The Ravens women’s hockey team won all three of their exhibition games Sept. 27-29, two of which were shutouts, an improvement on the previous weekend in which the Ravens lost all three exhibition games.
“We’re definitely getting better as the games go on. We started off a little slow but we’ve picked it up and started winning,” fourth-year forward Sadie Wegner said. “We’re a more positive team and we’re taking pucks to the net.”
The Sept. 27 game was against the Laurentian University Lady Vees who the Ravens beat with a score of 3-0. The following day the Ravens won by a score of 3-1 against the York University Lions.
The winning trend continued Sept. 29 against the MacEwan University Griffins when the Ravens won 6-0.
This was a tremendous feat for the Ravens as a sizeable portion of the roster is out with injury including forwards Victoria Gouge, Emma Dahlgren, and veteran defence Erin Beaver.
“There’s a huge list, it’s about half the roster. For our team it’s finding ways to battle beyond that. Our depth chart is deeper. We have players that can step into different roles,” head coach Shelley Coolidge said.
The game started slowly with no shots on goal for the first five minutes. After several attempts, the Ravens got on the scoreboard with a goal by Tawnya Guindon with 6:26 remaining in the first period. Fourth-year defence Jasmine Levesque took a wrist shot from the point that gave the Ravens another goal to close out the first period.
The second period started off with a bodychecking penalty for Ravens forward Chloe Dion. Despite being on the power play, the Griffins were unable to capitalize and ended up giving a short-handed goal to the Ravens. The Ravens finished up a dominating period with another goal by Ainslee Kent making the score 4-0.
Kent began the third period with another goal assisted by Chelsea Lefebvre.
“I was in the right place at the right time. I was hard on my stick in the front of the net and just buried them,” Kent said. “We’ve been really working with getting to the net with our sticks on the ice and burying those rebounds.”
Coolidge said the team has started to establish and habits that will make them successful.
The Ravens took advantage of the power play at 14:21 with a rebound put in by Olivia Keefe giving the Ravens the final score of 6-0. The Ravens outshot the Griffins 42-14 throughout the game.
“Everyone is working really hard and supporting each other which makes a big difference, obviously we can’t wait for them to get back but I think our team has been pulling together really well this weekend,” Kent said.
This game marked the end of the pre-season for the Ravens, who will begin their season Oct. 19 against the Concordia University Stingers.
