Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
-With files from SAIT Athletics
CALGARY – Whoever was working the penalty box doors at SAIT Arena on Saturday night got the biggest workout in the building as the MacEwan Griffins and SAIT Trojans women's hockey teams combined for 47 minutes in penalties.
The flow of the contest was disjointed as a result, but MacEwan persevered to post a 5-1 victory that keeps them unbeaten and atop the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference standings at 4-0 through the first two weekends of the season.
"It was a very interesting game in terms of special teams," said Griffins head coach Lindsay McAlpine. "Definitely, there was more time spent on powerplay or penalty kill in the game than five-on-five. We had numerous 5-on-3s, 4-on-3s, 5-on-4s. It was a very disjointed game, to say the least.
"I was happy that our girls pushed through it and were happy to stick within our structure in a game that felt very unstructured at times."
Shyla Kirwer opened the scoring for the Griffins with her fifth tally of the season two minutes into the contest. SAIT tied the game just over five minutes later when Tashel Scantlebury beat Natalie Bender with a point shot.
But it was all Griffins after that as Jill MacWilliam and Shyla Jans put MacEwan up 3-1 after the first period before Jaime Erickson and Vanessa Verbitsky – with her first ACAC career goal – scored in the third to round out the scoring.
"Jill MacWilliam led the charge on the front end for us," said McAlpine. "We put her back to forward today. Jill's a player we can move around in the lineup where we need. She responds really well as a forward or a defenceman. We had her at D in Game 1 and put her back to centre in Game 2. I thought she pushed the pace big time in the offensive zone."
In contrast to Friday's 5-2 MacEwan win where the Griffins outshot the Trojans 61-14, the shots were closer this time. Bender made 19 saves for MacEwan, while Cassidy Brown stopped 29 for SAIT.
However, McAlpine feels the Griffins made some positive adjustments, dictating the pace more than they did on Friday.
"Their response to yesterday's game, I was quite happy with today," she said. "It was kind of a choppy game in terms of special teams. When you get a game like that, it's hard to get in the flow of the game, but in the moments we did get to play five one five, I thought our team structure and things we worked on a lot were far better today than they were yesterday."
The Griffins will be back on the road for a Thursday night game at Olds College (7 p.m., ACAC TV) before hosting the Broncos on Saturday (6 p.m., Downtown Community Arena, ACAC TV).
