The next challenge to the Varsity Blues women’s hockey team will come this Saturday, when they face off against the four-time defending OUA champion, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks.
The game will be the teams’ first meeting of the season, as the Blues deal with an unknown quantity.
Blues head coach Karen Hughes isn’t sure what to expect. “[It’s] really hard to know because we haven’t seen them yet, but usually with Laurier, it’ll be about us trying to be a good skating team,” she said. “Good puck control will be key against them.”
The Blues look like they’re up to the task after a solid game against the Brock Badgers on Saturday night. Coach Hughes said the team had some good things to build on, and the final score—4- 1 in the Blues’ favour—certainly confirmed that view, bringing the Blues to a perfect 3-0 this season.
The team came out firing in the first period, but the sharp play of Beth Clause, second-year Badgers goaltender, kept the score close. Despite outshooting the Badgers 17 to 9, the Blues scored only one goal in the initial frame—a low glove-side power-play tally by Emily Milito from defenceman Kelly Setter on a two-on-one—when a hooking penalty to Brock’sMaggie Young gave the Blues their third chance with the man advantage.
Special teams continued to come through for the Blues, who killed off all six penalties against them. They were able to cycle the puck, get shots through from the point and maintain pressure in the offensive zone on most of their power-play opportunities.
The Blues would once again capitalize on a Brock penalty in the second period, on a hooking call against Ann Lavallee late in the frame. The Badgers’ aggressiveness on the penalty kill confined the Blues to their own zone for most of the two minutes but wound up costing them when a turnover inside Toronto’s blueline led to an odd-man rush that eventually ended in a goal by Annie Del Guidice, assisted by Milito and Brenly Jorgensen.
U of T broke the game wide open in the third period with two evenstrength goals at 3:34 and 6:11. After some aggressive forechecking deep in the Badgers’ zone, Blues forward Emily Patry came up with the puck in the corner and found an open Karolina Urban in front of the net. Urban fired the puck past the goaltender to make it 3- 0 and Lindsay Hill picked up the second assist on the goal. Laura Foster capped off the Blues’ scoring when shetapped the puck past a sliding Clause on a feed from Darby Smith and Lyndsey Ryan.
Brock called a time-out shortly after the fourth goal, and whatever head coach Todd Erskine said must have helped, because the Badgers responded with their first goal of the game just over a minute later. Lavallee made a pass to Kelly Walker just inside U of T’s blueline and after a move to get past the Blues defender, Walker walked in alone on the opposing goal and fired the puck high glove side to ruin goaltender Stephanie Lockert’s shutout bid.
The comeback attempt would end there. Though Brock would get a couple of chances late in the game, Lockert shut the door. Del Guidice, who led the Blues in scoring last year, was named player of the game.
