London, ON – An early Brock scoring streak was too much to comeback from as the Mustangs dropped their 2023-34 home opener 5-1 to the Badgers on Friday night.
Western struggled mightily in the 1st period of the night as the Badgers scored four goals in the opening twenty minutes which put Western into a tough position to battle back throughout the rest of the night.
"We had a great week of practice, not really sure what happened in the first period there," said Head Coach Clarke Singer "I don't think we were as connected as a group, we weren't vocal on the ice, I thought we weren't taking away the middle (of the ice) and overall just thought we weren't making enough hard plays to play against such a good time like Brock,"
The Mustangs had a much more complete effort in the second period when they were able to finally get on the scoreboard when Christiano Aiello tipped a centering pass from Zach Power into the Brock cage to cut the Brock lead to 4-1.
Both sides saw plenty of time in the penalty box with a total of 19 penalties on the night with 62 total penalty minutes but that wasn't of large concern to the Mustangs Coach.
"I think very few were undisciplined penalties tonight, if you're playing hard, things are going to happen," said Singer "It was fairly even as far as power play and penalty kill and I thought that was just a sign of a couple of teams playing hard,"
The game saw the first appearance of the captains "C" on the sweater of Mustangs forward Shane Bulitka who was named the teams leader earlier this week.
"It's definitely an honour, Clarke announced it to the group last week, we've got a lot of leaders in our room that's for sure, not just me, but I'm very happy to be a part of that group," said Bulitka.
"Shane does everything right in terms of what we are looking for in a captain and leader," said Singer "He is great in the classroom and in the community as well as on and off the ice so he checks all the boxes for our group and we will look to him and all of our leadership group to help us this year,"
The Mustangs now turn their attention to making some adjustments to their personnel and systems ahead of a couple of mid-week games at home after dropping their first three games.
"It's a short season in the OUA so these next few games are almost must-win games for us because last season we had a bit of a slide at one point and then played some good hockey near the end but we dug ourselves too deep of a hole," said Bulitka "We want to get out of this as quick as we can,"
Western will play TMU on Wednesday (October 18) at 7 PM at Thompson Arena and then have the University of Toronto come to campus on Thursday night (October 19) for a 7 PM puck drop. Mustangs fans can buy their tickets at WesternMustangs.ca/tickets and Western students get FREE admission to all regular season on-campus games with the Western ONECard.
