It's now do-or-die for the UPEI men's hockey Panthers after dropping both games of an Atlantic University Sport playoff doubleheader in Fredericton over the weekend to the top-ranked reigning national champions UNB Varsity Reds.
UNB's 5-1 win Saturday, which followed a come-from-behind 4-3 win to open the series, have put the Varsity Reds only one victory away from sealing the best-of-five semifinal series against the Panthers.
Game 3 will see the series move to Charlottetown, with the teams facing off at 7 p.m. Wednesday at MacLauchlan Arena.
If the Panthers pull off a win, the teams will play Game 4 at The Mac on Thursday, also at 7 p.m..
Coming off the two weekend losses, alternate captain Matt Carter said it definitely wasn't the road trip the Panthers had hoped for.
"It wasn't the most ideal weekend for us," said Carter. "They (UNB) are a good team. To give them credit, they capitalized on their opportunities.
"It's not like we weren't getting good opportunities. But we couldn't capitalize."
Carter, who assisted on Jordan Knox's goal in the first period of Friday's game but hasn't picked up a point since, said the team has to focus improving both on offence and defence.
"We have to get more traffic in front of the net and bang out some ugly goals," said Carter.
While the Panthers had some quality shots, the team was outshot in five of six periods over the weekend.
Despite the Panthers' returning home trailing UNB, head coach Forbes MacPherson said the pressure on UPEI remains the same as when entering the series.
When the two teams entered the series, UNB was top-ranked in the CIS top 10 poll for much of the year while the Panthers had just managed to crack into the media poll.
"There's always pressure. Even though we're the underdogs, we want to win," said MacPherson. "There's pressure in our own dressing room from our own group. It hasn't changed, it's always been there and will continue to be.
"We're here to win."
Despite the eight powerplay opportunities for each team in Saturday's game, only UNB could capitalize, with Varsity Reds captain Kyle Bailey slipping one past UPEI netminder Mavric Parks at 11:23 in the second period.
Other UNB goals Saturday were scored by Shayne Wiebe (2), Dion Campbell and Josh Kidd.
UPEI's lone goal was scored by Mike MacIsaac to tie the game up 1-1 at 16:19 in the first.
While the teams entered the second period tied, it didn't last for long with Campbell netting the game-winner at 2:13.
Emotions ran high during Saturday's game, which saw more than 120 penalty minutes called between both teams, most of them in the third period.
"We would get a power play then somehow manage to get a penalty as well, which kind of took the wind out of our sails," said Carter.
The highly-aggressive game, which saw UNB's Ben Wright get a game misconduct after taking a run at Parks midway through the third period, eventually prompted both teams to take out their goalies in the final three minutes to prevent any possible injury to their starters.
During his 56:26 minutes tending UPEI's backend, Parks stopped 27 shots he faced.
UNB netminder Travis Fullerton stopped all but one of UPEI's 24 shots.
Tickets for Wednesday's game go on sale at noon today at the MaLauchlan Arena box office with Wednesday's game expected to be a sellout.
"I'm positive we'll get it (a sellout)," said Carter. "The fans have been really good to us this year. We're going to be happy to have them back Wednesday."
"We're in a battle and guys are digging deep and battling as hard as they can," added MacPherson. "In that last series against Acadia, we could feel the support from the community and fans.
"We need that crowd as our seventh man to give us the energy."
