The Parkland Lions bantam girls鈥� hockey team began their 麻豆传媒AV Sask Female Hockey League playoffs with a two-game total goals series against the Wood River Ice Cats.
In Game One in Springside February 16, the Lions quickly took control of the series courtesy of a 10-0 shutout victory.
Goaltender Taylor Nagy picked up the shutout, while Olivia Gordon led the Lions offensive attack with four goals. Jordan Holinaty added a pair of goals, while solo markers were tallied by Janna Kesig, Sidney Shyiak, Heather Fiske, and Austen Dubreuil on 81 Lions shots on goal. 鈥淲e really stressed the difference between competing in the regular season and competing in playoffs,鈥� noted coach Chad Holinaty. 鈥淚t was good to see the girls come out strong and really control the game. At the same time, it feels like we鈥檝e been repeating some areas of our game we need to improve on.
鈥淏eing more disciplined in our positional play, limiting the number of penalties we take, and being more effective on our power play have to be areas we get better at.鈥�
Game Two in Lafleche on February 21 provided the Lions a chance to work on those areas.
The Lions offence exploded for eight goals in the first period en route to a dominant 17-1 win.
The win gave the Lions a 27-1 total goals series victory.
Heather Fiske and Sidney Shyiak both tallied hat tricks, while Janna Kesig, Jordan Holinaty, Brooke Hausermann, and Austen Dubreuil all added pairs.
Single markers were added by Olivia Gordon, Bailey Melnychuk, and Sierra Meroniuk on 64 Lions shots on net. 鈥淎fter a long bus ride, and going into a game with a big lead, we were happy to see the girls play with energy and work on parts of our game we need to improve on,鈥� said coach Dean Shyiak.
鈥淚 think this was the first game all season where the other team took more penalties than we did,鈥� quipped coach Kim Pennell. 鈥淲e told the girls they had to stay disciplined and not retaliate.
鈥淲ith the score what it was, frustrations come out and we told the girls they would have to skate away and stay out of trouble. We didn鈥檛 want to have any incident that would hurt our team moving into the next round of playoffs.鈥�
The second round of playoffs will be a best-of-three series, with their opponent to be determined by February 25.
