MONTREAL - The Carleton Ravens' three-game point streak ended on Sunday afternoon as the women’s hockey team lost 4-0 to Montreal.
“It’s a disappointing outcome, I don’t think we played near our best hockey,” explained Ravens head coach Stacey Colarossi. “We raised the bar the weekend before with how we can play and the expectation of play – we didn’t give a consistent six-player effort in either game this weekend.”
The Ravens opened the matchup continuing to prove they’re ready to compete with the highly competitive RSEQ, carrying the pace with the Carabins through the first half of the period before the Carabins Emily-Renee Paquin beat Ravens goaltender Marie-Eve Côté with a long shot that awkwardly bounced through the Ravens goalie to open the scoring.
The strange bounce was a blip in what was a fantastic first period for Côté who turned away a pair of Carabins odd-man rushes including a late breakaway to keep the game at 1-0.
Early in the second period the Carabins would extend the lead after beating the Ravens defender to the puck in the corner, the Carabins would quickly cycle out from behind the Ravens net starting a scramble in the crease that would wind up behind Côté.
After a relatively back-and-forth second period with neither team gaining much momentum, Carleton forward Cecelia Lopez was called a major penalty for checking to the head late in the period putting the Carabins on a lengthy powerplay. Moments into the Ravens penalty kill Abigail Byrne would be called for cross-checking putting the Carabins on a 5-on-3 advantage. Côté would make a pair of glove saves while on the first half of the disadvantage keeping the Ravens down just 2-0.
When the powerplay resumed at the start of the third, the Carabins would work the puck around the zone before getting a nifty deflection past Côté for the 3-0 lead. Carleton would kill off the rest of the major and look to push their way back into the match-up in the final 18 minutes. Any momentum the Ravens appeared to have built was quickly drained when Amelie Poire-Lehoux would break in short-handed cutting hard to her backhand beating Côté for the fourth and final game of the afternoon.
Through the rest of the period, every inch of momentum Carleton would build was taken away with minor penalties. After spending almost one third of the game shorthanded the Ravens would see their record fall to 2-5-1.
Focussing on the team’s penalty kill, coach Colarossi sees more adjustments coming to an already strong unit. “What we tried to do today was put some new people into those spots, because we can’t keep putting the same people into those spots.”
With new bodies on the penalty kill the Ravens remained five-for-six on the penalty kill improving to 88.6% on the season.
Carleton quickly returns to action on Thursday night when they host the uOttawa Gee-Gees at the Carleton Ice House. The team will be focused for the two games ahead, having already faced both opponents Carleton looks to use the home stand to start moving up the standings. “We know how Ottawa plays, we’ve played them and McGill already,” reflected coach Colarossi. “It’s not so much about managing what we have to do here, it’s about getting quality execution.”
