Queens toppled in overtime
Cougars 4 Queens 3 (OT)
Odds are against the RDC Queens making the Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League playoffs, but they’re not going down without a fight.
The Queens earned a valuable point Thursday as they dropped a 4-3 decision to the league-leading Mount Royal College Cougars at the Arena.
The point moved the RDC squad to within five points of the Grant MacEwan University Griffins, meaning they need to pick up at least a point tonight when they visit the Cougars and then sweep the Griffins in a home-and-home series, beginning Thursday at the Arena. By the way they’ll also need the Griffins to lose twice this weekend to the SAIT Trojans.
“One is better than nothing, now we need to get some more tomorrow and it will put us in a better position,” said Queens captain and defenceman Kimberlee Day.
Queens head coach Rob Weddell agreed.
“It was a big point, but the thing is we can’t just focus on the points. We do need them, but if we keep playing like that we’ll be happy. And if we go out fighting like we did tonight we can be proud of the way we finished.”
Day, who is one of only three regular defencemen on the roster, said the team can be proud of the way they played in the second half.
“We lost a few players at Christmas, so our bench is shorter, but we’re playing well because of it,” she said. “Everyone wants to be here. It’s been a lot of fun in the second half and it’s showing on the ice. Our plan is if we don’t make the playoffs, we want to end it with as much pride as we can. We want everyone to know we tried our best and show we can play good hockey.”
The Queens showed a lot of fight Thursday as three times they came from behind against the Cougars, who have lost only once all season.
Fifth-year forward Chelsey Morrill put the Cougars head with just a minute left in the first period. But RDC’s speedy forward Montanna Noyes stole a cross-ice pass in the Mount Royal zone and beat MRU netminder Kendall Kilgour with a high snap shot at 4:02 of the second period. Hedi Syme gave the Cougars a 2-1 lead at 8:16 on a perfect shot high top the glove side on Kendra Lakeman before Chelsea Greenbank shovelled home a lose puck for RDC at 14:38.
Jillian Hartley put the Cougars ahead on a screened shot from the point at 2:50 of the final frame before Jessica Abt put the game into overtime when she scored during a scramble with the goalie out and only 31.8 seconds remaining.
The Cougars got the extra point when Brooke Nelson cut off the left wing and cut across the crease, beating Lakeman at 1:02 of the five-minute extra period.
“Mount Royal is a very good team and they put a lot of pressure on our D,” said Weddell. “It’s even tougher in that we have only three natural defencemen , plus Brittney (Erlandson) who has done a hell of a job since moving back from forward. But Mount Royal controls the puck so well and got on the cycle and we’d get stuck in our zone and didn’t recover at times. They got at least two of their goals off that.”
But when the Queens did move the puck quickly and with authority they created some offence of their own.
“We had a game plan to make sure we weren’t in our end that long and it was important to move the puck quickly and be smart about it,” said Day.
Noyes, who is playing banged up, as is defenceman Alana Duncan, was named the RDC player of the game. Lakeland finished with 25 saves while Kilgour stopped 27 shots at the other end.
drode@reddeeradvocate.com
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