EDMONTON – It's incredible how fast things melted for the MacEwan Griffins men's hockey team in their home opener on Friday night.

With 20 minutes to go, they were playing a sound competitive and defensive game, backed by great goaltending as they led the Alberta Golden Bears 2-1 and seemed to be on their way to possibly beating their cross-town rivals for first time at home.

Then the floodgates opened and flooded them off the scoresheet.

In less than six minutes in the third period, the Golden Bears scored four times and capped it off with a late tally for a 6-2 rout in the opening game of the 2024-25 Canada West season for both teams.

Alex Thacker and Justin Hall each scored twice for the Golden Bears, the latter also picking up an assist, while Tyler Presziuso (1G, 1A) and Aidan de la Gorgendiere (2A) also had multi-point games.

That was working nicely for the Griffins in the first 40 as they Golden Bears were largely kept in check after Thacker opened the scoring on the powerplay 4:28 into the contest, hitting an open net after the puck fortuitously bounced onto his stick out of a scramble broken play.

But MacEwan outshot Alberta 14-11 in the opening frame and knotted the score on a beautiful play by three players. Hunter Donohoe threw a long stretch pass out of the zone, Samuel Simard won a 1-on-2 battle and sent a behind-the-back pass to Kadyn Chabot, who sniped it top corner.

After a series of great saves by veteran journeyman goaltender Brett Epp, who was making his Canada West debut in net for the Griffins – including a breakaway stop 2:20 into the second and a hot glove save on Blake Gustafson moments later – MacEwan took the lead.

Eric Florchuk's attempted pass behind his own net out of a corner scramble went off the side of the net and Vincent Scott jumped on it, went around Palmer and squeaked it under him.

But Alberta came out on a mission in the third, tying the game 3:42 into the frame when Preziuso cruised in on the left side unaccounted for off a shift change and he took de la Gorgendiere's cross-seam pass and wired it off the post and in.

Exactly a minute later, Thacker caught a break when Konrad Belcourt's point blast missed the net, but bounced off the back wall onto his tape on the other side, and he hit an open net after Epp slid over for the original shot.

Hall made it 4-2 less than two minutes later when he tipped de la Gorgendiere's point shot in heavy traffic past Epp, who didn't even react to it.

Noah Boyko made it 5-0 at 9:29 on a play created by Ty Nash, who occupied traffic in the slot, sput and hit the trailer Boyko, who wired it in.

Finally, with 41 seconds left, Adam Hall's shot went far pad on Epp and Justin Hall, untouched, tapped in the rebound.

Epp finished with 36 saves for MacEwan, while Palmer, who was also making his Canada West debut, stopped 21 for his first win.

The teams will meet again on Saturday (7 p.m., Clare Drake Arena, Canada West TV).