The RDC Queens are looking to use their final two Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League regular season games against the Olds Broncos to prepare for the playoffs.
They looked to get their offence going in the right direction as they whipped the Broncos 9-2 at the Arena Thursday.
The teams meet again tonight in Olds and the Queens, 17-3-3, will open the best-of-three league semifinal Thursday at home against SAIT. The Broncos, 5-17-1, will miss the playoffs their first season in the league.
“It was nice to see some scoring and nice to see some of the other girls scoring,” said Queens head coach Kelly Coulter.
Kaely McMurtry has been hot and cold this season, but may be getting in the right groove heading into the playoffs as she scored three times, all in the third period.
Suze Vanderlinde, Emily Swier, Julia Murrell, Keinyn Nordell, Casey Nicholson and Jade Petrie added single markers.
“Overall we were able to use all four lines, in fact we had our fourth line out on the power play,” said Coulter, who also had a couple of negatives.
“Our power play was one-for-four which I can live with, but was penalty kills was two-for-four which isn’t good,” he said. “As well our save percentage was .846.”
Jen West, who has been out with a slight injury, was in goal and made 11 saves on 13 shots. The Queens finished with 42 shots on Nikki Grandinetti.
Lisa Campeau and Kelly Shawara scored for the Broncos in the first and third periods respectively. The Queens led 3-1 after 20 minutes and 4-1 after 40.
McMurtry scored a natural hat trick after Shawara made the score 5-2. She connected at 6:35, 10:15 and 18:17.
“I went down the bench and asked who had two goals and when they said Kaely I used her to try to get her hat trick and it worked out,” said Coulter, who also honoured five graduating players prior to the game.
Jena Holden, Jayna Kitchen, who had two assists Thursday, Megan Jones, Nikki Connor and Nicholson are all graduating.
Ashley Graf had three assists while Swier had a goal and two helpers for 12 goals and 12 assists on the season and moved into a tie for first place in league scoring with 24 points.
The league semifinal opens Thursday at 7 p.m. with the second game Friday at SAIT with the third, if necessary, Saturday at 1:30, p.m. at the Arena.