The six teams for the Esso Cup are finally set with the Sudbury Lady Wolves’ 4-1 win over the Saugeen-Maitland Lightning on Sunday.
The female midget AAA hockey national championship starts on Sunday at the Red Deer Arena and will feature the Red Deer Sutter Fund Chiefs as hosts, the Edmonton Thunder out of the Pacific region, the Saskatoon Stars out of Saskatchewan, the Central Plains Capitals out of Manitoba, the Moncton Rockets out of the Atlantic, and the Wolves out of Ontario.
The only team the Chiefs have any familiarity with is the Thunder who they played three times this regular season and lost 3-1 in the provincial final. But head coach Tom Bast is not concerned.
“I’m more interested in the way we want to play,” he said. “Going in there blind doesn’t bother me much, as long as our girls are ready to play the way they are capable of playing.”
Sudbury and Saskatoon open the tournament on Sunday at noon, while the Chiefs first game is against Moncton at 7 p.m. that evening.
The Chiefs then play Edmonton on Monday, Sudbury on Tuesday, Saskatoon on Wednesday and close out the round robin on Thursday against Central Plains, based out of Portage, Man. All of the Chiefs’ games are at 7 p.m.
The semifinals are on Friday at 3:30 and 7 p.m. with Saturday hosting the medal rounds with the bronze medal game at noon and the gold medal game at 3 p.m.
The Chiefs have not played a meaningful game since losing the provincial final to the Thunder on March 22, but they have kept busy with practices and a high intensity pair of exhibition games against Junior Women’s Hockey League regular season champion Warner this weekend.
“We played a couple of really good hockey teams with great speed and we played against some really high-class athletes, and we could handle it,” said Bast.