The St. Albert Slash have two games to turn around their ship before the annual Mac's competition in Calgary after sinking to a 0-4-1 record at the Notre Dame Mandi Schwartz Memorial Tournament.
This weekend at Performance Arena the Slash host the Red Deer Chiefs and the Calgary Chaos in the Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League.
"Those are good teams to prepare us well for the Mac's tournament. They both have very strong programs," said head coach Terry Sydor.
Saturday at 5:30 p.m. the Slash (12-5-3) play Red Deer (16-4), the top team in the south division. Sunday's game against the Chaos (11-8-2) starts at 2 p.m.
"We would like to get some wins this weekend, absolutely," Sydor said. "After a five-game stretch without a victory you want to go into the tournament on a positive note."
The first game at the Mac's for the Slash starts 9 a.m. on Boxing Day.
Last year the Slash placed second in their pool at 3-1 as the defending champions.
"It's a very busy time for the girls, but it's a great tournament to experience so we're looking forward to it," Sydor said.
The Notre Dame tournament was good preparation for the Mac's despite the losing record.
"You're away for several days so there's a lot of distractions and challenges, which you have at the Mac's. You're playing very good teams too, so it's a challenge in that regard," Sydor said.
But losing four out of five games was a surprise.
"The girls are a proud and competitive bunch. They play to win and want to win. We just didn't get the results that we wanted, but it wasn't because we played poorly. The effort was there. The courage was there. They played with pride, right to the end," Sydor said. "When you're in a tournament you're trying to get that gold medal, but it's also really important to us that we're improving, learning and growing."
Scoring drought
A lack of offence was the downfall for the host team at the 2011 Esso Cup national championship.
"We struggled to score, and it wasn't from a lack of chances. We had a fair amount of shots and good scoring opportunities," Sydor said. "In these types of tournaments the goaltending is very strong. Sometimes in our league play you kind of have just a half of an opportunity and you get a goal out of it, but at these tournaments they don't make a lot of mistakes so it comes down to special teams really."
The tournament opener was Thursday's 3-2 loss against the Westman Wildcats of Manitoba.
"It wasn't a great game from either team but we had chances to win," Sydor said. "The ice surface at Notre Dame is Olympic size and we struggled with it. I thought it would be a real benefit because of our speed. We score a lot of goals off the rush and have some real dynamic players, but it took a long time for things to develop and it was the same for them. The game actually wasn't really fast and unfortunately we scored only the two goals and generally we create a lot more offence than that."
Friday the Slash dropped a 4-2 decision to the Okanagan Hockey Academy, the eventual silver medallists.
"There were just a couple of breakdowns really in that game. There were long stretches where we had good pressure on them and some real good opportunities," Sydor said. "They just got a couple of breaks early. Their girls would sort of slip between our defence or in behind and they got an early lead. We battled hard and got two goals back, but just couldn't climb all the way back."
The second game on Friday was a 2-2 draw against the Weyburn Goldwings, one of the top midget AAA teams in Saskatchewan.
"That was a solid game, but we could only get the two goals. We were kind of snakebit on offence and that sort of summarized the whole tournament," Sydor said.
Saturday against the Fraser Valley Phantoms the Slash lost 4-2.
"It was a smaller team and very skilled with some real zippy forwards. We got down early and couldn't come back," Sydor said.
The last game was the 2-1 loss to the 2011 British Columbia champion Thompson-Okanagan Rockets that started at 8 a.m. Sunday.
"The girls prepared for it as if it was a championship game in the middle of the afternoon," Sydor said. "That was probably our best game. The first period was our best period of the tournament. We had great energy. In the second we scored a late power-play goal and they got two power-play goals in the third."
