Dan Falloon
With the post-season approaching, the Muskie girls’ hockey team is looking to right the ship after losing three-straight losses.
But the slump doesn’t have the black-and-gold panicking.
Head coach Mel Langtry was encouraged by his team’s latest outing—a 4-2 loss to Kenora on Friday night.
“Physically, I think we are [ready] but we just have to start doing the little things,” he acknowledged. “We just have to be aware of what’s going on around us.
“When we’re covering the point, we have to be aware of where they’re coming and where the puck is going to end up,” he noted.
Langtry made it clear his squad must be better prognosticators going forward, picking up what the Broncos are doing when their first-round playoff series kicks off Friday (Feb. 26) in Kenora.
“We have to anticipate quite a bit more,” he stressed. “We seem to react to them anticipating, and they seem to be there by the time we get there and take the puck away.”
But the coach feels if the black-and-gold play up to their potential, they just might give Kenora a run for its money in the best-of-three showdown.
Game 2 goes here Sunday afternoon, with Game 3 (if necessary) back in Kenora on Tuesday night (March 2).
“They’ve got to want it and we might pull it off,” he remarked. “The girls are still feeling confident to some extent.”
Fort High fell behind 1-0 early last Friday night but quickly evened things up on Nicole Beadle’s tally.
The Broncos wrangled the lead again as the Muskies ran into penalty trouble, but Jillian Langtry netted one to tie things at 2-2.
Kenora then made it 3-2 before the period was through.
Langtry said that towards the end of the first, his team began to get into penalty trouble—leading to the eventual game-winner.
“They’re the type of penalties that happen when you’re not moving your legs, so there were about three or four penalties we could have avoided,” he admitted.
After the five-goal outburst in the first, the teams played scoreless hockey right up until the end, when Kenora banged a rebound past Muskie goalie Dana Cridland with about two minutes to go in the third.
“The third, once again, they jumped on us. Dana made some pretty big saves,” recalled Langtry. “We missed a couple breakaways and a couple right in the slot, which would have put us ahead if we’d have scored on our opportunities.
“I think we should have won, but we just didn’t capitalize,” he stressed.
Even though the black-and-gold didn’t find the scoresheet in the final frame, the fact Kenora only tallied once was important to the Muskies, who had given up nine goals in their previous two third periods coming in.
“This one was a lot better but the two before that,” said Langtry. “We allowed four goals in one game and five in the other, that’s not very acceptable.
“We’ve been trying to concentrate on conditioning a little bit and we’re being ready for every period.”
The Muskies went into Friday’s game with a short bench as they were missing starting goalie Melissa Payne and forward Shae-lynn Smith in addition to defender Erika Anderson, who has missed the last two months with a broken collarbone.
All three are expected to be ready to go come playoff time.
Still, Cridland stepped up to make 45 saves as the Muskies were outshot 49-29 by Kenora on Friday night.
Langtry is excited his squad will ice its full roster for the first time since December as Alyssa Penner also missed significant time due to injury, causing the Muskies to juggle their lines.
“It’s tough to get chemistry when you’re rotating all the time,” he reasoned.
Friday’s loss was Fort High’s second at the Broncos’ hands in under a week. They coughed up a 4-2 lead heading into the third period back on Feb. 13, eventually dropping a 6-5 decision.
The Muskies’ final game of the regular season came last night at home to first-place Dryden (the score was not known as of press time).
