{"id":32719,"date":"2023-03-09T18:59:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T23:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=32719"},"modified":"2023-03-16T14:33:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T18:33:28","slug":"sac-sweeps-cisaa-d1-weekend-series-with-upper-canada-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/sac-sweeps-cisaa-d1-weekend-series-with-upper-canada-college\/","title":{"rendered":"SAC Sweeps CISAA D1 Weekend Series with Upper Canada College"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The St. Andrew\u2019s College Saints swept two games from Upper Canada College on the weekend in two vastly different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saints shut out UCC 4-0 on Saturday afternoon in Toronto, after a wild 8-6 win on Friday in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jack Pridham\u2019s hat trick spurred the Saints to their home ice victory and Luke Brandon turned away 21 shots to shutout the Blues on the road to cue SAC\u2019s early-March sweep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A common theme to both CISAA Division 1 victories was the Saints\u2019 power play that scored six times\u2014three in each game\u2014to impel SAC to a pair of victories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saints Head Coach David Manning commented about his team\u2019s efficacy with the man-advantage versus UCC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe power play has been good for us all year long. There\u2019s a level of comfort with the senior players running the power play. They\u2019ve been dangerous when they\u2019re out there and have clicked all season. We went 3 for 3 on Friday and 3 for 4 on Saturday so the goals were timely, especially when they drew four-minute penalties.  We made them pay for those penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another highlight of the weekend was the offensive production of Saints\u2019 forward Jack Pridham.  The Boston College commit produced five points in the Saints\u2019 wild home win on Friday, comprised of a hat trick, two assists, and the game-winning-goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coach Manning said he was impressed with Pridham\u2019s six points versus UCC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s definitely an opportunistic and skilled player who made the most of his chances this weekend.  Jack makes a team play if they give him some room and he has a great collection of skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday\u2019s win in Toronto versus UCC, the Saints\u2019 power play broke a 0-0 second period deadlock when Captain Jonathan Castagna tallied his 16th goal of the season at 11:03 assisted by Lucas Veilleux.  SAC\u2019s power play struck again less than a minute later when Jack Good\u2014on assists from Ryan Castle and Connor Arseneault\u2014gave the Saints a 2-0 lead heading into the final frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two minutes into the third period, the Saints built a three-goal cushion when defenceman Francesco Dell\u2019Elce scored his team\u2019s third power play of the game on Veilleux\u2019s second assist of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dell\u2019Elce tallied his second goal of the period with assists going to Dean Letourneau and Jack Pridham to provide the margin of victory over UCC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a stunning contrast to the prior game versus UCC, Coach Manning applauded the better defensive effort and the play of his goaltender Luke Brandon who turned away 21 shots for the shutout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLuke was solid and he made all the saves he was supposed to make to earn the shutout. We were more focused on playing proper defense. We were tougher to play against on Saturday and our team protected Luke better in the second game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saints outshot UCC 47-21 on Saturday afternoon, after blitzing their opposition for eight goals on 57 shots on Friday on home ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Friday afternoon\u2019s lid-lifter, SAC jumped out to a 1-0 lead at La Brier Family Arena on Anselmo Rego\u2019s 24th goal of the season assisted by Dean Letourneau, but UCC drew even less than 2 minutes later on Louis Charles Tremblay\u2019s marker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saints\u2019 Captain Jonathan Castagna broke the 1-1 tie with an unassisted goal with 6 minutes left in the period. Two consecutive goals by Jack Good 14 seconds apart gave SAC a commanding 4-1 lead after one period of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, UCC struck back quickly \u2013 just thirteen seconds into the second period \u2013 when Tremblay scored his second goal of the game and Leo Schneeberg pulled the Blues within one at 6.51.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAC responded to UCC\u2019s surge when Jack Pridham fired a power play goal with assists from Del\u2019Elce and Veilleux to put the Saints up 5-3. Tremblay tallied his third goal of the game to reduce UCC\u2019s deficit to 5-4 and Blues\u2019 centre Atom Thususka tied the game 5-5 before the SAC power play went back to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pridham\u2019s second goal with the man-advantage put the Saints back on top 6-5 on assists from Rego and Dell\u2019Ecce with 24 seconds left in the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pridham struck again to complete his hat trick \u2013 assisted by Ben Power \u2013 six minutes into the third period to put the Saints up 8-6 with what turned out to be the game-winning-goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCC drew to within one when Matteo Russo struck at 9.45, but SAC\u2019s Lucas Veilleux removed the remaining suspense with 1.26 left in the game with his ninth goal of the season.  Dell\u2019Elce\u2014on his third assist of the game\u2014and Castagna set up the Saints\u2019 eighth and final goal of this \u201cFriday afternoon shootout in Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coach Manning praised the play of Austin Gao, a call-up defenseman from the Markham Majors of the GTHL, who \u201cplayed very consistently all weekend and was voted player of the game on Friday by his teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora resident was called up due to a rash of injuries that have struck the Saints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven SAC players are currently hobbled by myriad injuries.  Despite the number of regulars missing from the lineup, the Saints will soldier on and travel to Lake Placid to complete their PHC schedule this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saints\u2019 2022-23 season comes to an end when they travel to New York to play two PHC games versus Northwood at the Olympic Center on March 10-11.  The Saints were eliminated from PHC playoff competition in Minnesota earlier in February, but defeated Northwood 6-5 in a Consolation matchup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pridham led the SAC weekend points parade versus UCC with 6 (3 goals\/3 assists) while Dell\u2019Elce added 5 (2 goals\/3 assists), and Veilleux totalled 4 (1 goal\/3 assists). Good had 3 goals and Letourneau totaled 3 assists against the Blues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jim Stewart<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Pridham\u2019s hat trick spurs Saints to wild 8-6 win at La Brier; Luke Brandon turns away 21 shots to shutout UCC 4-0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8vJ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 13:33:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}