Cards skate past Delta, fall to Oakland, questioning refs' fairness

January 21, 2008 —

Blood, sweat and fights. The Cardinals got enough this weekend when they took on the Delta Pioneers Friday night, and Oakland University on Saturday night.

In their first game of the semester, the Cardinals traveled to Bay City to square off against Delta. Junior forward Matt Fogal assisted senior forward Nate Engstrom for the first goal of the game at 9:22 in the first period.

A Delta penalty early in the second led to a power-play goal by junior defenseman Chris McGuire assisted by junior forward Doug Greene.

Both teams kept up rough play, seeing Delta enter the penalty box once again. Short-handed, Delta joined the Cardinals on the scoreboard with their first goal at 4:14 in the second. Less than two minutes later, the Pioneers scored again, tying the game.

By the end of the second, Saginaw came back and scored two short-handed goals by Fogal and sophomore forward Jon Tibaudo.

The Cardinals held onto their 4-2 lead well into the third period. Junior forward Doug Greene gave the Cardinals their fifth goal on a power play, assisted by senior forward Brian Jensen and sophomore forward Chris Landrith.

"After Delta tied it up we came out and got two short-handed goals," captain Pat Miller said. "We put the nail in the coffin and had a really good team effort."

The Pioneers took out their frustration, having a player ejected after a scrum with Miller.

With only 11 seconds left in the game, Tibaudo was also asked to leave the rink after a scuffle with a Delta player.

Saturday night the Cardinals traveled down to Fraser to play against Oakland University.

The Grizzlies jumped on the Cards early, and never looked back, skating to a final score of 9-2.

Questionable officiating raised frustrations for the Cardinals as the number of penalties Saginaw took flew above the number that Oakland had. At the end of the game, Saginaw had 27 penalties and five players were ejected. Oakland only served in the box four times.

"Five players being kicked out is something I've never seen before and most of the calls were inaccurate," Jensen explained. "They were giving our team five minutes in the box instead of two."

The inaccurate calls caused frustration among the team. There were a large number of tiffs between the teams and as Oakland gained more of a lead, the number of penalties increased.

"They didn't stick to the game plan," Jensen said. "They forgot about our game and were more worried about the refs. We had controlled the tempo of play in the first but lost control after the refs started making questionable calls."

Junior forward Doug Greene scored both of Saginaw's goals, one in the second period and the other during the third. By the end of the game, some of the team was showered and had joined the crowd in watching the remainder of the third period.