CALGARY - The University of Calgary Dinos women's hockey team is set to face the MacEwan Griffins in their penultimate weekend of the regular season. The Dinos are surging down the home stretch, leading the league and suffering only a single loss in seven games since the New Year. MacEwan has seen similar success recently, going 4-2 last month.
Last weekend in the ACAC all three matches ended in sweeps; the Dinos, Griffins, and SAIT Trojans walked away with two wins. The Dinos, in particular, saw incredible success against Mount Royal College, shutting them out in a 6-0 rout. MacEwan is fresh off 4-3 and 3-2 victories over the NAIT Ooks.
The standings give the 15-3-0 Dinos the edge against the 8-7-3 Griffins; this should be taken with a grain of salt due to MacEwan's upset of second ranked SAIT in mid January. This match-up will be an emotionally charged one for the veteran Dinos, who fell to the Griffins in a four-game final series last year; that defeat relegated the Dinos to a second place finish, something none of them are planning to repeat.
Statistically, the Dinos hold a slight edge with a near impenetrable penalty kill that leads the league at 91.8 per cent effectiveness, while MacEwan ranks fourth in this category with an 85.3 per cent kill rate. On the powerplay, however, the Griffins are superior, converting on 18.2 per cent of their chances versus the Dinos' 14.3 per cent success rate.
On the goaltending front the Dinos' Katie Urness has statistics that are far superior to Kristin Sugiyama. Urness comes into this game with a league leading six shutouts as well as a 1.14 GAA and .930 save percentage. Sugiyama, the Griffins starting goaltender, is slightly less impressive on the stat sheet carrying a 2.24 GAA and a .915 save percentage.
With two weeks left in the regular season, the ACAC playoffs are not too far away. The format sees all six teams make the post-season. The third and sixth place teams will square off in a best-of-three series while the fourth and fifth ranked teams do the same. This matchup will likely see sixth place Mount Royal take on either MacEwan College or Red Deer College, whichever has a more successful last two weeks.
The lower ranked of those two will face NAIT in that first round. The winners of those series go on to play the first and second ranked teams in a best-of-three semi-final which will likely be contested by the Dinos, who are guaranteed a top two finish, and SAIT, providing they don't experience a disastrous final two weeks.
The Griffins travel to Calgary on Friday, Feb. 6 for a 7:30 p.m. start at the Olympic Oval before both teams travel to Edmonton to complete the series on Saturday night.
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