TORONTO (CIS) – The reigning national champion University of Calgary Dinos and all-world forward Hayley Wickenheiser hope for a repeat performance this week as they travel to Toronto for what is shaping up to be one of the most wide open CIS women's hockey championships in recent years.  

The CIS tournament, hosted for the first time since 1999 by the University of Toronto, gets underway on Thursday at Varsity Arena and wraps up Sunday with the gold-medal final set for 7 p.m. ET (5 p.m. MT)

All nine games from the event will be webcast live at www.CIS-SIC.tv.

Calgary enters the tourney as the fifth seed after being upset by UBC in the Canada West championship series. Also competing for CIS supremacy this week will be the top-seeded Montreal Carabins (RSEQ champions), No. 2 St. Francis Xavier X-Women (AUS champs), No. 3 Queen's Gaels (OUA champs), No. 4 Thunderbirds (Canada West champs), as well as the No. 6 and host Varsity Blues.

In the round-robin portion of the competition, Montreal, UBC and Toronto will battle in Pool A, while StFX, Queen's and Calgary face off in Pool B.

Opening day sees the Dinos kick off their title defence against the X-Women at 1 p.m., and the Carabins take on the Blues at 7:30 p.m. The Gaels and T-Birds take the ice Friday against the losers of Thursday's matchups.

It was a tale of two seasons in CIS women's hockey.

League play was pretty much business as usual, with perennial powerhouses StFX (AUS), McGill (RSEQ), Wilfrid Laurier (OUA) and Calgary (Canada West) finishing atop the standings.

And then, all hell broke loose in the conference playoffs!

In Quebec, out are the McGill Martlets, who had won seven straight RSEQ banners and had skated at the last 10 national championships, winning three titles and nine CIS medals along the way. After dominating Montreal 6-1 in Game 1 of the best-of-three league final, McGill saw its crosstown rivals rebound with 3-2 and 2-1 victories to claim their first RSEQ crown in only their fourth-year of existence.

The Carabins' progression has been phenomenal since they made their CIS debut in the fall of 2009. After qualifying for nationals in their inaugural campaign (fifth place), they missed the 2011 tournament only to return last season and reach the gold-medal final, where they fell 5-1 to Calgary.

In Ontario, out are the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks, winners of eight of the last nine OUA titles, who will miss the CIS tourney for the first time since 2003. After finishing atop the OUA standings, the Hawks were upset in the conference semifinals by the fourth-place Western Mustangs, who in turn were swept by Queen's in the league final.

To be fair, the Gaels' triumph wasn't as stunning as Montreal's in the RSEQ. After all, only five points separated the top four teams at the end of the 26-game OUA schedule.

Not to be outdone, Canada West had a playoff upset of its own, although the end result wasn't as dramatic for the losers since the conference had two berths for the CIS tournament.

Last weekend's best-of-three conference final in Calgary pitted the reigning national champion Dinos against the Thunderbirds, a team that is a year removed from a one-win season and who had never had a sniff at the Canada West banner. As could be expected, the Dinos won Game 1 quite convincingly, 4-1, but then saw UBC roar back with 5-4 (2OT) and 5-2 victories to take the series.

The AUS was the only conference where logic was respected following the regular season. After going 23-1 in league action, StFX went 3-for-3 at the AUS championship to claim its second banner in three campaigns and advance to the CIS tournament for the fifth time in six years.
 
Despite their status of fifth seed and Canada West runner-ups, many still consider the Dinos to be the team to beat this week in Toronto.

After all, the defending champs are still led by three-time Olympic gold medallist Wickenheiser, who recently earned her second Canada West MVP award after tallying a conference-best 43 points (16-27-43) in only 22 contests. Also back from last year's championship squad are Russian Olympian Iya Gavrilova (13-15-28) on offence, all-Canadian Stephanie Ramsay (11-14-25) on defence, as well as standout goalie Amanda Tapp, the 2012 CIS championship MVP.  

“This team hasn't done anything easy this year, but we've always come back,” said head coach Danielle Goyette, whose team is 3-3 so far in the 2013 playoffs following a 7-0 post-season run a year ago. “We won't stay down because we lost to UBC, we have more character in the room than that and we know our season isn't over.
 
“We're disappointed to not win Canada West, but we're still a very good team. We won last year and maybe there's a target on our backs going into Toronto, but we didn't show this weekend that we were better than UBC - so we have a lot to prove. We know we have to get better and play better, and we know that we can do that.”

One person who knows better than to count out a Wickenheiser-led team is second-year Varsity Blues head coach Vicki Sunohara, whose squad had a solid 15-8-3 regular season but was dropped in two straight by Western in the first round of the OUA playoffs.

In addition to Calgary, the Blues are the only other participating team to have hoisted the CIS trophy in the past (2001).

No. 5 Calgary Dinos

Head Coach: Danielle Goyette (6th season)
Regular season record: 23-4-1
Regular season standing: 1st Canada West
Playoff record: 3-3
Playoff finish: Canada West finalists
Overall record vs. CIS teams: 30-9
Overall record vs. CIS championship teams: 5-3 (4-3 vs. UBC / 1-0 vs. Toronto)  
Top 10 final ranking (Feb. 19): No. 2
Top 10 best ranking: No. 1 (4 polls)
Top 10 number of weeks ranked (16 polls): 16
Conference award winners: Hayley Wickenheiser (MVP), Tanya Morgan (student athlete & community service)
Conference 1st team all-stars: Stephanie Ramsay (D), Hayley Wickenheiser (F), Iya Gavrilova (F)
Conference 2nd team all-stars: Amanda Tapp (G)
Conference all-rookie team: No all-rookie team in Canada West
Season leader (points): Hayley Wickenheiser (22 GP: 16-27-43)
Season leader (goals): Hayley Wickenheiser, 16 (22 GP)
Season leader (assists): Hayley Wickenheiser, 27 (22 GP)
Season leader (No. 1 goalie): Amanda Tapp (21 GP, 17-3, 1.53 GAA, .932 SV%)
CIS championship appearances (including 2013): 3  
CIS championship all-time record: 4-2 (.667)
CIS championship all-time medals: 1 (gold)
CIS championship best result: Champions (2012)
CIS championship last appearance: 2012 (champions)
CIS championship sequence: 2nd straight appearance

CHAMPIONSHIP SCHEDULE (all times MT)

Wednesday, March 6
19:00 All-Canadian Banquet (Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel)

Thursday, March 7
11:00 Pool B #1: No. 5 Calgary vs. No. 2 StFX ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  
17:30 Pool A #1: No. 6 Toronto vs. No. 1 Montreal ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  

Friday, March 8
14:00 Pool B #2: Loser Pool B #1 vs. No. 3 Queen's ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  
17:30 Pool A #2: Loser Pool A #1 vs. No. 4 UBC ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  

Saturday, March 9
14:00 Pool B #3: Winner Pool B #1 vs. No. 3 Queen's ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  
17:30 Pool A #3: Winner Pool A #1 vs. No. 4 UBC  ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  

Sunday, March 10
10:00 5th Place ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  
13:30 Bronze ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  
17:00 Final ( www.CIS-SIC.tv)  

About Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Canadian Interuniversity Sport is the national governing body of university sport in Canada. Every year, 11,000 student-athletes and 700 coaches from 54 universities and four regional associations vie for 21 national championships in 12 different sports. CIS also provides high performance international opportunities for Canadian student-athletes at Winter and Summer Universiades, as well as numerous world university championships. For further information, visit www.cis-sic.caor follow us on:

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