We already know that Saskatchewan has a berth in the U SPORTS National Championship thanks to their hosting the event this season, the defending National Champions in the Mount Royal Cougars are looking to defend that title, and UBC is hungry for another Canada West banner so they can return to Nationals. Major coaching changes with the Dinos and Pandas may mean new looks for those teams, and all of MacEwan, Manitoba, and Regina are looking for playoff berths after missing last season. Week One gets us started, so let's see how this week went for eight teams on The Rundown!
A Little Housekeeping
Before we get to the recaps, I'm going to be very clear that I do this for the fans of Canada West women's hockey. Yes, those can be players, coaches, parents, alumni, and anyone else who has an interest, but I owe the schools who are mentioned here nothing. If the schools don't want to post highlight packages to their YouTube accounts, that's fine, but I'm going to call those schools out for failing to endorse their athletes. If schools don't want to be called out or embarrassed by what I post, there's an easy solution to this. I'm not wasting hours on a Sunday when I could be doing other stuff. Are we clear? Good. Let's roll in this weekend's recaps!
The first goal of the season in Canada West women's hockey came at 6:25 of the first period. Sophie Lalor's quick shot from the high slot drew two defenders towards her which left Kate Ball wide open in front of Shippam. Ball picked up the rebound, went to the backhand, and potted it behind Shippam as the Huskies went up 1-0!
Why did I post that highlight there? Because it's the only one you'll see from the Huskies this weekend. As much as I respect the fact that the Huskies have sponsors who want highlight packages, your women's hockey team is guaranteed to be playing at Nationals. Let's do a little promotion of that team, shall we?
The Fluffy Cows would respond just past the midway mark of the period as Kate Gregoire scored off assists from Kylie Lesuk and Dana Goertzen, and that 1-1 score would carry into the first intermission with the Huskies up 14-9 in shots through one period.
The second period saw the roof cave in on the Fluffy Cows as they started the period killing penalties. Saskatchewan helped them with that when they ended a penalty early after Sophie Lalor scored at 2:10 to make it 2-1, and, five seconds later, Kelsey Hall made it a 3-1 game with another tally! Lalor would add a second goal in the frame at 10:24 after denting twine again, and that 4-1 advantage would hold into the second intermission with Saskatchewan leading 25-13 in shots as they showed some solid play.
The third period saw the Fluffy Cows push back as Sarah Dennehy scored at the 5:17 mark, but Camryn Drever and the Huskies defence would hold the fort through the remaining time as the Huskies capture their first win of the season by a 4-2 score! Camryn Drever stopped 21 shots for her first win of the season while Emily Shippam took the loss on opening night despite making 25 saves.
Highlights for Friday? Nope. We already know that. Instead, let me post this video from Scott Roblin of Global Saskatoon of the Huskies getting ready for a memorable season.
SATURDAY: With one win in the books, the Huskies looked to close out their weekend against the Fluffy Cows with a sweep by taking Saturday's game as well. Sophie Lalor looked to continue her big season after putting up four points on four goals the night before while the Fluffy Cows hoped to even the series at 1-1. Meagan Relf defended the Manitoba net in this one while Camryn Drever was back for her second-straight game!
The opening period featured no goals, but the Huskies killed off an early penalty while the Fluffy Cows killed off two penalties. The shots favoured Manitoba 10-9 through the opening frame.
Just like one night earlier, the second period saw the roof collapse in on the Fluffy Cows, albeit a little later in the frame. Jayde Cadieux scored her first goal of the season at 11:51 to make it 1-0. Kate Ball and Taylor Wilkinso went to work later in the period as Wilkinson set up Ball for a goal at 16:06 before Ball returned the favour 55 seconds later as Wilkinson made it 3-0 with her first of the season. The Huskies held a three-goal lead in the second intermission for a second-straight night while holding a 19-17 edge in shots.
The only goal scored in the third period was a third marker by Sophie Lalor at 14:54 off another feed by Kate Ball as she picked up three points on four goals in the Huskies 4-0 shutout win over the Fluffy Cows. Camryn Drever stopped 24 shots to complete the sweep and pick up her first shutout and second win while Meagan Relf suffered the loss on a night where she stopped 25 shots.
Since we already know there are no highlights, there are none here. What should betbe seen, though, is the effort the Huskies took to recognize National Truth and Reconciliation with a special logo created by artist Chris Chipak - better known by his artist name "inchipakwetrust" - who ius from Red Pheasant First Nations. Full marks to the Huskies for this fantastic effort, and to Chris Chipak for the great logo! Here's the video that Saskatchewan produced!
The two teams battled through the first period as each looked for weaknesses in the other's defensive systems. Mount Royal killed off a penalty before Regina killed off the new two infractions that were penalized, and we'd hit the first intermission still tied at 0-0 with Mount Royal clearly showing a better offensive effort with a 13-6 edge in shots.
We'd see our first goal in this game at the 7:06 mark!
Makena Kushniruk was in the right spot after the centering pass in front saw Paige Hubbard get a stick on it before the puck seemed to bounce off the defender standing in front of Ross, and the puck came to Kushniruk. She went glove-side to the far post with her shot, and it found room past Ross to make it 1-0 for the Regina Cougars! Why am I showing you this highlight? Like Saskatchewan, there are no highlight packages available for this game! Get it together, Regina!
Mount Royal continued to push for an equalizer, and they'd get one approximately ten minutes later when Aliya Jomha beat Kliewer at 17:45 to make it 1-1 game! That score would hold into the intermission with the Alberta-based Cougars holding a 22-11 advantage in shots.
The Regina Cougars would jump out to a lead early in the third period off an incredible effort by Hannah Pennell. She skated the puck out of her zone and into the MRU zone before dishing to Paige Hubbard. Hubbard's shot was blocked, but Pennell picked up the loose puck and went over the glove of Ross at 3:55 to make it a 2-1 game for Regina! The champs, though, would respond twelve minutes later when Julia Duke scored her first Canada West goal at 16:05 on an unassisted effort, and we were back to an even 2-2 game. The horn would eventually sound on the third period with no other goals being scored, so we got some free hockey on the first night of the season!
It wouldn't take long to find a winner in this game, though, as 77 seconds was all that was needed. Athena Hauck found Kiana McNinch who found the back of the net, and that gave Mount Royal the 3-2 overtime victory over the Regina Cougars! Kaitlyn Ross earned her first win of the season with an 18-save effort in 61:17 of work while Arden Kliewer made 33 stops in the overtime loss.
As stated, there are no highlights, but I think this story about Regina goaltender Arden Kliewer might be pretty interesting for people to see. I had no idea she was a two-sport star playing perhaps two of the most demanding positions in those sports! Have a watch of this story from Global News' Andrew Benson and Brenden Purdy!
SATURDAY: After taking the first game, the Mount Royal Cougars were looking to sweep the Regina Cougars in the weekend series. Regina grabbed a point from Mount Royal one night earlier, so they looked to build on that point in the back-half of the two-game series. Both teams changed netminders as Scout Anderson was in net for Mount Royal for her first start of the season while Natalie Williamson was in the Regina crease for her first start of 2023-24 as well!
I'm not one to celebrate blowouts, so let's just work this one quickly as one of the two Cougars squads went for the throat in this game. Allee Gerrard scored at 13:04 to put MRU up 1-0, and Lyndsey Janes would close out the period's scoring when she beat Williamson at 17:27 to put Mount Royal up 2-0. The shot count favoured Mount Royal 8-5 through 20 minutes.
Mount Royal started the second period down a player as they killed off a penalty, but they flipped the script when Jerzey Watteyne scored her first Canada West goal while shorthanded just 16 seconds into the frame! That 3-0 lead would become a 4-0 lead with 1:25 to play in the frame as Athena Hauck found Kiana McNinch at 18:35 for the four-goal lead with Mount Royal leading 20-11 in shots.
Jerzey Wattyne would add her second goal off a Lyndsey Janes' feed at 7:51 to make it 5-0, and Emma Bergesen would get one more on the power-play at 13:52 to round out the scoring as the Mount Royal Cougars take four points in Regina with a 6-0 score in this game. Scout Anderson is still perfect after this game this season, stopping 15 shots for her first shutout and win of the season while Natalie Williamson made 20 saves in the loss.
Highlights? Let's not even make that joke. Regina athletes deserve a little credit, though, as they participated in the Glenn Anaquod Tipi raising competition as part of their Truth and Reconciliation Ceremonies. Trinity Grove and head coach Sarah Hodges of the Cougars women's hockey team were part of the competition that was started by Glen Anaquod, the late Cree elder, who taught generations about the significance of tipis in Indigenous cultures!
The two teams came out of the gates looking for early goals, but the ice seemed tilted in one direction for most of the opening period as Calgary peppered Sank in the MacEwan net with shots. She was up to the challenge, though, as both she and Durante kept the scoresheet free of ink in the goal-scoring section! MacEwan killed off a penalty as well, but the first intermission saw the teams head down to their rooms tied at 0-0 with Calgary holding a 14-3 edge in shots.
Things seemed to even out in terms of shots in the second period as both team had chances, but only one capitalized. Former Old College defender Ali Macauley, now playing for Chris Leeming at MacEwan, found room past Durante at 9:51 to put the Griffins up 1-0! The only problem? There's no video evidence of this happening. I asked them via Twitter account about it, and this was the response.
There was one more goal before the second period came to a close, and the Griffins were the team to tally that marker. Shaelyn Hopkins' shot on the power-play at 19:05 found the back of the net to put the Griffins up 2-0, and we'd head into the intermission with that score, but with Calgary leading 25-10 in shots.
The Griffins came out in the third period looking to disrupt the Dinos for the last 20 minutes, and whatever they were doing was working well. The Dinos still got off a pile of shots, but Brianna Sank was there to stop them. Allee Isley iced the game with 40 seconds to play as she hit the empty net after Calgary brought out the extra attacker, and the MacEwan Griffins earned their first win of the season with a 3-0 victory! Brianna Sank was a wall in the net as she picked up her first shutout and win with a 39-save performance while Gabriella Durante stopped 14 shots in the loss.
I'm not saying anything about highlights. Because the Griffins also don't produce videos for anything they do on campus nor anything cool things their players do, let's check out the Griffins at school.
Let's just say that this game was the reverse of Friday night. Calgary opened the scoring as Elizabeth Lang scored at 6:41 to put the Dinos up 1-0 after Courtney Kollman centered a pass off a dump-in by the Dinos to where Lang was standing in the slot, and she went over Sank's glove to opening the scoring! Kollman now has points for three different university teams in her career which is kind of cool! The two teams would exchange penalties in the latter half of the period, but Lang's goal would stand as the only marker as the Dinos led 1-0 at the first intermission despite MacEwan outshooting Calgary 8-7 in the first period.
You likely noticed the link on the Calgary goal above. Why? No highlight package. Instead, they clip the goals and post them to Twitter, so I'm posting those here. I'm not making highlight reels for your players, Dinos. Find someone who will and post it to your YouTube page. Why is this so hard for athletics departments?
The second period was rolling along until Jolie Nafziger announced her presence at the 14:00 mark. Kyla Mitenko centered the puck as she skated out of the corner, and Nazfiger had her stick on the ice where she redirected it high over Sank's glove for the 2-0 Calgary lead! The final six minutes of the frame yielded no other goals, though, so Calgary took the 2-0 lead to the rooms while holding a 20-19 edge in shots.
Whatever was said in the room by Calgary Dinos head coach Josh Gosling seemed to put the Dinos on the offensive as they dominated the third period's offensive touches. Sydney Mercier got her name on the board when Caitlyn Perlinger fed her a pass in the circle, and she circled into the slot area and wired a shot high stick-side past the screen that eluded Sank at 9:17, and it was a 3-0 lead for the Dinos. Calgary wasn't done, though, as Jolie Nazfiger set up shop in the slot uncovered, and Evelyn Lawrence fed her the puck which she banged home past Sank at 11:37 for the 4-0 lead! That was more than enough for Amelia Awad as Macewan's three shots didn't find twine, and the Calgary Dinos recorded their first win of the season with a 4-0 victory over the MacEwan Griffins! Amelia Awad picked up her first win and first Canada West clean sheet with her 22-save effort while Brianna Sank suffered her first loss after stopping 25 shots.
I'm not ever going to bother mentioning highlights.
The first period was evenly played between these two teams. In fact, had Alberta not been whistled for a penalty, the first period would have been rather uneventful outside of a handful of shots. Through 20 minutes, UBC and Alberta were tied 0-0 and tied in shots at 7-7!
The second period was far more eventful for one team as the Pandas barely had time to breathe after penalty problems allowed UBC to turn up the pressure on the Pandas. Grace Elliott would open the scoring after Jacquelyn Fleming broke in on the left side and centered it to her, and Elliott used a defender as a screen to rip a shot past Oswald just 64 seconds into the frame for the 1-0 UBC lead! Minutes later, Chanreet Bassi found the back of the net on the power-play at 4:10, and the Thunderbirds were flying with a 2-0 lead! Alberta would get one back late in the period as Maia Ehmann scored her first Canada West goal at 15:41, but it was a 2-1 lead that UBC took the room while leading 30-10 in shots! Not a typo!
You saw the link above, right? You already know why that's there.
The third period saw UBC run into some penalty trouble of their own in the opening half of the frame. Alberta would finally capitalize on the power-play when Jadynn Morden beat Hugens for a power-play goal at 11:56, and this game was all square at 2-2! After a UBC timeout, it seemed that the T-Birds refocused, but momentum was helping Alberta. It wouldn't be until the final minute that we'd see the stalemate broken as Ashton Thorpe's initial shot was stopped by Oswald, but she couldn't corral the rebound as Joelle Fiala came crashing through the crease to whack the puck past the sprawled Alberta netminder with 39 seconds to play as UBC took the 3-2 lead! An Alberta timeout did nothing to change the score as the horn sounded on the UBC 3-2 victory! Elise Hugens picked up her first win with a 23-save performance while Halle Oswald was on the losing end in this one despite making 33 saves.
No highlight package was made by Alberta, so we get this shaky formation by the US Air Force Thunderbirds after UBC Thunderbirds nearly squandered their two-goal lead. A win's a win, though!
SATURDAY: The Pandas hosted the early game on Saturday as the Thunderbirds stopped in at Clare Drake Arena once more. After a quality showdown one night earlier, would we see these two bring the same intensity less than 24 hours later? We were destined to find out as Elise Hugens was back in her spot in the UBC cage while Halle Oswald was back in the Alberta net as she was seeking a win as well!
The first period was solid defensively for both sides as both UBC and Alberta killed minor penalties, and both took few risky chances with the puck. Some may say that's boring hockey, but it's how you win in Canada West! After one period, these two teams were tied at 0-0 with UBC holding a 7-5 edge in shots.
The second period felt similar to the first period in that neither side wanted to make mistakes that would result in the red light being on in their zone. UBC had a couple of penalties to kill off compared to Alberta's lone infraction, but all three penalties were killed. Through two periods, it was still 0-0 with Alberta leading in shots 14-10.
Again, the third period was feeling a lot like the previous two frames, but that changed with seven minutes to go. Mackenzie Kordic picked the pocket of an Alberta defender and curled into the high slot area where she unleashed a laser of a shot that beat Oswald on the stick side to give UBC the 1-0 lead at 13:26! A late penalty to UBC would have bad consequences of you're a UBC fan as Alberta used the power-play to tie the game. With six attackers on the ice, Payton Laumbach would find twine with one second remaining on the clock as the Alberta Pandas found a way to salvage a point by tying the game at 1-1! As a result, we'd head off to overtime to find a winner!
It wouldn't take long to find that winner in this frame either. 54 seconds into the first overtime period, Brooklyn Tews would end this game with her marker in overtime as the Alberta Pandas rallied to win 2-1 in overtime over the UBC Thunderbirds! Halle Oswald made 18 saves in 59:15 of work for her first win of the season while Elise Hugens stopped 21 shots in 60:54 of work in the overtime loss.
Highlights? Nope. But winning in overtime after scoring with a second left in regulation time? Yeah, you could say that's pretty awesome for Week One!
| School | Record | Points | GF | GA | Streak | Next |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saskatchewan | 2-0-0-0 | 4 | 8 | 2 | W2 | @ MAC |
| Mount Royal | 1-0-1-0 | 4 | 9 | 2 | W2 | vs ALB |
| UBC | 1-0-0-1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | L1 | vs REG |
| Calgary | 1-1-0-0 | 2 | 4 | 3 | W1 | @ TWU |
| MacEwan | 1-1-0-0 | 2 | 3 | 4 | L1 | vs SAS |
| Alberta | 0-1-1-0 | 2 | 4 | 4 | W1 | @ MRU |
| Regina | 0-1-0-1 | 1 | 2 | 9 | L2 | @ UBC |
| Trinity Western | 0-0-0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | n/a | vs CAL |
| Manitoba | 0-2-0-0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | L2 | BYE |
The Fluffy Cows
First, Manitoba lost the special teams battle that I highlighted on Wednesday as they were oh-fer-nine on the power-play while Saskatchewan went 2-for-9. Neither team scored a shorthanded goal so at least the Fluffy Cows can claim that as a small victory compared to last season, but special teams matter and it seems like the Keystone Herd isn't working on trying to make them special.
Second, the Fluffy Cows have to find consistency in their efforts. That's a big topic in hockey, but it starts with a consistent effort from game to game, practice to practice, drill to drill, line to line, player to player, and shift to shift. As the old saying goes, "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard," and this Fluffy Cows squad has yet to convince anyone that they're willing to outwork whoever is sitting on the other bench.
There's no doubt that the Fluffy Cows are an impressively-talented team with scoring depth and speed all over the roster, but I find it hard to watch them when it seems like the team attitude is "good enough". Ole Kirk Christiansen, the founder of Lego, decreed that company's motto to be "Only the best is good enough," and I'd like to see that mindset installed in this Fluffy Cows' team. With a bye week starting this week for the Fluffy Cows, they have two weeks where they can begin to reshape their team if they want to be playing in meaningful games in late February this season.
Are they willing to put the work in that's required to be a playoff team? I have no doubt that they possess that work ethic, but getting that work ethic to be consistent on a shift-by-shift basis will need to be the goal. Otherwise, the Fluffy Cows are looking at another winter with just 28 games of hockey for them.
You Were Warned
I will continue to point this out all season long, but scoring first in Canada West is essential if teams want to win games. On average, the season trends point to a 76% chance of winning and an 80% chance of recording points over the years for teams that score first, and this weekend followed that trend nearly perfectly. In the eight games we saw, teams that scored first went 6-0-2 for a 75% winning percentage and a whopping 87.5% points percentage.Again, nothing is guaranteed in this game, but scoring first in Canada West women's hockey seems to give teams a better-than-good chance of winning the game. At the very least, it seems to virtually guarantee points which is the most important thing when trying to earn a playoff spot. That points percentage number will regress slightly as more games are played, but there's no denying that scoring first significantly improves a team's odds of winning.
The Last Word
Since none of the schools likely read this article I post weekly about their athletes, I doubt I'll see any of the schools make an effort to make highlight packages of their fantastic women's hockey players. Not one school this week has posted a highlight package to YouTube, and there were only handful of goals clipped and posted to social media. How does anyone get to see these amazing athletes do their things when their own schools won't give them a push?To the players on the nine teams who make up Canada West, I am here to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a webcast that doesn't cost $40 that prevents people from seeing you play. You deserve highlight packages that show off your incredible skills and talents. You deserve to be celebrated and cheered and idolized for those skills and talents and great plays. You deserve the same treatment that the professional teams in your cities get.
I'll do my best with my annual budget of $0.00, but your schools have to do the bare minimum by getting highlights of your games up on YouTube and on social media. You make them look good; demand that they show off your skills as well.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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