Nobody is expecting much from the Carleton Ravens women’s hockey team. Well, nobody outside of the team’s dressing room, that is.
Head coach Pierre Alain’s team went 3-17 last season, and while the Ravens will once again compete in the toughest division is CIS women’s hockey, there are grounds for optimism surrounding Alain’s program entering 2015-16.
Success for Carleton, like any hockey team, will start between the pipes, where sophomore goaltender Katelyn Steele is poised to build on a stellar rookie campaign in which she posted a respectable .908 save percentage. The Markham native was the key to two of Carleton’s three victories last season, and has settled into a positionally sound butterfly style under Ravens goalie coach Tom Dempsey.
Any kind of success in the fastest game on earth starts in net, and Steele should be more than capable of providing the kind of backbone and consistency needed in order for Carleton to make a serious playoff bid.
Carleton’s blueline has undergone a facelift since the end of last season, with veteran Jasmine Levesque gone and multiple recruits challenging for serious ice time. A trio of Quebeckers—Valerie Bouillon, Maude Ranger, and Nicole Allison—look poised to play major roles in Carleton’s top six, and should be catalysts for a Ravens powerplay which was impotent at a Canada-worst 5.4 per cent a year ago. All signs point to the defensive corps being substantially better than last year.
Up front, Carleton returns two thirds of its top line from last season, with sophomore Sidney Weiss and senior Tawnya Guindon set to be team leaders both on the scoresheet and in leadership roles in 2015-16.
Intriguing rookies are Becky Davidson, a product of former NHLer Miiko Makela’s program at Warner Hockey School, and Shannon Pearson, an aggressive grinder with a knack for scoring goals.
Alain’s team is still the biggest question mark amongst Carleton’s varsity teams. They’ll be relying heavily on freshman and sophomore players at both ends of the rink, and will play half of its games against the top two programs in Canada (McGill University and l’Université de Montréal). The learning curve for some of these players will be a little much in the opening weeks of the season, but with Alain and his staff’s experience, mid-season adjustments will almost definitely be made.
Fever Pitch author Nick Hornby once stated that cheering for a mediocre team is more rewarding than a perennial powerhouse. The highs of being a supporter seem that much more unexpected, and the lows are understood as necessary for development. Such will likely be the case with the 2015-16 Ravens women’s hockey team—improved, but not yet of the upper echelon, ready to compete for a playoff spot with the likes of Concordia University and the University of Ottawa, still not ready to go toe-to-toe with the likes of powerhouses McGill University and l’Université de Montréal.
Regardless, the journey will be a rewarding one for young Ravens talent core, which promises to keep fans on their toes this season at the Carleton Ice House.
