr. W.G. Hardy Trophy last year.

But just because they can empathize with T-Birds, don’t expect the Dinos to ease off on UBC when the two teams square off in the best-of-three Canada West men’s hockey championship series at Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Arena in Vancouver.

The action gets underway with Game 1 on Friday, followed by Game 2 Saturday. If necessary, Game 3 will take place Sunday. All games start at 7 p.m. PT. and will be broadcast live and on-demand at CanadaWest.TV.

Friday's Game 1 will also be featured as the Canada West CBC Game of the Week.

Calgary certainly can’t to give an inch to the T-Birds if it has designs on winning back-to-back gold medals for the first time since 1995 and 1996. UBC is hosting the championship final for the first time in program history, after finishing first in the regular season standings, two points ahead of the Dinos.

A pair of regular season meetings between these teams settled nothing: each won once, by identical 4-1 scores. Calgary punched its ticket to the championship series by knocking off the crosstown rival Mount Royal Cougars in a semi-final sweep last weekend, while UBC out-lasted the Alberta Golden Bears in three games to advance to the final.

"It means a lot. I'm already thinking about (the championship series), I can't wait,” UBC head coach Sven Butenschon said after his team shutout Alberta 3-0 in Game 3 at Doug Mitchell Thudnerbird Arena last Sunday.

“Normally I'm all about celebrating the wins in life, but in my (post-game) talk to the guys we're going to try to keep it business-like here and start focusing on next week real quick. We're not satisfied. We set a bar for ourselves and we're not even close to that yet."

(22-4-2 regular season, 2-1 playoffs)

How They Got Here: first in standings; quarter-final bye, defeated Alberta 2-1 in semifinal.

Key Player: Second-year forward Sam Huo was named Canada West’s Player of the Week for men’s hockey after he scored four times, including one game-winning goal, and added an assist for a team-leading five points in UBC’s semifinal series victory over Alberta. ​

Key Stat: UBC had the top-ranked power play (23.6%) and No. 1 penalty kill (89.1%) in Canada West during the regular season.

Calgary Dinos

(21-5-2 regular season, 2-0 playoffs)

How They Got Here: second in standings; quarter-final bye, defeated Mount Royal 2-0 in semifinal.

Key Player: Third-year forward Colson Gengenbach, a 2023-24 Canada West First Team All-Star selection, was one of only two players in Canada West this season with at least 20 goals and he scored the series-winning goal in overtime against Mount Royal.

Key Stat: During the regular season, the Dinos were 12-0-2 as the road team and won their last 10 games not played in the city of Calgary.