The York University Lions men's hockey team lost the opening game of their best-of-three OUA semifinal series to the Brock Badgers by a score of 6-2 on Wednesday night at Canlan Ice Sports.
 
The defending Queen's Cup champions now have some work to do to get back to the gold-medal game as they will need to win the next two contests against Brock to advance. The winner of the series will also earn a spot at the U SPORTS championships in mid March.
 
The game did not start off well for the Lions as the Badgers wasted little time getting on the scoreboard. An early penalty allowed Sammy Banga to score less than two minutes into the game for a quick 1-0 lead. He was assisted by Josh Timpano and Jeff Corbett.
 
The Lions battled hard following this goal, and their efforts paid off. Trevor Petersen scored four minutes later with the assistance of Morgan Messenger and Colton Vannucci to level the score at 1-1 This was not the end of the action for the period, however, as the Badgers quickly restored their lead and then built a significant advantage.
 
The Badgers went on to add three more goals. The first came from Corbett, assisted by Timpano. The second came from Cosimo Fontana and was assisted by Timpano and Adam Lloyd. The Badgers added another in the final minute of the frame, again from Fontana, to take a commanding 4-1 lead after the opening 20 minutes of play.
 
The second period remained scoreless until the 13:44, when Messenger – with the help of Justin Bean and Nik Coric – was able to add a second goal for the Lions, bringing this score to 4-2. This was the only goal of the period, which allowed the Lions to close the Badgers' lead.
 
That was as close as the Lions would get, however, as the Badgers added another two goals in the third to round out the scoring. Adam Lloyd scored halfway through the period with the help of teammate Mack Lemmon, and Ayden MacDonald added the final goal six minutes later into an empty net.
 
The Lions will look to continue their quest for a second straight appearance in the Queen's Cup when they make the trek down to St. Catharines, Ont., on Friday for the second game of the best-of-three series. Puck drop is set for 7:15pm at Seymour-Hannah Arena.