It’s safe to say that Major Edward A. Murphy Jr. didn’t have hockey in mind when he said, “If something can go wrong it most undoubtedly will.” But if you asked the women’s hockey team, they might tell you that Murphy’s Law was working overtime in St. Catharines this past weekend as the Blues battled in the Ontario University Athletics final four tournament.
After a remarkable victory over Queen’s in Saturday’s semifinal, the Blues were set to take on the defending Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) champions from Laurier in the OUA gold-medal game. However, when the team arrived at Seymour-Hanna Arena Sunday afternoon, a buzz started to filter through the gathered crowd that something had gone terribly wrong.
Soon information began to leak out that some of U of T’s starting goaltender Lisa Robertson’s equipment, along with the jerseys of captain Kim Devereaux and assistant captain Sue McCutcheon, had gone missing from the Blues’ locker room. The game was delayed for an hour as tournament and team officials scrambled to get the Blues’ ready for this most important of contests.
Finally, at 4 p.m., the team took to the ice. Robertson was wearing a non-descript black mask and Devereaux and McCutcheon were wearing the unfamiliar numbers 20 and 22, respectively. But, unfortunately for the Blues, the worst was yet to come.
With time winding down in a cautious first period, Devereaux took what seemed to be a harmless wrist shot with ten second left. The puck hit a pair of Laurier shin pads and bounded out to centre ice, where it was easily corralled by Laurissa Kenworthy-Laurier’s most dangerous forward.
Kenworthy went in alone on Robertson, deked to her forehand and slid the puck under the Toronto netminder just as time expired.
The referees, with help from tournament organizers and a television broadcast team, ruled that the puck had gone in with 0.03 seconds left and that Laurier had secured a 1-0 lead; a disastrous finish to an evenly played period.
When faced with such adversity, a team has two options; either wave the white flag and give in to defeat or use the misfortune as a means to rally the troops and work even harder. When the Blues emerged for the second period, it was absolutely clear that the team had unanimously chosen the latter.
The Blues came out with renewed energy and began to outwork the Golden Hawks at the start of the second. The team was finally rewarded with just under seven minutes left in the period when young sparkplug Annie Delguidice-who also had the game-winning goal in the semifinal-fended off multiple Laurier defenders and beat goaltender Morgan Wielgosz low on her stick side to tie the game.
The teams then traded chances throughout an exciting third period, with the Blues outplaying the Golden Hawks in the frame’s final minutes. Devereaux, Delguidice, and McCutcheon all had chances to put U of T ahead, but were denied by the stellar play of goaltender Wielgosz.
Still knotted at 1-1, the game was headed to overtime.
The Blues controlled the pace of the play in the early stages of the extra stanza, but couldn’t generate any quality scoring chances. Laurier then began to mount sustained pressure on U of T, hemming them in their own zone and preventing any line changes, which ended up being the Blues’ undoing.
Just over four minutes into overtime, with an exhausted complement of Toronto players still on the ice, Laurier forward Jessica Judges took a wrist shot from the top of the circles that weaved its way through a maze of legs and found the back of the net. The Laurier Golden Hawks were OUA champions, and for the second year in a row the Varsity Blues would have to settle for second place.
But all is certainly not lost for U of T’s women’s team. The Blues still get to advance to the CIS national tournament this weekend at St. Francis Xavier University as the second of Ontario’s two entries despite this devastating defeat.
Everything from Delguidice’s tireless work ethic to Katie Dowdall’s dyed blue ponytail showed everyone in attendance at Sunday’s OUA final that the Blues are capable of coming together to overcome an unfortunate set of circumstances. After withstanding all the adversity the team has faced, it’s only fitting that they still get a chance to advance onto the national stage so that the entire country can see what only a select few in St. Catharines already know.
