The return trip to the Esso Cup runs through Richmond this weekend for the St. Albert Ron Hodgson Slash.
The defending national midget AAA female hockey champions play the host Greater Vancouver Comets in the Pacific Regional for a berth at the 10th annual Esso Cup, April 21 to 29 in Bridgewater, N.S.
The score from Friday’s best-of-three series opener in Richmond was unavailable at press time.
Game two is 11 a.m. today and game three, if needed, is 12:30 p.m. Sunday,
“We’re pretty excited to see if we can make it happen again,” said co-captain Mackenzie Butz prior to Wednesday’s practice at Go Auto Arena. “A bunch of us have already been to Esso and we’ve played in Pacific so we kind of know what it’s going to take to do it again."
The Slash swept the Comets 2-0 and 3-2 last year in St. Albert.
“We’re a new team and they’re new team so it will be competitive,” said co-captain Tyra Meropoulis.
The Comets finished 29-2-1 (174 GF/45 GA) in the five-team British Columbia female midget AAA league and the team’s playoff mark is 4-0.
As for the scouting report on the Comets, “We’re going to do some video just like last year and kind of go over their plays. Their league is different than our league and they’re just different to play against," said Meropoulis, an 18-year-old centre who was third in team scoring with 21 points in 30 games.
The Slash have 10 returnees from the first Alberta team to win the Esso Cup while going 38-4-1 overall in the Alberta Female Hockey League regular season, playoffs, Pacific Regional and nationals.
“Definitely playing in those big games in the past have helped us this year,” Butz said. “I know our first years are excited to experience what we experienced last year. It should be good.”
The Slash skate into the Pacific Regional with records of 21-8-1 (85 GF/45 GA) in league play and 5-1 in the post-season.
“There are differences and definitely good differences from last year and this year,” Meropoulis said. “We have a lot of first years so winning provincials was a pretty awesome feeling for them and now they get to go to Pacific and that will be exciting for them and then if we make it back to Esso that will be a good experience for them as well for their first year.”
The Slash were more beatable this season even though they came through in the clutch in thrilling fashion to win the second annual Final Frozen Four provincials in overtime against the first-place Rocky Mountain Raiders after scoring the tying goal with seven seconds left in regulation time.
“Last year we were kind of the top team going in. We were feeling confident and then we almost didn’t make the provincial final (three-way tiebreaker decided on goals for/against put the Slash in the big game) so that was an eye opener and we really got refocused but this year we never really were the top team going in. We were always kind of thought of as the underdogs so I think that almost helped us,” Butz said. “We kind of knew what it took last year and so we were ready to kind of bring it this year. We have a lot younger team this year going in and everything was kind of clicking better at the end once our younger girls had more experience.”
The Slash were also under the gun as national champions.
“I definitely think it put a lot more pressure on us. When everyone came to play us they wanted to beat us so it probably made us better in the end because we always had to play at our best if we wanted to win,” said Butz, a defenceman from Sherwood Park who has committed to the Mount Royal University Cougars.
The will to win for the Slash was never greater than the provincial final as Madison Willan’s fifth goal at provincials was the equalizer following a faceoff with 18 seconds to play and in sudden-death after killing off a two-minute five-on-three power play McKenzie Hewett potted a rebound with the man advantage at 11:05 of OT for her second goal of the game and fifth of provincials.
“It showed we had a lot of heart definitely,” said Meropoulis, who was sentenced to the penalty box with Willan at the 7:08 mark as the Raiders tried in vain to find the back of the net on the power play. “When we scored in the third like that it gave us momentum leading into overtime and then it was a good kill, our penalty kill was great, and that gave us more momentum leading into that power play.”
The Slash were over the moon after the capping off the comeback on Hewett’s golden goal.
“It was pretty exciting but we didn’t want to get too high after the win because we know we still have a lot more that we want to accomplish this year,” said Butz, 18, a Grade 12 Archbishop Jordan High School student who played for the Sherwood Park Fury in the Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League two seasons ago before joining the Slash in the inaugural AFHL campaign.
Butz’s sister, Alexis, is a 16-year-old Slash centre.
Hewett's golden goal brought back a flood of memories of Meropoulis' heroics in the Esso Cup final at Morden, Man., as the only scorer against the Harfangs du Triolet of Sherbrooke, Que. Meropoulis lit the lamp at the 14:41 mark in OT with the team’s 45th shot on net as the Slash became the first team to go 7-0 at nationals.
“Especially with Esso coming up here again this time in the year I think about it quite a bit and how we could win it all again. The feeling of winning was pretty incredible,” said Meropoulis, a Grade 12 student at Holy Redeemer High School in Edson who has committed to the St. Francis Xavier University X-Women in Antigonish, N.S.
