The St. Thomas University women’s hockey team defeated the St. Francis Xavier University X-Women on Jan. 11, maintaining their first place standing in the Atlantic University Sport league.
They played the University of New Brunswick women’s team on Jan. 9 and suffered a loss of 3-1, ending their 13 game winning streak. While head coach Peter Murphy wasn’t happy to see the team lose, he wasn’t upset with the loss.
“The weekend wins I don’t think we played well but we got away with it, and on Wednesday, we didn’t get away with it,” said Murphy.
The Tommies second semester season began on Jan. 2 with an exhibition game against the University of Prince Edward Island, followed by two more games that weekend against Saint Mary’s University and UPEI.
The Friday game against the X-Women saw a goal by Tommie Lauren Henman 30 seconds in. Goalie Abby Clarke followed with some good saves. The Tommies tried to score again on a power play but fell short, making the score 1-0 for STU at the end of the first period.
The second period kicked off with the Tommies fighting to get the puck away from their net. StFX tried to score on a power play but couldn’t find the back of the net with Clarke’s saves.
The game got rough as both teams stared collecting penalties. The Tommies had some good shots, but couldn’t score, ending the period still up 1-0.
STU’s defence was strong in the third period which kept the shots from StFX on Clarke to a minimum. STU finally got the puck out of their end and Megan Pardy scored her first goal of the year with an assist from Paige Jackson nine minutes into the third period.
Just two minutes later, Olivia Reid scored, bringing the Tommies lead up 3-0.
The X-Women were able to find the back of the net two minutes later, making it 3-1.
With just over two minutes left in the final period, the Tommies took a penalty giving StFX a power play but the X-Women got one of their own right after. StFX pulled their goalie, trying to keep the power play, but Henman scored her second goal of the night with less than a minute to go, making the final score 4-1 for the Tommies.
Murphy believes the loss against UNB helped kick the team into gear for their game against StFX, but he thinks their practice before the game is what they really needed.
“On Thursday, we had a really good practice. We had a practice that was very similar to the practices we were having in the first term,” said Murphy.
The team got back into second semester with four regular season games and one exhibition game, which meant there wasn’t a lot of time for practicing.
“We haven’t really had a normal week where we’d have four days of practice. That’s what it was going to take to get them back to where they were, and they were able to do it in practice on Thursday,” Murphy said.
“We were really pleased with that.”
