Dan Falloon
Sometimes it just takes that little bit extra.
Even with heavy legs after a jam-packed season so far, the Muskie girls’ hockey team was able to pull away from the Kenora Broncos en route to an 8-5 victory here Friday night.
With the score tied 5-5 after two periods, the hosts ran wild in the third with three unanswered goals to seal the win.
“It was a NorWOSSA game, so for the standings it was great,” enthused Muskie head coach Mel Langtry.
With the win, the black-and-gold evened their record in league play to 3-3.
The Muskies came out buzzing—getting three goals by Courtney Bethune, Shae-lynn Smith, and Nicole Beadle to grab the early lead.
Kenora responded with a pair of their own, however, to trail by just one heading into the second.
Langtry recalled that both Bronco goals came on the same shift.
“We really fell apart for one shift, which is something we’re trying to work on in practice,” he noted.
Jessie Baker and Smith tallied for the Muskies in the middle frame, but the Broncos roared back with three to knot the game at 5-5 heading into the final period.
From there, it was the Jillian Langtry show as the Grade 10 forward put away the eventual game-winner and then the insurance goal in the third.
Baker added an empty-netter to ice it.
Muskie goalie Melissa Payne handled 29 of the 34 shots directed at her while the offence in front of her directed 41 shots towards the Bronco net.
“She really picked it up in the third,” Mel Langtry said of Payne. “She forgot the goals that had been scored against her and really helped us out.
“They [Kenora] put on a little pressure [13 third-period shots] but she held us in there.”
The Muskies, already without the injured Alyssa Penner and Anikka McTavish, also were missing Erika Tymkin for Friday’s game. But Langtry was satisfied with how his shorthanded roster responded.
“Everybody had to step up. Forwards had to come back and do a little bit more defensively,” he noted.
He did feel, however, that there still was some work to be done in the Muskies’ own zone, especially after allowing five goals.
“In defensive coverage, sometimes we forget where we’re supposed to be,” he bemoaned.
Still, Langtry was excited to have hit the .500 mark in NorWOSSA play and expects his team now has a chance to build on Friday’s victory.
Fort High faces St. Thomas Aquinas (Kenora) this Friday before meeting Red Lake on Sunday.
“We’ve been playing the tougher teams,” noted Langtry. “We’ve played [the Kenora Broncos] twice and Dryden twice.”
Langtry also gave an update on the status of Penner, the Grade 9 forward who has been out with a broken wrist.
Penner has had the cast removed and Langtry hopes she’ll be in the lineup for the beginning of February—a month in which the Muskies have six games scheduled, including five NorWOSSA battles.
“She’s young and she wants to get back, that’s for sure,” said Langtry.
