Blake Murphy Sports Writing

The UBC Thunderbirds were close but came up just short against Canada’s second-ranked women’s hockey team Friday night, narrowly losing to the University of Calgary Dinos 4-2 in Calgary.

Down 3-1 in the third, Kaitlin Imai (Coquitlam, BC) beat Amanda Tapp to bring the Thunderbirds within striking distance with nine minutes to play.

After a pair of late penalties put the teams at four-on-four, UBC pulled goaltender Danielle Dube (Vancouver, BC), who made 21 saves on 24 shots, for the extra attacker. Unfortunately for the Thunderbirds, Stephanie Ramsay was able to find the empty net and seal the game at 4-2.

For UBC, it’s their second close call with the Dinos this season, having lost in overtime to them previously, and it’s a sign that the Thunderbirds can play with the best teams in Canada West.

“We played a really hard game,” said head coach Graham Thomas. “I’m proud of the girls, I was happy with the effort.”

UBC managed just 14 shots on Tapp, who has the best goals against average in the conference, but many of those chances were high quality opportunities. Still, 14 shots won’t often cut it against a goaltender of that caliber.

“We had some great chances and their goalie made some good saves,” said Thomas. “But we need to find a way to create more offense and generate more shots and traffic in front of their net.”

One major positive for the Thunderbirds is that they held Calgary, the conference’s third-ranked powerplay, to an 0-for-5 mark with the advantage. UBC also added a powerplay goal of their own against Calgary’s top-ranked penalty killing unit, courtesy of Rebecca Unrau (Humboldt, SK).

UBC will get another crack at the Dinos with a short turnaround time, as the two teams will meet once again at 2 p.m. local time Saturday.