The Carleton Ravens women’s hockey team will face off against the McGill Martlets Feb. 23 in game one of their first-round playoff series.
After finishing the regular-season with a 7-8-5 record, the Ravens go into playoffs in fourth place in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ). As a result, the Ravens are matched up against the first-place Martlets, who are also ranked first in the country, according to the Feb. 22 Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Blackberry Top 10 Rankings.
On paper, it looks as though the Martlets will take the series handily. McGill won all five games against the Ravens this season, including a shootout win Nov. 27. Fourth-year centre Claudia Bergeron neatly summed up her team’s situation after the Ravens’ final regular-season game Feb. 20, when she said it’s “going to take everything to beat McGill.”
If they want any chance at success in this series, the Ravens better not take any nights off on the penalty kill — or better yet, they should stay out of the box all together. At 28.1 per cent efficiency, the Martlets’ powerplay is the deadliest in the RSEQ, and the Ravens should have enough trouble containing the Martlets at even strength. At 4.20, McGill’s production on a goals-per game basis nearly doubles the Ravens’ 2.15.
In goal, rookie Victoria Powers has been a standout for the Ravens down the stretch, facing 123 shots in the last four games alone. She’ll need to be able to handle that pressure against McGill, who put an average of 33.8 pucks to the net against the Ravens this year. At the other end of the rink, Canadian Olympian Charline Labonte has a .953 save percentage compared to Powers’ .925.
The Ravens enter the post-season on a four-game winning streak that saw them beat the Concordia University Stingers twice, as well as take a game off the second-place UdeM Carabins. Lately, the team has been able to play strongly for a full three periods, and the confidence gained from the late-season wins should provide them with some extra momentum to face the Martlets Feb. 23 in Montreal.
Ravens head coach Shelley Coolidge said her team knows McGill is “beatable,” and Ravens have slowly chipped away at the Martlets this season. They nearly took their last game against the Martlets to overtime Feb. 5, which is a big improvement compared to the 6-0 and 6-1 losses the Ravens suffered to the same team at the beginning of the season.
If the Ravens can play a full 60 minutes of hockey against the Martlets, then they might have a chance in this series. But as Bergeron said, they’re going to need to leave everything on the ice.
Prediction: Martlets in three. Too many things have to go right in order to upset a team that has won their last 101 games against RSEQ opponents.