Strueby finding form on Queens blue-line
Trojans 2 Queens 1
Mika Strueby came to the RDC Queens this season with the reputation of being a solid performer in pressure situations.
The 19-year-old anchored the defence for the major midget Lloydminster Steelers the last couple of years, including in 2006-07 when they won the Alberta championship.But still it took the five-foot-five Strueby some time to start to feel comfortable in the Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League.
“It was different for sure,” she said following the Queens 2-1 loss to the SAIT Trojans at the Arena Thursday.
“Right from the beginning of the season we were on the ice training and working out every day. It’s overall faster and the players are bigger and stronger, which I noticed in the corners at the beginning. As well communication is huge. You won’t last two seconds if you don’t have it.”
But Strueby is feeling more comfortable all the time and it shows as she’s handling the puck with more authority and moving the puck quicker.
“I feel I’m more on my game now and I’m more comfortable. Hopefully it’s showing although I know I have more in me. Rob (head coach Rob Weddell) knows I have more in me as well, which is good.”
Strueby has teamed with third-year veteran Lindsay Hogg since the beginning of the season.
“As partners we should be familiar with each other, but even we feel we should step it up more and come playoff time we have to,” said Strueby, who is taking business and will be with the Queens are at least two seasons.
Strueby wasn’t pleased with the Queens effort Thursday.
“We didn’t come out hard enough and that got us in the end,” she said. “We made a good comeback in the third period, but you can’t wait that long.”
Weddell agreed.
“It was a bad start. We were down by six shots early on, then played better the second half of the first period and better in the second period. The third period was good, when we cut down to three lines, which tends to happen.”
Weddell felt the team played hard on the forecheck, but let down in the defensive zone.
“We have this forecheck where everyone is happy in the offensive end and they work hard, but then don’t work as hard in our zone. I was disappointed the way we battled around our net. Possibly our goaltending is to damn good and the girls don’t feel the urgency to play hard in our end.”
The goaltending was solid at both ends of the ice. Kaitlyn Chapman finished with 25 saves for the Queens and had no chance on either goal while the Queens had 33 shots on Lindsay Coghlan in the SAIT net.
Still Strueby felt they could have done a better job against Coghlan.
“We had a lot of shots from the outside and didn’t do a good job of getting traffic in front of her and driving to the net,” she said. “We have the bear down harder in games like this if we want to get it done come crunch time. We need to win these close games.”
The loss left the Queens six points back of the Trojans in the battle for second place. Both teams have five games remaining, including a meeting Saturday in Calgary.
Karla Bourke scored her 10th goal of the season for the Queens in the third period while Tonya Faasse and Melanie Vincent connected in the first and second periods respectively for the Trojans.
Contact Danny Rode at drode@reddeeradvocate.com
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