Women's hockey top 10 tracker: #1 vs #3 in Montreal highlight of weekend

This week we indeed have four of the five QSSF teams in the top 10; this was something we could avoid when Ottawa was merely 10th and therefore easily-punted back to 11th, but now McGill is 1st, Montreal is 3rd, Carleton is 6th, and Ottawa is 8th. John Bower and Stuart Bowden picked up on this prevalence of Q teams in their latest, making it seem like the rankings below could actually be reflective of reality.

Top matchups this week: McGill/Montreal (Friday), Ottawa/Carleton (Sunday), Queen's/Guelph (Sunday), and StFX/Moncton (Sunday). For the last game, let's hope someone actually bothers to keep score and let us see it somehow (see below).

Teams are ranked by Simple Rating System (SRS) based on regular-season games for everyone and exhibition games for the top teams, with the most recent CIS ranking in parentheses. Complete rankings (RPI, SRS) are here.

  1. McGill (1): Battle of Mount Royal on Friday night. The result was 3-0 for McGill, which they call a "whitewash" but also "a rare, hard-hitting affair." (Would you expect any less with former Martlets now wearing the Carabins' colours?) Stacie Tardiff scored seven minutes into the first, one of 19 shots McGill had to Montreal's 3 in the period.

  2. Laurier (2): Fresh off an effortless sweep of Waterloo, the Hawks host their other W-named divisionmates: Lancers on Friday, Mustangs on Saturday. Friday night's game was postponed due to "a scheduling issue."

    What, that's not enough information for you? It was postponed because, 40 minutes after the scheduled start, there were no officials on the ice, and it sounds like none of them were even in the building when the game was supposed to start. I feel bad for all you suckers who rushed through your delicious pasta dinner to make it to the Rec Complex for 7:30, only to find that there was no reason to show up.

    Saturday's game must have had officials, since Katherine Shiriff scored on the power play to tie the game at 10:33 of the second; up until then, and since 1:17 of the first, they had been trailing 1-0 against Western. They added another at the end of the period and won by that score to go to 20-0 in league play.

  3. Montreal (10): Must have felt they were catching a break with a rookie goaltender in McGill's Andrea Wreckman, but ended up getting shut out. They're so far ahead of everyone else in the Q that their remaining games are about as meaningful as your average Buffalo Bills contest, but they play Concordia on Sunday. That game was a 5-3 final, 4-3 not counting empty-netters. Les Carabins scored three times on the power play (five total by both teams), once in each period, with Marie-Andrée Leclerc-Auger scoring one and helping on another. (She later got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty right as the game ended, and if either school had a recap on their site, I could tell you what for.)

  4. Alberta (3): Host Saskatchewan for two the week after the Huskies swept the no-longer-ranked Bisons in Saskatoon. Friday night looked like a tense one: 2-0 Alberta win, but they added an empty-netter. Basically the entire second and third periods were played with a one-goal lead. Tarin Podloski scored the first goal. Sarah Hilworth netted a pair on Saturday, Podloski added one of her own and two assists, and the Pandas won 4-1. It was a one-goal game until 9:58 of the third, so 4-1 might be a little misleading, but it nonetheless puts Alberta ten points up on the Bisons with six games left for Manitoba (two of which are against the U of A, so the Pandas only need to win one of those games at the very least).

  5. Queen's (9): Host Brock and Guelph. They jumped out to a 3-0 lead against the Badgers (Kristin Smith getting involved all over the place; she ended up with four points on the night), and they won 6-3. Karissa Savage didn't have a good night, percentage-wise, letting in those three goals on just 17 shots. Then Guelph ran over them 4-0, leading by three after one. Not much to say there.

  6. Carleton (NR): Two goals from Jennifer Gordon equalled the output of the Gee-Gees, and she assisted on another by Tara O'Reilly as Carleton won 3-2. As so often happens in this league, the winning goalie didn't even face 20 shots.

  7. York (7): Home-and-home with U of T. The first one was all York (3-0 win, two goals from Kristie Wilson) but might have been less York-dominated had the Blues picked up a goal on their 10:55 of powerplay. The second was in effect a 3-2 Toronto win; York pulled within one with lots of time left in the third, but couldn't get another one in.

  8. Ottawa (NR): At Concordia and Carleton, Saturday and Sunday. The Stingers kept pace at the beginning, answering both of the Gee-Gees' first two goals within a few minutes, but the second period shattered that illusion when, during a four-minute penalty after a uOttawa powerplay goal, Concordia not only failed to score in return, but let one in shorthanded. Final was 5-3, Kayla Hottot with 1 and 2. The Carleton game, a 3-2 loss, saw them being outshot 14-4 in the first--the period without any goals! The Gee-Gees didn't score until 57:36 had elapsed, and two goals in the last three minutes weren't enough to tie it. Blair Kitlar had one; Dominique Lefebvre had the other.

  9. Guelph (NR): At UOIT, then at Queen's. They won 6-2 against the most convoluted name in Ontario postsecondary institutions, with the points concentrated among Tamara Bell (2 goals, 2 assists), Dayna Kanis (3, 1), and Jenna Lanzarotta (1, 4). For reasons unknown to man, the CIS boxscore shows Guelph shot counts of 15-7-0 by period, whereas the OUA boxscore gives 15-11-8. The inner workings of Canadian Interuniversity Sport are many and wonderful, and mere mortals like us can never hope to understand them.

    They then won 4-0 against Queen's, as noted above.

  10. St. F-X (5): In New Brunswick for two, the first at St. Thomas, the second at Moncton. Golly, chief, I would love to tell you what happened in their 3-1 win over STU, but look, no boxscore here (as of Sunday night)! Or here! And...yep, not here either. Ah, surely we can go here--nope. But five separate misfortunes? I'd like to see that! (Oh.)
  11. Against Moncton, they went to OT and Genevieve David scored for the Blue Eagles to beat X 2 to 1. Tyson Beukeboom picked up the only goal for the X-Women; this game was also notable because Moncton had just one minor penalty in three-plus periods of play.

This didn't fit with the Guelph-UOIT recap above, but the Ridgebacks' goaltender moves were...curious. Emma Thompson was pulled at 13:59 of the first after two goals, Jessica Larabie went until the halfway mark of the second, then Thompson came back in (and immediately gave up a goal; that must not have been fun) and let in the other two. The easiest explanation is a minor injury to Thompson, but why not rest her once you're already down 4-0?
Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

1 comment:

  1. Just in case it wasn't blindingly obvious from the snark in the St. F-X capsule, I am far beyond the point of return with this. Not the governing body, not the conference, not even either team had anything more than the final score posted on the afternoon after the game. Is this is a sports league or not?

    ReplyDelete