Raven Kristen MacDonald showed aggressive play against UdeM (Photo: Greg Mason)

If penalties had been points, the Quebec Student Sport Federation (QSSF) regular season opener between the Carleton women’s varsity hockey team and the Carabins de l’Université de Montréal (UdeM) would have been a high-scoring game.

As it played out, the penalty count on the score sheet told a completely different story from the UdeM shut out by a single goal: calls for elbowing, hooking and roughing against both teams would have handed UdeM a win of 8-2.

But the inability of both teams to put the puck in the net resulted in a close 1-0 win for the Carabins.

“Once a team gets a hooking penalty called once, we shouldn’t get a second,” said Ravens head coach, Shelley Coolidge.

The Ravens got two such hooking calls.

“For us it’s just about reading the type of game the official’s going to call and understanding what their standards are going to be.”

Yet even with 26 minutes worth of power plays – several of which opened up the ice to two-man advantages and four-on-fours – neither team was able to capitalize.

“I was really, really happy with our PK,” said Shelley. “When we were on the penalty kill we . . . maintained possession [and] controlled the flow a lot more [when we were short] than in the game itself.”

This was especially true when, come the third period, the Ravens staved off a two-man advantage for a minute and a half without allowing a single UdeM shot on net.

But over-cycling of the puck when the Ravens were on the power play kept their number of shots – even wide ones – to a minimum as well.

The constant passing behind the net did not take full advantage of the open defensemen holding the blue line, who in turn did not always look up to check the option of a D-to-D play before choosing to shoot through traffic.

Play in the neutral zone was equally shaky where passes by either team weren’t connecting, either between the blue lines or in an attempt to complete a breakout.

Coolidge attributed this to “first game jitters” that she said can be easily worked through this early in the season.

That night, however, the jitters translated to a sluggish third period for the Ravens that not only cost them the winning goal – a one-timer by Carabins Kim Deschênes from a pass behind the net that beat Ravens goalie Valerie Charbonneau at 11:07 – but also closed the gap in the shot count.

At the end of the second period, the Ravens were up 17 to nine in shots, but at game’s end they led only 26 to 20.

“They out-chanced in the third,” Coolidge said.

“And it comes down to a group of athletes having a really tough exam week, a tough work week. Right now we’re focusing a tonne on fitness and you can see that the amount of work we did this week led [us] to tire out a bit sooner than the game ended.”

The loss, however, did hand Katrina Giuliani the first shutout in the Carabins women’s varsity hockey history.