Building a winning record has been a work in progress for the St. Albert Slash.
The midget AAA female hockey team is 8-4-1 with a line-up of 11 returning players from the previous season when the Slash hosted the Esso Cup national championship.
“We’ve had some good results but we’ve let a few slip away,” said head coach Terry Sydor. “We’ve just made some mistakes that cost us some wins, but that’s part of the process. You always try to prevent or minimize those mistakes.”
The Slash finished fifth in their first appearance at nationals last year, while going 41-15-4 overall on the season.
“You hope the returning ones are still hungry and they still want more and kind of have an unfinished business attitude,” said Sydor. “You also hope the new ones hear the stories and perhaps were even at some of the games and they want to experience those types of things.
“We chatted about it with some of the veteran players the other night. Is this your goal for the year and is this really what you want to accomplish or have you been there and done that? It’s important that everybody is on the same page and working towards the same team goal.”
This is the last season of rep hockey for eight players, including captain Eliza Snider. The rock-solid defender is a fourth-year Slash player who served as an assistant captain the last two years.
“We’ve spent the last several years with sort of two or three graduating players and this year we have a substantial senior class,” Sydor said.
Some of the veterans were asked to play a different position while trying to mesh with the six newcomers.
“There is a little bit of a learning curve there and with the new people we’ve had to fit them in accordingly and adjust,” Sydor said. “You still have an end point, but you sort of have different stages to it.”
So far the Slash have qualified for the Notre Dame Hounds tournament in December and a winning performance this weekend at Performance Arena would punch their ticket to the Mac’s tournament in Calgary during the Christmas break.
“It’s tough early on because we’re always kind of under the gun to get results to qualify for the Notre Dame tournament and the Mac’s tournament. It really puts I guess sort of a weird twist on a season,” Sydor said. “It’s there every year. It’s solely based on your winning percentage, but when you start a hockey season you’re really trying to build your team. Early on you kind of figure out really what you have as far as personnel and abilities and who fits where best.”
The Slash rank among the top scoring teams in the Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League despite the loss of captain Melissa Kueber. The team’s all-time career point producer was the league’s most prolific goal scorer with 31 in 24 games last season. She was recently named the rookie of the week in the Eastern College Athletic Association with the Colgate Raiders.
“We’re still a team that scores a lot off the rush with our speed, which we’ve had the last few years,” Sydor said. “Some of our players have graduated or moved on with that speed and high end skill so what we’ve really tried to work on is get the puck down low and create stuff off the cycle and be a little grittier than high flying. Again, it’s a work in progress as far as your style goes.”
Tied for sixth place in league scoring is Ashley Morin with 18 points in nine games. She is also the team leader in goals with 11.
Morin, her twin sister, Deanna (1-9-10), and Jessica Kampjes (9-5-14) missed four games because of Team Alberta commitments with the U18 national women’s championship in Quebec. The trio will be back in the line-up this weekend as the Slash host the Calgary Flyers and the Calgary Chaos.
“We called up some affiliates with the bantam triple [Raiders] team to help us out with those four games and they did a real great job. That’s real encouraging, not just for our team this year but for the future of the program. The bantam triple program is very strong with some good players with excellent skill,” Sydor said. “Unfortunately in those four games we won two and lost two and those two games could be the difference [in qualifying for the Mac’s].”
Today’s game against the Flyers (7-4-1) starts at 2:15 p.m. Sunday’s start time against Chaos (8-5) is 2 p.m.
“Both teams have done well. They’ve beat some very good teams,” Sydor said. “We’re expecting a good challenge so we’ll need our A game.”
