Montreal blanks Huskies in opener
Carabins 3, Huskies 0
There’s no time to mope and little time to regroup.
It’s a short turnaround for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies at the CIS women’s hockey championship in Fredericton, N.B.
The Huskies dropped a 3-0 decision to the reigning CIS national champion Montreal Carabins on Thursday night and now face the host St. Thomas University Tommies Friday in their final pool round-robin game.
“One game at a time,” said U of S coach and CIS coach of the year Steve Kook. “I’ve been at enough of these to know that anything can happen. We take care of (Friday’s game) and that’s all we can do.”
In their CIS-opener Thursday, the Huskies couldn’t generate any goals against the Carabins.
Playing against the defending national champions was a tough way to start the tournament, but the Huskies still had a chance in the third when, down 2-0, they were awarded back-to-back power plays.
“All that we asked of our players was that we come out and compete,” Kook said. “I watched a lot of game film and I don’t think they’ve been pushed that hard in terms of a smaller team working that hard. It would have been real easy, after the first goal, to fold. It would have been easy to fold after two and real easy to fold with a minute left, on a 5-on-3, but we did a heck of a job blocking shots.”
Blue-liner Julia Flinton was Saskatchewan’s player of the game.
Elodie Rousseau- Siro made 24 saves for the Carabins’ shutout.
Cassidy Hendricks stopped 29 of 32 shots in the Huskies’ net.
Next up is St. Thomas, which finished fourth in the AUS with a 12-7-5 record and 15-14 overall against CIS teams.
In their first appearance at the CIS tournament, the host Tommies hope to get solid goaltending from fifthyear senior Kristin Wolfe, a first-team AUS all-star who posted a 2.04 goals-against average and .929 save percentage during the regular season.
St. Thomas, ranked 18th offensively in the CIS and 12th defensively, is also led by AUS second-team all-star and leading scorer Katie Brewster (17 points in 21 games).
St. Thomas ended the regular season on a high note, winning five of its last six games, before being eliminated in two straight by Mount Allison in the first round of the playoffs.