The Raiders hit Rocky Mountain heights during a dream opening week to the season.
The Rocky Mountain U18 AA Raiders capped a two-win week with a relentless effort in their home opener, a 6-2 triumph over the Lloydminster Steelers on Saturday at the Scott Seaman Sports Rink to improve to 2-0 in the Alberta Female Hockey League.
“It’s consistency and always building off the period we play,” said Raiders forward Abby Graham. “We might not come out the hardest in first period, but we keep building and get better until we get to the third where we play really well.”
Saturday’s win followed the script with the ice tilted in the Raiders favour in the late stages.
Knotted at 2-2 after 40 minutes, on goals from Graham and Madelyn Chinski, despite the Raiders owning the edge in shots, scoring chances and territorial play, the team would not be denied in the third period.
“Going into the dressing room, it was ‘Hey guys, it’s a 0-0 hockey game so this our period, this is our 20 minutes to win,’” said Raiders head coach Shayla Katrick. “We put it on the girls and each girl went around the room with their individual goals and they combined with the team goals and they came out with probably the best period I’ve seen from this team.”
Grace Bjornson restored the Raiders advantage five minutes into the frame and that was only the beginning.
Ava Dease, Ashlyn Mackay and Chinski all scored in a 1:11 span, the latter two of which were on the powerplay, to make it a four-goal margin of victory.
In goal, Tara Den Hoed made 15 saves on 17 shots to pick up the win.
“We really wanted to focus on stopping on the puck and not doing big loops around and we wanted to crash the net as hard as we can,” Graham said. “And just fire pucks on the net, as many as we could.”
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Earlier in the week, the Raiders struck a successful season opener on the road by doubling up on the Airdrie Lightning by a 4-2 count.
Katie Frost stood tall with a 42-save effort in between the posts with Mackay, Brooke Harder, Dyllyn Duckett and Kate Pettersen providing the goals.
“It’s been so much fun, the girls just compete every day at practice, games, they overcome adversity,” Katrick said. “They want to learn and always ask the right questions and they’re there to learn with positive attitudes.”
Katrick, in her first year with the Raiders, said she had a good feeling about the team’s prospects even before getting the inside perspective.
“From the girls I remember playing against last year and the girls coming up I knew it would be a really strong year this year,” the coach added. “They’re doing amazing, especially coming off the season they had last year, it’s totally, in my opinion, night and day and with the girls coming up they’ve been nothing but great and have adjusted well.”
Next up for the Raiders is a two-day road trip to Sherwood Park and Red Deer on Oct. 29-30.
For more information, go to u18femaleaa.ca.
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