Twenty players from 13 hometowns joined forces to win the first provincial championship in St. Albert Slash history.
“A big part of our success is this group of girls get along so well that the chemistry in the room just goes onto the ice. It makes it easier to make plays and communicate and find the players on the ice,” said left-winger Isabelle Lajoie of St. Albert. “If you do the work as a group you get along better in the dressing room.”
The Slash quickly gelled into a winning midget AAA female hockey team.
“It’s kind of crazy because there is only a couple of local girls. Everyone else is from the surrounding areas,” said right-winger MaKenna Schuttler of Sturgeon County. “We’ve been playing against each other for like our whole lives but we’ve come together and bonded really well right off the start. It’s like a big family. Off the ice we’ve clicked so well and then we all brought that to the ice.”
The Slash were 29-4-1 in league and provincial action before hosting the Greater Vancouver Comets in the Esso Cup Pacific Regional best-of-five series opener Friday. The score was unavailable at press time.
Game two is 7 p.m. tonight and game three, if needed, is 1 p.m. at Go Auto Arena.
“We’ve won provincials so obviously this is the next step,” said Schuttler on the eve of game one. “We’re all excited to get the weekend going. It’s also nerve-wracking going up against a team we’ve never played against and they also have a really good record so it will be a good series.”
The Comets finished 4-0 in two playoff series as the British Columbia champions after going 29-1 (131 GF/34 GA) in their six-team provincial league.
“We’ve heard everyone on their team can score and they’re all really well rounded but other than that we don’t really know much so we’re just going to have to play our best and see how that goes,” Schuttler said.
The winner advances to the ninth annual Esso Cup national championship, April 23 to 29 at Morden, Man.
“It’s crazy. No other Slash team has ever had this record or made it this far,” Lajoie said. “Our goal has always been to go to nationals. We’re a group of 20 girls that all want the same thing and we’re all pushing ourselves to get there.”
The Slash made their Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League debut in 2004/05 and in 2011 the AMMFHL provincial finalists hosted the Esso Cup and finished fifth out of six teams.
The Alberta Female Hockey League replaced the AMMHL this season and the Slash were the runaway pennant winners at 27-2-1 (119 GF/44 GA) in the six-team division.
“Once we got to Christmas (15-0-1 record) we realized that if we keep winning there is no way anyone can catch us in the league standings just on points,” Lajoie said. “The entire year has been incredible. We’ve been good from the very start and there really hasn’t been anything that’s changed that. We just wanted to win.”
Provincials were somewhat sketchy by Slash standards with one win and two losses in the four-team round robin. Losses were 2-1 in overtime to the Red Deer Chiefs, who beat the Slash twice in January, and 3-2 to the Rocky Mountain Raiders, the second-place AFHL team at 18-9-3.
The difference between a berth in the gold-medal final or the bronze-medal game for the Slash was the Calgary Fire upsetting the Chiefs in a four-round shootout to end the round robin in a three-way tiebreaker that was decided on the goals for/against formula.
“It was pretty nerve-wracking because we had to wait to see if we got to the final,” Schuttler said. “We didn’t play our best hockey but we got our second chance and we won and now we’re provincial champs and we’re here so we’re all excited to kind of show that we’re provincial champs and we deserve this.”
The final against the Raiders, last year’s AMMFHL champions and Esso Cup bronze medallists, was vintage Slash. Kaitlyn Pelley of Onoway scored in the last minute of the opening period, Madison Willan of Edmonton closed it out before the buzzer and Camryn Drever of Edmonton stopped a game-high 36 shots in the 2-0 victory.
“We all played our best. It was a team effort and that’s how we played throughout the whole year and we all showed it in that final game. It did reflect our year and it was good to come out with a win that way,” said Schuttler, 15, a Grade 10 Bellerose Composite High School student who posted five goals and nine points in 30 games.
“Everyone brings something special to the team. We all know our roles and we all contribute any way we can and we all cheer each other on.”
Willan was the AFHL’s leading scorer with 25 goals and 50 points in 28 games, followed by Tyra Meropoulis of Edson with 22 goals and 46 points in 24 games.
Cassidy Maplethorpe of Wetaskiwin was the top playmaker with 29 assists in 30 games.
Drever (14-3, 1.38 GAA) and Brianna Sank (12-0-1, 1.55 GAA) of Ardrossan combined for six shutouts.
“We have some girls on our team that can really score and we also have amazing goaltending which helps in the defensive zone when we need that big save,” said Lajoie, 16, a Grade 10 Bellerose student who collected one goal and eight points in 30 games.
