Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Morgan Casson has produced some pretty epic moments at the NAIT Arena over the years.
None of them will top the golden goal she scored last March to deliver MacEwan's third-straight Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference championship.
But Saturday afternoon's game-winner in a 3-1 triumph over the NAIT Ooks will certainly be up there.
Casson received a great down low pass from Chantal Ricker and wired it top shelf past Kaitlyn Slator with 8:02 remaining as the Griffins pulled off a rally from 1-0 down to complete a weekend sweep of their cross-town rivals.
To top it off, Casson added an insurance marker into the empty net with 55 seconds left.
"Morgan loves to play in games that have that emotional intensity," said Griffins head coach Lindsay McAlpine. "That's exactly the type of personality she has, and she comes out and does it every time."
Her two-point night gives her a four-point weekend after setting up Ricker for two goals in Friday's 3-1 win at the Downtown Community Arena.
"They were again a great duo for us tonight," said McAlpine. "They had some great opportunities early and they pushed throughout the game. They were rewarded there at the end."
With the result, the Griffins improve to 15-3-0-0 and moved nine points ahead of the Ooks (10-7-1-0) in the standings. More importantly, they won the season series 4-2 and gained some confidence after being swept by their rivals before Christmas break.
"I think even bigger is the mental win there heading into a potential playoff series with them," said McAlpine. "We'll take the season series now with four wins out of six, so I think that was some mental momentum that we needed going into the playoffs."
After Cassidy Shandro put the Ooks up 1-0 in the first period, the Griffins – much like Friday night – tried in vain for a long time to get a puck past Kaitlyn Slator.
Finally, Sydney Hughson did 2:49 into the third period.
"Slator's a tough goalie to beat," said McAlpine. "We needed to continue to get pucks on her from hard areas and get some traffic in front. Sydney did a great job from the point just hammering a puck just over the pad. It was a tough save for Slator to make and it gave us a huge energy boost. We just kind of took control of the game from there."
Slator made 23 saves in a losing effort for the Ooks, while Brianna Sank stopped 22 for MacEwan. Both goalies were named their respective teams' players of the game.
