CALGARY - The Dinos women's hockey squad came out and made a statement this week in their season opening series. Cait O'Hara summed that statement up well, “we are focused on winning the ACAC.”

Thursday night the Dinos defeated the Red Deer College Queens with a convincing 5-2 win. The Dinos followed up Saturday with a 1-0 victory.

The game winning goal was scored by rookie Elana Lovell, playing in her first university match, five minutes into the second period; “I shot from the point, it hit some sticks and skates, bounced, and then I put it in, it wasn't fancy but it got us a 'W'.” The goal was assisted by Nicole Kuglin and Shannon Davidson.

The story behind the low score was Red Deer netminder Grace Gaska, who saved 32 shots over the course of the evening. Gaska robbed the Dinos on numerous occasions frustrating an offence that had control of the puck all evening.

At the other end of the rink, second team all-star Katie Urness has an easy game deflecting 14 shots.
One defining play during this game came in the first period when Red Deer went on the powerplay due to an O'Hara crosscheck. The Dinos commanding fore-check forced Red Deer to stay in their own end for the whole of the Penalty, which saw the Dinos take more shots than the Queens.

The rest of the game continued in much the same way with the Dinos beating the Queens to the puck and controlling the game.

Neither team were successful on the powerplay at all with the Dinos failing to score on seven and Red Deer capitalizing on none of their four.

O'Hara also commented on the game and the new look for the team. “It was a good home opener, we didn't come out too strong, but we kept fighting.," she said. "We are a different team this year, we have more skill [on the team] this year, but just because we have skill does not mean our work ethic goes down, we're still focused on winning the ACAC.”

The now 2-0 Dinos' quest for dominance in the ACAC continues next weekend as they face the NAIT Ooks, who lost their season opener to Mount Royal college in overtime on Friday night. The Dinos series against NAIT will see them in Edmonton on Friday night before returning to the Oval on Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m.

-UC-