Joey Payeur
The path back to the podium has been laid out for the Muskie girls’ hockey team.
Fort High is seeded fourth—and will be the top-rated squad in Pool ‘D’—at the 16-team OFSAA ‘A/AA’ provincial championships that begins Tuesday in Stratford.
The three-time defending NorWOSSA champs will look to go one better than the silver-medal showing they achieved last year in Kenora, which was the first OFSAA medal in the program’s 15-year history.
“After the puck drops, the rankings don’t really mean anything,” noted Muskie head coach Todd Hamilton.
Joining the Muskies in Pool ‘D’ will be the seventh-ranked Holy Trinity Secondary School Titans (Courtice), the No. 10-seeded Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School Spartans (London), and No. 13 Ecole Secondaire Catholique Embrun Cyclones (Embrun).
The Cyclones were the only one of the three to compete in last year’s tournament.
To no one’s surprise, the defending OFSAA champion and host St. Michael Warriors were seeded No. 1.
The Warriors are in Pool ‘A,’ which means the Muskies won’t have to worry about them until the semi-finals at the earliest.
“St. Mike’s got to be the top-ranked team and rightfully so,” said Hamilton.
“They didn’t lose a lot of players from last year.”
The Warriors beat the Muskies 5-1 in the OFSAA final last March.
Also in Pool ‘A’ are the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (Kenora), who stepped in to take the second available NorWOSSA berth after the Dryden Eagles declined to attend.
The Saints are the lowest-seeded team at No. 16 and will have to face the Warriors in the opening game of the tournament.
Hamilton said there isn’t much pre-scouting that can be done based on information off the various schools’ websites.
“You just have to go and watch them play when you’re not playing, and see what they have and determine what their top lines are,” he reasoned.
“Then you just hope by the middle of the game when you play them, you have things figured out.”
Fort High begins play Tuesday against Embrun, then will take on Holy Trinity that afternoon.
Pool play wraps up the following morning with the Muskies facing Mother Theresa.
The top two teams in each pool advance to the quarter-finals, which get underway Wednesday afternoon.
The semi-finals and final then will go Thursday.
Meanwhile, the seedings and pools for the OFSAA ‘A/AA’ boys’ hockey championship in Ottawa were expected to be released this afternoon.
The Muskies are competing in the 20-team tournament, which gets underway Monday.
As well, the seedings and pools for the OFSAA boys’ and boys’ curling championships in North Bay, which also start Monday, should be announced tonight.
Chris Silver and Erin Tomalty are skipping the respective Muskie entries.
