The first year of the Alberta Major Bantam Female Hockey League for the St. Albert Raiders was better than expected.
The Raiders finished first in the north and fourth overall in league play at 15-8-3.
“We wanted to end up first place in the north and we achieved that,” said head coach Floyd Murrin. “It was a good building year for the program, an extremely good year.”
In the best-of-three north playoffs the Raiders needed three games to eliminate the Sherwood Park Kings (0-22-4) in the semifinals, but were swept last weekend by the Edmonton Lighting (12-9-5) in the final by identical 2-1 scores.
“We kept a round-by-round mentality [in the playoffs],” Murrin said. “In the final they were tough games.”
Rebecca Wall scored the only goal in game one Friday at St. Albert as the Raiders outshot the Lightning 34-23.
In game two Saturday, Jenica Roy scored for the Raiders at Confederation Arena. Netminder Kaelin Klim stopped 23 shots while Chloe Sanderson turned aside 29 for the Lightning.
Both teams had five chances with the man advantage. The Lightning struck once and the Raiders were blanked on the power play.
“The first four or five minutes we got stormed and our goalie kept us in. We regrouped and got our heads on and carried the play to them,” Murrin said. “The girls played their hearts out. We threw everything at them that we could and rang a couple off the iron.”
As far as first years go, Murrin said that the competition level was high and that the girls achieved most of the goals they had set out at the beginning of the season. The key to next year will be getting the message out to all the hockey associations in the zone and continuing to build awareness and attract more players from those areas.
The bench boss also acknowledged he learned a lot personally throughout the season about how to coach bantam-aged girls.
“They're at the age where they have lots of interests. We did our best to make sure they came together as a team and focused on what we wanted to do for a program. We held them accountable for their actions and how they treated their teammates.”
