Dan Falloon
It should have been a statement game.
On home ice, with sole possession of second place in NorWOSSA’s ‘AA’ division on the line, the Muskie girls’ hockey team gave up a pair of two-goal leads en route to a 6-5 loss to the Kenora Broncos on Saturday night.
The Muskies had gotten the weekend off to a good start by pounding the Sioux Lookout Warriors 8-1 on Friday night in Emo.
But on Saturday, the visiting Broncos scored five of their six goals in quick bursts, getting their first two in a 2:27 span before tallying three in 4:31 to grasp second place—and home-ice advantage—in the opening round of the NorWOSSA playoffs.
“I don’t know if it’s just a confidence thing or what,” bemoaned Muskie head coach Mel Langtry.
“They take it to them at times, and then at other times they’re just slacking off,” he noted.
“You’d think that the next line that goes out would feed off the line before it and that’s not happening for us,” Langtry remarked.
“We really have to work through that,” he stressed.
Langtry concluded that Kenora knew exactly what it had to do to come away with the crucial two points, then executed the strategy effectively.
“They came out very hard,” he noted. “They’re a good squad, they seem to spread us out. We seem to bunch up quite a bit and they spread us out a little bit more.
“They needed to take advantage of that, and they took advantage of a couple of shots that shouldn’t have went in that ended up going in,” he added.
As for Fort High, Langtry said the plan was there but the way it was implemented was left wanting.
“We tried to meet their speed,” he explained. “We knew they were going to come out like gangbusters, and we didn’t meet that.”
With workhorse goalie Melissa Payne returning from an elbow injury over the weekend, Langtry opted to start her in Friday night’s cakewalk against Sioux Lookout and giving Dana Cridland the reins here Saturday.
But at this late point in the season, the starting job heading into the playoffs is still up for grabs. Two gut-check games against first-place Dryden may help to settle things.
“We’ve got to get one of them to pick it up and start stopping some pucks,” Langtry stressed. “We’ve got two games [this] week, so we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do there.”
As for his skaters, who racked up 13 goals in the two games, there still are strides to be made as many of the goals were saves in the hands of the more capable goaltending that Fort High should expect in the post-season.
“We have to work on driving to the net and getting to the net,” Langtry said. “We’re getting shots from outside, but we’re not driving to the net.
“We’ve got to start getting those garbage goals because they all count.”
Leading up to getting pucks to the net is just getting a handle on the puck in the offensive zone.
“We did well was when we forechecked hard,” Langtry noted. “When you forecheck, you’re going to cause some havoc and that’s what we did in the first five, seven minutes [against Kenora].
“We clogged them up and they couldn’t get going.
“After that, we let up, they started coming on, getting to the puck to get back in it,” he added.
The black-and-gold will have to make those Bronco-specific adjustments soon.
The two teams meet again this Friday (Feb, 19) in Kenora, but with the Dryden Eagles clasping top spot in the division, a Muskie-Bronco match-up in the opening round appears inevitable.
(The Muskies faced the Eagles last night in Dryden, with the outcome not available prior to press time).
Strong start
Fort High got off to a strong start Saturday as Jillian Langtry struck just 1:31 into the game.
After forcing a turnover in the Broncos’ zone, Shae-lynn Smith centered to Langtry, who fired one past Kenora goalie Stephanie Ferguson.
The Muskies then went up 2-0 just over three minutes later when Anikka McTavish’s slapper beat Ferguson upstairs.
Kenora got on the board less than a minute after, though, when Erica Johnson snapped one past Cridland at 5:20.
The Broncos drew even at 7:47 when Ainsley Lindquist put an innocent-looking shot toward Cridland, but the puck ended up in the net after a couple of caroms.
Fort High regained the lead in the second when Jessie Baker, fresh out of the penalty box, gathered a centering pass from Kimmy LaFleur and snuck it past Ferguson.
The black-and-gold made it a two-goal cushion again at 9:11 when Langtry went coast-to-coast before putting a perfectly-placed wrister behind Ferguson.
Cridland was forced to be sharp in the second—gloving a shot from Rylee Meisner before robbing Sam Smith on a backhand from point-blank range.
Kenora knotted things quickly in the third, however. Johnson got things started when she slid her second of the game past Cridland at 4:49 before Lindquist’s second of the night—a slapper—came 66 seconds later.
The Broncos then snagged their first lead of the game at 9:20 when Smith got her revenge, tapping a rebound past Cridland to make it 5-4.
That lead was short-lived, though, as Baker got her second of the night just 40 seconds later—firing a shot from an impossible angle to Ferguson’s right that found its way through the goalie’s legs.
Both goalies came up big late in the third, with Cridland gloving down a one-timer from Kenora defender Linnea Vaudry while Ferguson stoned Carlee Bosma from in close.
But Lindquist completed her hat trick with only 2:47 to go, putting a routine shot on net that eluded Cridland to secure the 6-5 win.
Against Sioux Lookout on Friday in Emo, Fort High buried the Warriors quickly.
Bosma kicked things off with an impressive marker at 4:51 of the first, breaking through a pair of Warriors before deking out goalie Dianne Kanate.
She struck again 19 seconds later, wristing a bullet over Kanate’s shoulder.
Ericka Tymkin boosted the lead to 3-0 at 9:24 by slipping a bad-angle shot behind Kanate.
Langtry rounded out the first-period scoring after taking a pass from Smith and backhanding one past Kanate at the 18-minute mark.
Muskie goalie Melissa Payne was on when needed, getting her blocker on a last-minute blast from Warrior Roberta Manakwa.
In the second, Baker bumped the lead to 5-0 before Courtney Bethune hammered one off the iron and in at the nine-minute mark.
Bethune notched her second of the game in the third when a floater beat Warrior relief goalie Doris Winter at 2:53.
The Muskies’ scoring was complete when a failed clearing pass made its way to Jessica Taggart, who pumped it past Winter at 6:37.
Manakwa spoiled Payne’s shutout bid with 40 seconds to go, beating the Muskie goalie through the five-hole.
