An historic Esso Cup repeat solidified the legacy status for the St. Albert Ron Hodgson Slash.
The first team in the 10-year history to celebrate consecutive Canadian midget AAA female hockey championships is basking in the glow of the fantastic feat.
“It’s a pretty awesome feeling,” declared co-captain Tyra Meropoulis, two days after the Slash dimmed the Saskatoon Stars 2-1 in the gold-medal game at Bridgewater, N.S. “No one has ever done it before so that’s what we were trying to accomplish and we did.
“It’s pretty sweet.”
Last year the Slash set the standard of excellence as the first Alberta team to win the Esso Cup while establishing the tournament record of seven wins and no losses.
With 10 returnees in the lineup from last year’s 38-4-1 championship squad, the Slash finished 6-1 and the only loss was 4-1 to the Stars in the round robin.
“Nobody really thought we had the team to do it at the start of the year and obviously we did,” said Dan Auchenberg, head coach of the 34-11-1 Slash.
As for which championship was the most satisfying, “It’s always sweet when you win, you can never take that away,” Auchenberg said. “The first one is pretty special but for the kids that hadn’t won it this one was very special for them too.
“Nothing really takes over the first one because it’s something that you’ve never won before but the way we did it this time is totally different so it’s pretty exciting in a different way.”
Prior to the final against the undefeated Stars, Auchenberg addressed the legacy the Slash would enhance with a record-breaking performance.
“I said, ‘Do you want another team tying your record of seven straight wins at the nationals?’ They said no so then I said, ‘You have one opportunity to break a record and that’s to be the first team of winning back to back.’
“There was a lot of that motivational stuff before the game. We talked about if you need energy think about those things in your mind that gravitate you to the next level or whatever to make you work a little bit harder.”
What the final ultimately boiled down to for the Slash was, “resiliency and just their character,” Auchenberg said. “Every time there was something on the line this year they have stepped up in different ways. They find a way to do it and that’s what they did.
“I’m very proud of them.”
The Stars were winners of 24 in a row before the final and the round-robin result against the Slash resonated with the defending champs.
“Sask was a really good team. They had tall and strong players and they were all pretty fast. We had to kind of break them down a bit and just use our speed and do what we do best,” Meropoulis said.
In the round robin, the Stars tallied twice in the first period after the Slash opened the scoring and in the third potted a pair.
Shots were 16-4 in the third and 32-21 overall for the Stars.
“They outplayed us, there is no question. They did things we hadn’t seen a lot of. Their top end players managed the puck really well and were very dominant in that respect,” Auchenberg said. “We just changed our mindset going in. We said we’ve got to utilize our speed as our strength. We’re not the same size of players as they are so we changed up the forecheck. We also changed our PK strategy.
“Basically we tried to protect the house as much as we could and keep the puck out of the crease area. We have to manage the players in front of the net as much as possible because they’re so big.
“And the girls did it to a T. They did an outstanding job about trusting the coaching staff and believing in the game plan we had set forth.
“And at the end of the day they believed in themselves too.”
In the rematch, Meropoulis put the Slash on the board by tucking in her own rebound with 2:29 left in the first. The goal was the fourth of the tournament for the centre from Edson.
Meropoulis, 18, was the golden goal heroine in last year’s 1-0 overtime final against the Harfangs du Triolet of Sherbrooke, Que., in Morden, Man.
Madison Willan of Edmonton potted the second goal against the Stars with 48 seconds remaining in the middle frame by knocking a loose puck off the post and past the outstretched netminder, Jordan Ivanco.
Meropoulis and Jayme Doyle assisted on Willan’s fourth at nationals.
“As soon as we got those first two goals we knew that if we just play defensively most of the game we would have a chance of winning,” Meropoulis said. “We just had to out-skate them. It was a really fast game, one of the fastest games that I’ve played."
The Stars responded less than a minute into the third by forcing a turnover at the Slash blueline that led to a tap-in by Kianna Dietz against netminder Camryn Drever (3-1, 1.88 GAA, .920 save percentage) of Edmonton.
The Slash also killed off the team’s second penalty of the match after the halfway mark in the third.
Shots were 6-2 for the Stars in the period after the Slash held the Western reps to nine in the first two periods.
The overall shot count was 18-15 for the Slash.
The Stars racked up 28 goals in six games before suffering their fifth loss of the season.
“They did a great job, an absolutely great job,” Greg Slobodzian, head coach of the Stars, told the Hockey Canada media official after the final. “We haven’t been pressured like that in a long time. Our girls didn’t know how to handle it at the beginning but I thought we answered really well in the third period.
“It could’ve went either way.”
Co-captain Mackenzie Butz of Sherwood Park was selected the Slash player of the game.
The Slash advanced to the final in the 2-1 shootout decision against the Brampton Canadettes in Friday’s semifinal.
Both teams recorded 28 shots in 70 minutes of action.
“That was pretty nerve-racking because we beat them the night before and then we had to play them the next day and I think we came out a little cocky and we probably shouldn’t have,” Meropoulis said. “We just had to be mentally tough. That whole week was mentally tough with seven games in seven days so we had to battle through.
“Camryn did a really good job of holding the back door shut so we just had to try and get all of our goal scorers to try and score in the shootout.”
In period two, the Ontario reps redirected a shot past Drever 23 seconds in and Meropoulis replied with 3:53 to go before the intermission with a shot upstairs against netminder Hannah Szczepanowski.
In the shootout, after the first three players were denied, Meropoulis went five-hole on Szczepanowski to give the Slash the lead.
Two more saves by Drever and one more by Szczepanowski set the stage for Doyle and the Calahoo forward picked the top corner over the glove to seal the deal.
“I had an idea going into it. I usually go top shelf and when I was skating down I saw that open corner so I put it there. It was open all the way down, even my teammate told me she saw it but I was nervous,” Doyle said in the post-game interview.
The day before, the Slash closed out the round robin in the come-from-behind 6-2 victory against Brampton as Doyle tallied twice in the first during a three-point performance to erase an early 2-0 deficit.
Among the Esso Cup award recipients were Mckenzie Hewett of Edmonton as the top forward. Hewett produced four goals and six points for the Slash.
Vanessa Verbitsky of Fort Saskatchewan, Taylor Anker of Sherwood Park and Doyle also registered six points, while Meropoulis and Willan tied for the team lead with seven.
The Slash ended the tournament with 26 goals and 11 against, compared to 29 goals and six against for the Stars.
The Slash graduate seven players from the Final Frozen Four provincial champions in the Alberta Female Hockey League – the final was 3-2 in overtime on Hewett’s power-play marker, following a five-on-three penalty kill in sudden death against the Rocky Mountain Raiders after Willan scored the equalizer with seven seconds left in regulation time – and the winners of the Pacific Region best-of-three playoff as Willan sniped the series winner with 10 minutes to play in the deciding game against the Greater Vancouver Comets in Richmond, B.C.
The St. Albert Raiders Hockey Club team made its 2004/05 debut in the Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League and the Esso Cup was its third but second as the Pacific rep after hosting nationals in 2011.
– with files from Hockey Canada
