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Queens put on ice

Over the years the NAIT Ooks have caused the RDC Queens more problems than any team in the Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League, when it comes playoff time.
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RDC Queen Montana Noyes edges past NAIT Ook Meryl Ditchburn Saturday

Ooks 3 Queens 1

Over the years the NAIT Ooks have caused the RDC Queens more problems than any team in the Alberta Colleges Women’s Hockey League, when it comes playoff time.

So it should be no surprise that the Ooks recorded a 3-1 victory before over 200 fans at the Arena Saturday to eliminate the Queens 3-1 in the best-of-five league semifinal series.

“There’s no doubt NAIT has been my nemesis,” said Queens head coach Rob Weddell. “They have a history of coming up big against us. They always seem to get outstanding goaltending. I remember one series when we outshot them 150-49 and lost the best-of-three.

“But really NAIT had our number for most of this year, except that last two games in the regular season.”

The Queens scored 10 times in the two-game sweep over the Ooks in that final weekend series, and it appeared they carried that into the playoffs.

The Queens won the opening game of the semifinal 4-3 in triple overtime, but that was the end of their offensive output.

They lost the next two games 1-0 and trailed 3-0 for most of Saturday’s contest before Montanna Noyes beat Ooks netminder Meghan Witt with 8.2 seconds remaining in the third period.

“We had almost 100 shots on her over the last three games and got one goal,” said Weddell shaking his head. “But give her credit she played well and their team were tough around the net. They plugged it up in front of their net, took away our second chances and blocked a lot of shots.

“We did a good job of cycling and controlling the puck, but we had problems getting to the net.”

The Queens also didn’t get many breaks as they had a puck slip past Witt in the second period only to hit the post, then hit the crossbar in the third period with Witt beat.

But overall scoring on a consistent basis was a problem for the Queens most of the season.

“We struggled with that,” said Weddell. “If you look at our team we have the girls who can score, and they would go on spurts, then go cold for a period of time. But overall I’m not disappointed in the way we played and with the attitude of the girls. They played hard and I think we peaked at the right time. We were playing our best hockey, but unfortunately scoring is a big part of playoff hockey. You can’t win if you don’t put the puck in the net. Everything else was there. We played good defence and although we made a few errors, we made less than NAIT.

“But it was like the hockey Gods didn’t want us to win.”

Gabrielle Pelland scored twice for the Ooks, who led 1-0 after both the first and second periods, while Nicole Gregoire added a power play marker in the third.

The Ooks finished with 24 shots on Queens netminder Kaitlyn Chapman.

Weddell will now shift his attention to preparing for next season.

“Recruiting is well underway,” he said. “We’ll have a couple of prospect camps in March, but nothing that big. We’ll bring in five or six girls for each camp.”

What the Queens will be looking for is mainly on defence with only Caitlin Couronne and Kim Day back for sure.

“There’s a couple of others who may return, but we’ll see,” said Weddell, who’ll also lose team scoring leader Karla Bourke, Ashley Blacquiere and Amber Graham up front.

“We should have at least five of our top nine forwards back and have some girls who should step in and fill the holes,” said Weddell, who could have several players out of Saskatchewan and Manitoba next season.

“We have a lot of Saskatchewan girls who are interested in coming, it’s a matter of scholarship money,” he said. “As well we have two or three from Manitoba interested as well.”

drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com