EDMONTON, AB (February 17, 2012) – The final night of the regular season will determine who plays who, and where and when, after the No.5 Alberta Golden Bears kept pace with the No.4 Manitoba Bisons and No.7 Saskatchewan Huskies, taking a 7-3 win over the Lethbridge Pronghorns, Friday night at Clare Drake Arena in Edmonton.

Boxscore

Several Bears had multi-point nights as Zack Dailey (2G), Ben Lindemulder (1G, 1A), Travis Toomey (1G, 1A), Brett Ferguson (2A), Ian Barteaux (2A), and James Dobrowolski (2A) each drew a fair bit of ink on the scoresheet while Drew Nichol (GWG), Kruise Reddick, and Jordan Hickmott scored singles.

Lethbridge’s Winston Day Chief led all players with a three-point night (1G, 2A), fellow senior Chris Cooper (2A) and rookie forward Cass Mappin (1G, 1A) notching strong offensive nights as well. Former Everett Silvertip Clayton Cumiskey rounded out the scoring.

The now 19-6-2 Bears sit second in the Canada West standings, one point behind the 19-5-3 Bisons yet one point ahead of 18-6-3 Saskatchewan. A win tomorrow by Alberta can guarantee a “bye” to the semi-final round in two weeks time, but they’ll need some help from 12-12-3 UBC (hosted by Manitoba on Saturday) to claim the regular season conference title.

Friday’s victory looked a bit uncertain in the starting minutes of the game, even though the Bears got on the board first with a shorthanded tally from Toomey, putting on the afterburners at the Pronghorn blueline to cut in from the sideboards and deke the puck around ‘keeper Scott Bowles at the 2:37 mark.

Only 28 seconds later, however, Lethbridge replied on the same power-play with Day Chief’s wrister off the crossbar and, two-and-a-half minutes after that, Cumiskey took advantage of the combination of an out-of-position Kurtis Mucha and a loose puck in the Alberta crease by tapping the rubber back through his own legs before it crawled over the goal line for a 2-1 Pronghorns lead.

Lindemulder knotted the score at two at the 8:56 mark when he one-timed a beautiful feed from Ferguson in the corner, wristing the pass top shelf over an outstretched Bowles.

Alberta then grabbed the lead on a similar play just past the midway mark of the first, sophomore Johnny Lazo sending a cross-ice feed to Reddick to the far side of the net where the Manor, SK native found the empty cage for the go-ahead goal.

Yet the teams would tie again when Mappin deflected a Day Chief shot at the 13:11 mark, the freshman getting his eighth goal on the season and fifth goal on the power-play.

Surprisingly, it would take 18 more minutes before another goal was scored, despite Alberta firing 14 shots at the Lethbridge net in that time and having a 19-7 lead on the shot clock after the first period.

Nichol’s wristshot after a rush down the wing at 11:11 in the second period found the twine, the former Edmonton Oil King notching his first goal of the season after being “on the schneid” for 20 straight conference games.

A cross-crease tap-in on the man-advantage by Dailey would increase the lead to two at the 14:13 mark of the middle frame and Alberta would make it three with 4.5 seconds left on the clock when Hickmott went in alone on a breakaway and roofed it in tight for the rookie’s 12^th goal of the season to lead all freshmen.

Edmonton native Dailey’s second of the night five minutes into the third, deflecting a Barteaux point shot, salted the game away and keep the Bears in second in the standings.

The power-play continued to be a bright spot for the Pronghorns, going 2-6 on the evening while Alberta finished 1-4.

Game two of the weekend series, the final game for both teams in the regular season will go tomorrow, puck drop at 7 PM MT.