Jamie Mountain
Focus on the goal at hand and work to get better each day.
That was the mindset of the Muskie girls’ hockey team as they headed into a busy slate of games this week.
After opening their NorWOSSA regular season with a 14-1 rout of the Kenora Broncos here last Tuesday on the strength of Issy Taylor’s four-goal performance, the black-and-gold have three more league games scheduled for this week.
The Muskies were slated to be in Kenora yesterday to face the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (the outcome wasn’t known as of press time), then will host the Sioux Lookout Warriors on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Emo-La Vallee Arena in Emo.
They’ll cap the week by welcoming the Dryden Eagles on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at the Ice For Kids Arena.
“I believe that each day we have to get better and better, and Tuesday [yesterday] we are going to see a stronger NorWOSSA team than what we have seen so far,” Muskie head coach Chris Sinclair predicted.
“A couple [of] areas that we will be focusing on is our play without the puck, so our positioning in our defensive end, as well as 1-on-1 situations,” he noted.
“We do have a busy schedule coming up with our game in Kenora against TA on Tuesday, and then we play in Emo on Friday versus Sioux Lookout, and then a home game on Sunday versus Dryden,” Sinclair added.
“On top of that, we will have our home game against International Falls on Tuesday, Nov. 27.
“It is a lot of hockey so it’s important that the girls keep focused,” he stressed.
“We must take it day by day, and worry about the task at hand and not start looking ahead.”
As for their season-opening win against the Broncos last Tuesday, it was all Muskies from the outset as they built a 5-0 lead through 20 minutes.
After Taylor and Paiten Kinnear both bulged the twine, Jill Calder fired her first marker of night under the arm of Broncos’ goalie Trista Boulette to put the Muskies up by three.
Taylor then tallied again with a shot through Boulette’s five-hole before Calder lit the lamp off a centering pass to make it 5-0.
Things didn’t get any easier for the visiting Broncos (1-1) in the second frame as Calder tipped in a shot to put the Muskies up by six.
Kianna Antonick then netted a short-handed goal after a Broncos’ turnover.
Kenora was able to get on the board on that same power play when Kira Boucher skated the puck out of the corner and bulled her way to the front of the net unimpeded before jamming the puck past Muskie goalie Isabella Fortes to trim it to 7-1.
But on a goal-mouth scramble later in the frame, Marti Woods found the loose puck and knocked it in before Makenna Henttonen fired home a centering pass from the slot to make it 9-1 after 40 minutes.
Henttonen found herself on a breakaway early in the third and she made no mistake in going upstairs on Boulette to help the black-and-gold reach double-digits.
The Muskies then got tallies from captain Emily Kaun, Taylor (two), and Antonick later in the frame to cap the scoring.
“I was very happy with our team performance and, overall, I thought we played a good 60-minute game,” Sinclair enthused.
“There were a lot of things that we have been practising the past couple weeks that we were able to transfer from practice and apply in the game.
“I think the girls handled the nerves and the pressures of any first-game jitters very well and just played our game,” he lauded.
“We were able to capitalize on our chances in the offensive zone and we played relatively well in our defensive end.”
Sinclair felt many of his players stood out to him in last Tuesday’s win, particularly the combination of Taylor and Calder.
“They are both defensive-minded players that have strong offensive potential, as showed in our game against Beaver Brae,” he said of the pair.
“They are starting to develop good chemistry between them and I believe are going to
