Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
REGINA – Unfortunately, this hour has 22 minutes.
No, we're not talking about a TV show, but rather the amount of time the MacEwan Griffins women's hockey team spent in the penalty box in their Canada West season opener on Friday night.
That pretty much wrote the story of their downfall in a 3-1 setback at the Regina Cougars where they were outshot 33-14.
"We had a whole period in the box, so that's part of the reason we were outshot," said interim head coach Chris Leeming. "We took a lot of penalties and weren't able to find a groove and get into a routine of constantly getting the lines out there and creating some momentum for ourselves.
"We finally stopped taking so many penalties in the third and were able to establish some momentum. We played a lot better in the third as well. We're just looking to build off of that in tomorrow's game."
Jenna Merk scored twice and added an assist for the Cougars, who built a dominant 3-0 lead before Makenna Schuttler finally got the Griffins on the board with 7:24 left – the first goal of her Canada West career.
"We established some offensive zone time – we had a good forecheck and had them hemmed in for a bit – got a pass low to high to the point and got a shot through," said Leeming. "She got a secondary chance and buried the rebound."
On the positive side, the Griffins' penalty kill limited the Cougars to just 2-for-9 on the powerplay, but there is no rhythm for a team sitting in the box so often.
"The biggest thing was with the penalties being called, we kind of lost our focus and our attention to detail and execution really fell off," said Leeming. "We just had a good conversation and redirected the focus. We discussed what we needed to do to be successful because we kind of figured that out in the preseason.
"We got back to work executing the things we needed to do to be successful as a group. We're just looking to build off of that for tomorrow's game because we know how we can play."
Brianna Sank made 30 saves for the Griffins in defeat.
The teams will meet again on Saturday (3 p.m. MT, Canada West TV).
