Women's hockey top 10 tracker: first look-in of the season

It's our first top 10 tracker of the season, now that most schools have 7 or 8 or more games in the books. Teams are ranked by Simple Rating System (SRS), with the CIS ranking in parentheses.

This is not the week for a matchup like No. 1 vs. No. 2, as none of the top 10 play each other. Also included in this week's update is an example, for every top 10 team, of an easily-fixable mistake in one of their boxscores. Hopefully this gets the point across that the misinformation in the CIS is widespread; it's by no means limited to one school or conference.

1. McGill (1): hosted Carleton, the only team so far to hold the Martlets to one goal in the regular season. This time, it was 4-2 for McGill, with goals 2, 3, and 4 coming in the third period, when down 2-1. Too bad I can't tell you when the goals were scored, but they aren't summarized.

2. Alberta (3): two three-goal wins over Lethbridge, 4-1 and 3-0. Dana Vinge, one of last year's best goalies, probably got some reading done, with only 34 shots in the two games. And the boxscore issue this time? No penalties after the first intermission were recorded.

3. Laurier (2): Beat Waterloo 3-0 on the road, such as it is. Outshot the Warriors 28-11 through two and obviously played back in the third, giving up 11 more shots, but Liz Knox picked up another shutout nonetheless. Fun with boxscores: no time of game listed.

4. StFX (5): at Mount A, then at UPEI. Earlier, I pointed out those teams were 27th and 29th out of 29 in SRS, and asked if it would be wrong to expect two easy wins? The answer is yes. Because Mount A beat them in a shootout, 3-2. It's the first win for the Mounties this year, and they were outshot more than 2-to-1 en route. X's second game was more of the expected variety: a 3-0 win, Carolyn Campbell (two PP assists) and Marilynn Hay (the second goal) all but outshooting the entire Panthers' squad. Fun with boxscores: the shootout is not noted anywhere in the Mount A game.

5. Saskatchewan (8): at UBC for two, and lost both by a goal, the first loss in a shootout and the second by giving up two shorthanded goals. Breanne George can usually be counted on for a goal per game, but none of her eight shots found the net Friday night. Fun with boxscores: instead of players' positions, the "POS" column for the Huskies has "0000" for everyone.

6. Moncton (6): Host St. Thomas and at SMU, whom they beat 5-1 last week. This week, they beat SMU 5-3 and lost to the Tommies, apparently 2-1 in a shootout. It's not often you see a team register 16 shots in the first and just 12 in the next two periods, but the Aigles Bleues did that vs. STU. Fun with boxscores: here it says 3-2; here it says 2-1. Presumably one of those is correct.

7. Queen's (7): Lost to York 4-1 and beat U of T 6-5 in what I'm guessing is another shootout, because the Gaels' sixth goal isn't noted in the summary. (Neither are their second, third, fourth, or fifth goals.) York's Sydney McMurter, no slouch last year between the pipes, turned away 47 of 48 Queen's shots. Fun with boxscores: Queen's is given 12-13-12 for their shots by period against Toronto, but somehow ended up with 43.

8. Dalhousie (NR): A pair of wins over PEI and Mount Allison. The Panthers might have had a shot, cutting the lead to one with four minutes to go, but their 15:42 goal was followed up by a 15:56 one from Robyn Nicholson and the Tigers won 3-1. Nicholson was all over the Mount A game, too, scoring three minutes in (1-0), converting on the power play in the third (tying it at 2) and assisting on the game-winner with 63 seconds left in the third. Fun with boxscores: UPEI is listed as 0-for-4 on the powerplay despite having at least six of them.

9. Guelph (9): Hosted Windsor and Western on Friday and Saturday. Windsor beat them in a shootout (geez, those are common) and Western lost 4-2. The Windsor game sounds like a good one, same as the second. Click through to both those recaps for the perspective of someone who was there. Jessica Zerafa, one of last year's top players, had a goal in one game and an assist in the other. Fun with boxscores: every player is neutral on plus/minus.

10. Montreal (10): Host Ottawa (W 4-1), then at Concordia (W 3-2). Against Concordia, the Carabins must have won in a shootout, and all we have for the Ottawa game is the final score. Fun with boxscores (I saved the best for last): the Friday night game vs. Ottawa still hasn't been posted to the CIS site, the goal-scorers against Concordia managed to score without taking any shots, and the Stingers only had five shots all game!



The new top 10 looks like this: Alberta, McGill, Laurier, (big gap) StFX, Moncton, Queen's (another gap), Dalhousie, Saskatchewan, Toronto, Montreal. Guelph is the only team out of the top 10 week-to-week, down to 13th, but they're not far behind Montreal.
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