The Dalhousie Tigers women’s hockey team beat the Saint Mary’s Huskies 3-1 during the Tiger’s first pre-season game at the St. Mary’s Alumni Arena on Monday September 21.
“Any win is a good win,” said Tigers coach Sean Fraser. “We were impressed with everybody top to bottom, it was a complete team effort.”
The Tigers got off to a great start. Laura Ellerton opened the scoring for the Tigers on a power play goal eight and a half minutes into the hockey game. Two minutes later Lisa MacLean scored to give the team a 2-0 lead.
The two-goal lead did not last for long. Three minutes later Huskies forward Brianna Soper scored to cut the Tigers’ lead in half.
In the second period, the Tigers’ Lisa Maclean passed the puck to wide-open teammate Jessica Rietveld at the Huskies blue line. Rietveld got on a breakaway and shot the puck through the goaltender’s legs to re-gain the Tiger’s a two-goal lead.
In the third period the Huskies outshot the Tiger’s 15-3 but Tiger’s goalie Jessica Severeyns held the fort. She made a couple of big saves to keep the score at 3-1.
The Tiger’s played two goaltenders in tonight’s game and both were excellent. Goaltender Mati Barrett played the first half of the game, and stopped twenty-seven out of twenty-eight shots. Severeyns played in the back half of the game and stopped all twenty shots she faced.
“We have two solid goaltenders that we have confidence in every night,” said Fraser. “We know if we make a mistake we have someone is back there to bail us out.”
The Huskies also played two goaltenders in this game. Goalie Rebecca Weagle played the first half of the game and let in three goals on eight shots. The Huskies other goalie Rebecca Clark played the last half of the game and stopped all six shots she faced.
Outside of the goaltending, coach Fraser was particularly happy with the use of the team’s speed.
“We were quick. We have a pretty quick team so we want to use our speed as much as possible. I think we did that.”
The team does not start the regular season until Oct. 17. Coach Fraser knows there is a lot of work to do between now and then.
“It’s a process, defensively we need to be better, and we haven’t even practiced special teams yet.”
The Tigers rested some of their veteran players in this game. The team has players battling for roster spots, and wanted to give them an opportunity to play.
“We still have people trying to make the team, so we had some veterans out of the line up to give them a chance to play.”
This was the Tiger’s first out of three pre-season games and Fraser knows he needs to put the win in perspective.
“It’s still early in the season so we have a lot of work to do. It’s just a process so this is day one.”
The team’s next game is a pre-season game at St.FX on Saturday, Oct. 3rd at 3:00 pm. The team is home again the day after on Sunday, Oct. 4th against St. Mary’s.
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