CALGARY – The Dinos women's hockey team took a critical 1-0 lead in their semi-final series against the MacEwan college Griffins with a 1-0 victory Friday night at the Olympic Oval. This ends a minor losing skid caused by two losses to SAIT at the end of the regular season as well as an exhibition game shutout against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.
“We played a full three periods and kept playing the whole time,” assistant captain Ali Webb commented after the game. ”It was a really good team effort.”
Tiara Schoenroth, who set up the game's only goal, echoed this sentiment, “it's the first time in awhile that we've come together as a team and played well, every single person had a good game.”
The game winning goal came in the second period following a Dinos-dominated first period where the home squad outshot the visitors 7-2 but failed to convert on two power-play chances.
The goal was scored by the Dinos rookie line of Elana Lovell, Schoenroth, and Shelby Davey who have dominated offensively during the regular season. This domination led to Lovell and Davey being named to ACAC all-conference teams.
At 7:28 in the second period Lovell managed to skate the puck into the Griffins zone and drop it back to a waiting Schoenrth; seeing Davey streaking to the far side of the MacEwan net Schoenroth fed the puck through traffic before Davey bashed home the eventual game winner.
All told, the Dinos outshot their opponents in the first two periods 23-4, leading to a final shot count of 28-9 for the Dinos. This caused a one sided game which saw dangerous scoring chances by most of the Dinos offense. These chances never saw the back of the net due to MacEwan's goalie, Kristin Sugiyama who was on-hand to stop many of Cait O'Hara's redirects and Lovell's shots from the slot.
“It was a lot more intense than the regular season and everyone realizes that we have to step it up,” O'Hara said. “It's not going to be an easy walk, everyone showed tonight that we're all going to do it.”
The intensity was apparent early in the third when, on the first play, a push from Tanya Morgan dropped MacEwan forward Jenna Reichert into the boards. This resulted in a game misconduct for Morgan and a high tension third period for the spectators.
With that taste in the players mouth a similar hit from behind occurred against Tiara Schoenroth a minute later as she left the penalty box and took off on a breakaway. Throughout the third the game became more hotly contested but was kept in check by Sugiyama and the Dinos goalie, Katie Urness. Each net-minder faced five shots in the third and turned them all away.
One other thing on everyone's mind in this ACAC playoff is the goings on of the SAIT-Mount Royal series. First ranked SAIT lost to sixth ranked Mount Royal in overtime during the opening match before evening the series in double overtime during the second game.
“It just goes to show that anything can happen in the playoffs so we have to come out to play every game,” said Webb. “It doesn't matter where we finished in the league, it's a whole new start.”
The Dinos and Griffins are back at it Saturday night with a 7 p.m. tilt at Servus Place in Edmonton. The Dinos can put this series to bed with a second win while MacEwan will try to even the series. If MacEwan wins the second game, a tiebreaker match will be held at the Olympic Oval on Sunday for a 1:30 p.m. start.
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