UNB men's hockey team posts 1st perfect 30-0 regular season in U Sports history
CBC
Thirty wins and zero losses.
The University of New Brunswick men's hockey team completed a perfect regular season on Saturday with a 9-1 win over the University of Prince Edward Island, becoming the first U Sports hockey team to win 30 consecutive games in the process.
An undefeated regular season hasn't happened in U Sports men's hockey since 2002-03, when Western University accomplished the feat. That team actually lost two games that season, but the losses were reversed due to a player eligibility issue, according to U Sports records.
You'd have to go back to the early 1970s, when the University of Toronto and Saint Mary's University men's teams both posted perfect regular seasons with no losses or ties, to find a Canadian university men's hockey team quite as dominant as this year's UNB team has been. Even then, those teams played fewer games in a season.
"It's a great feeling," said UNB forward Austen Keating, who finished the season as the leading scorer in the competitive Atlantic University Sport (AUS), with 50 points in 30 games. "When you do something that rewrites history, it's pretty incredible."
Keating had a hat trick in the win over UPEI, while his linemate Brady Gilmour had a goal and three assists. Samuel Richard made 17 saves in the win.
When the final buzzer sounded, the team saluted a sold-out crowd of more than 3,300 at the Aitken University Centre, the homey, 1970s-era rink in the Maritime province's capital. They celebrated under rows of white banners from standout UNB men's and women's hockey teams of the past.
In the last two seasons, both the UNB men's and women's teams have made the national championships, with the men's team winning its ninth national title last year.
But an undefeated regular season is a first.
"I think it's just our bond," Keating said about what makes this team special. "For people who are around our team, we're so connected. We're brothers on the ice and off the ice. We push each other."
Some of the players on this team were here in 2020-21, when the team practised for months but never got to play a single game due to the pandemic.
The team went to the national championship the season after that, but exited early. Then, they got redemption last year, winning it all.
It's left them hungry for more.
"I think there's a lot of growth in personal life and a lot of growth as a team that you can get from doing hard things consistently," said captain Jason Willms, who had a goal and assist in the 9-1 win. "We're just kind of focusing on the process and I think that's what makes us so special."
