CIS CORNER: UNB PAINTS MONCTON 'VARSITY RED'

The last look you got at Robert Pearce, the hometown kid turned overtime hero, before he went down under a tangle of teammates was a look of fear.

On the TV closeup, you could actually see Pearce blanch a bit before he used his gloveless hands to cover his face as his teammates rushed toward him after he scored the overtime winner for the New Brunswick Varsity Reds in the CIS hockey final tonight. Given what it meant to his pals at that moment to have beaten Moncton Aigles Bleus 3-2 for the University Cup, they couldn't be trusted to act with much restraint.

That's one image to take from a national final whose third period and overtime was a good advertisment for Canada's best-kept hockey secret. Overtime in the CIS final is pretty standard -- this was the sixth one in eight years. This time, you had the added juice of the game involving two New Brunswick schools going at it at a raucous Moncton Coliseum.

For the Moncton fans, this must be a category-5 stomach punch loss -- losing the national final at home to a team it beat five straight times in the regular season and league playoffs. The Aigles Bleus, who will host the University Cup again in 2008, lost their leading scorer Yvan Busque to bit of silliness near the end of the first where he interfered from the bench with UNB rookie Josh Hepditch and was thrown out of the game. For a team that had played double overtime to beat Laurier in Saturday's semi, this loomed large when they kept coming up empty on power plays -- eight of them, all told. Moncton led 2-1 after 40, but it was tentative all the way. When it blanked on a 69-second 5-on-3 early in the third, any grip it still had on the game was gonzo.

Sure enough, the Varsity Reds' John-Scott Dickson popped in Rob Hennigar's centring pass with 9:33 left, and after another fruitless power play, it was on to overtime.

It's too bad for Moncton that it didn't get the storybook scenario -- win it all on home ice with their teammate Sébastien Savage, who was paralyzed in a 2005 game and now lives in Ottawa, on hand. The Varsity Reds had a better idea for a script -- they arrived seeded No. 5 in the six-team tournament, but outlasted the Saskatchewan Huskies 3-2 on Thursday and crushed Trois-Rivières 6-0 yesterday to advance to the final. Tonight their goalie, former Mississauga IceDogs standout Michael Ouzas, shrugged off a soft second-period goal by Moncton's Pierre-Luc Laprise to keep his team in the game. In a little deus ex machina, he stopped Laprise's one-timer off a rebound in the first minute of the extra session; after that, the puck barely left Moncton's zone before Pearce took a pass from Marach and went five-hole on Moncton's Eric Lafrance to end it.

There might not be a good analogue to put this in perspective for people in "Upper Canada." -- e ven a Carleton-Ottawa final at next season's CIS Final 8 wouldn't have the history or the French vs. English aspect of UNB playing U de M. The Maritimes is much like New England when it comes to their schools and their sports teams, so the hockey and hoops rivalries run deep. It took a while tonight, but the rest of the country got to see how they treat university hockey down East.

Related:
Varsity Reds win second title (Mirtle)
Moncton welcomes paralyzed player home (James Mirtle, globesports.com)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.