After losing Olivia Eustace, Brooklyn Paisley and Izzy Weist to graduation, the Dalhousie University women’s hockey team is forced to find new ways to create offense.
Eustace and Paisley were the top point scorers for the Tigers during the 2023-24 season. Eustace was among the top goal scorers in Atlantic University Sport (AUS) while Weist was the captain of the team for two straight seasons. The team also lost their third highest point scorer— Kennedy Whelan. This leaves holes to be filled by new recruits and existing players on the team.
During the off-season, head coach Keifer House knew the team was going through a big turnover, so during the recruiting process the team put a great deal of effort into finding players who could generate offense. The team recruited so heavily, some players from last year had to leave the team.
“Not that anybody did anything wrong,” House said. “We feel like the players who we brought in gave us the best opportunity to have success.”
So far the squad has been able to put the puck in the back of the net for the first four games of the new season and sits tied for second in the AUS — having scored the second most goals in the league. New recruit Jill Imeson has been the lead point-scorer for the group as she has tallied three goals and added an assist.
Score by committee
House anticipated players like Leah MacSween, Imeson and Avery Holmes will be relied on for offense, but he said the team has been able to score throughout the lineup with all four forward lines being able to generate some form of offense. House said this is something they haven’t had in past years.
“The biggest advantage we’re going to have is people aren’t going to be able to key in on one line,” House said.
Through four games that has been exactly the case, as 11 different members of the team have tallied goals. Only two players have scored multiple goals so far in the season — Imeson and Abby Walmboldt.
The Tigers are also led in the crease by first-team all-star Grace Beer, who House called a “built in cheat code.” Beer in her sophomore season held the second-best save percentage of any starting goalie in the AUS and the third-lowest goals against average.
“If she’s not the best goalie in the conference,” House said, “then I don’t know who is.”
Leadership group
On top of losing their top three point scorers Dalhousie lost their captain Izzy Weist. Weist wore the “C” for two seasons before graduating last season.
The Tigers are going in an unconventional direction as they assigned captain responsibilities to five different players. Beer, Natasha Falk, Emma Penner, Gabrielle Noordijk and Lexie Small make up the group with each member having an equal say. However because of the rules Beer cannot wear a letter and the team must have a captain so Penner will sport the “C” for this season.
House has been impressed by the group’s ability to lead by example and their willingness to ignore the typical hockey tradition, where whoever is named the captain is the one leader of the team.
“We need to have some letters on jerseys as rules to be able to communicate with the officials in game,” House said. “But really our group is leading as a group.”
Early success
Heading into their Oct. 5 game against the Université de Moncton Aigles Bleus, the Tigers had gone 1-3 in their three pre-season games and their first regular season game against the University of New Brunswick. Things changed against the Aigles Bleus as they scored five goals in a 5-2 win.
Since then, the Tigers beat the pre-season favourite St. Francis Xavier University 4-1 and then defeated Mount Allison University 5-2.
House credited familiarity being the reason for this as they had 11 new players come in the summer.
“It takes a little bit of time for those things to settle in,” House said.
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