Comets a measuring stick for Northern Capitals
The Greater Vancouver Comets are burning brightly, a perfect 12-0 to start the B.C. Hockey Female Midget Triple-A League season.
As they showed the Northern Capitals in a three-game series over the weekend at the Kin Centre, the Comets don’t make many mistakes in their own end, they have good goaltending and when they get scoring chances they put the puck in the net.
Comets’ captain Jennifer Gardiner was a Capital-killer Sunday with three goals and three assists in an 8-2 win. Gardiner is maintaining a three-point-per game pace and leads the scoring race with 20 goals and 16 assists for 36 points in just 12 games.
She was a factor throughout the weekend, helping the Comets win the first game Friday 6-1 and joining their 12-2 trouncing of the Cougars on Saturday.
“That’s the best team in the league – they skate extremely well, they move the puck extremely well and they have a lot of top-end talent and that’s where we want to get,” said Capitals head coach Justin Fillion.
“It was a good learning experience for the girls. I thought at times we were right with them but then we’d take a shift off or take a bad penalty or just lose that little attention to detail, and that team is so talented they’ll make you pay every time, and that’s what happened.”
In Sunday’s game at Kin 2, the Capitals drew life from a rebound goal from Sara Vermueulen eight minutes into the second period but allowed a power-play goal a couple minutes later, then gave up a shorthanded breakaway to Gardiner and she beat goalie Cadence Petticlerc-Crosby with a deke on the ensuing penalty shot. The Capitals seemed undeterred and kept up the pressure in the Vancouver end and Camryn Scully made it a two-goal deficit again, firing off a wrister from a sharp angle which found the top corner of the net. The Caps kept their feet moving the rest of the period and were rewarded with several chances to try make it a one-goal game.
The Comets regained their skating legs in the third period and finished with four unanswered goals to keep their perfect record intact.
“We worked really hard in the first and second periods but we let it get away from us in the third period,” said Scully, 17, who leads the Capitals with six goals and three assists in nine games. “If we kept pressuring like we were, we would have had a better outcome.
“It’s only the start of the season and I think we’re in a good position to improve from where we are now. We know we have the Fraser Valley team and the Comets to beat, they’re really good competitors, but I think later in the season we’ll be able to beat them because we’re a hardworking team.”
The Capitals (3-5-1-0) remained third in the five-team league, two points behind the second-place Fraser Valley Rush (4-4-1-0). The Capitals have a bye this weekend.
“Today was definitely our best effort out of the three games,” said Fillion. “I see a lot of good things from our girls. I like the direction we’re going. It comes down to how bad do we want it and I think the future looks positive for us. I hope we get to play (the Comets) again in the playoffs in March. We’ll be a more polished, more confident team by then.”