Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Playing their best hockey of the season with wins in three of their last four games, the MacEwan Griffins will test themselves against a premier opponent this weekend.
MacEwan (6-15-1) will visit the UBC Thunderbirds (18-2-2), who are in first place in the conference's women's hockey standings, on Friday (8 p.m. MT) and Saturday (4 p.m. MT, both Canada West TV).
It's going to take their best against a team that's ranked No. 1 in U SPORTS.
"Just having a sense of urgency from the drop of the puck has been a key for us playing well recently," said interim head coach Chris Leeming. "We're focused on our game play and what we're trying to do and not get discouraged if things don't go our way.
"I think it's a mindset towards competing that we've developed throughout the year, and we'll see how it pays off against this type of competition."
The Griffins have been sizzling of late with a weekend sweep against Regina Jan. 13-14, followed by a split at Trinity Western last weekend, including a 3-1 victory last Saturday.
"As I mentioned before, our sense of urgency from the drop of the puck," cited Leeming as the biggest reason to their recent success. "I think we've played a complete game for all 200-feet of the ice for 60 minutes more often than not as of late. That's an inspiring thing.
"What I kept repeating in first semester when we weren't finding success is the consistency aspect," he added. "Our consistency has become a little bit more engrained in our game and it's allowed us to find success in different areas."
One of those is goal scoring. After struggling to score earlier in the season, they've begun to finish recent chances by funnelling more traffic to the front of the net.
That said, UBC is one of the stingiest teams in the nation and held the Griffins to just one goal in two games the last time the teams met (5-0 and 4-1 Griffins losses on Oct. 28-29).
Leeming knows it will come down to hard work and getting the details right all over the ice.
"We've taken practice this week to be prepared to not allow a lot of time and space," said Leeming. "We have to be willing to compete, just like we've talked about – getting pucks and bodies to the net to create traffic and get secondary opportunities.
"If we can bury our scoring chances, it's going to pay off for us at the end of the day."
