The last jewel in the triple crown of hockey was pure gold for the St. Albert Hit.
The Edmonton Minor Hockey Week and EMHA playoff winners completed the trifecta in Sunday’s 4-3 come-from-behind victory over the Cochrane Rockies in the peewee female A provincial final at Castledowns Arena.
“The girls were relentless; they never gave up,” said Justin Kidd, head coach of the 47-0-2 Hit.
With only nine skaters and one goalie the Rockies crumbled as the Hit kept pounding away.
“After we got up we just tired the other team out,” Kidd said. “They were a big team. I bet you they had 50 pounds on every girl on our team. We just kept skating and skating, dump-and-chased them and we grounded them down. They couldn’t create anything because we were all over them.”
The tying marker by captain Abby Benning was scored on a play drawn up by Kidd in the dressing room between periods. It was 2-1 Rockies going into the third and 31 seconds left in the Hit power play.
“We set this play up right from the face-off at centre and it actually worked. The girls perfected it. It was like a miracle on ice,” he said. “Once we tied the game up we got another two quick goals [by Kyrelle Skoye and Kolby Krueger] and we never looked back.”
The goal was Benning’s second of the game and fifth of the tournament by the Hit’s player of the game in the final.
“She is the leader for our team,” Kidd said.
The Hit and Rockies stormed through their pools undefeated in four games. The final was the first time the teams crossed paths this season.
“Going into the game there was a little bit of insecurity on the girls’ part because of how big and physical Cochrane played against some other teams,” Kidd said. “About five minutes into the second period the girls realized they had a chance. They could tell we were wearing them down and the tide was changing. From the halfway point of the game they didn’t really have any chances. Our forwards back-checked and kept cutting them off and angling them off. Our defence did a wonderful job of standing them up tall, forcing them to the outside. Sarah Murray, our goalie, played terrific, as she did all weekend.”
Murray was between the pipes as the Hit shut out the Grande Prairie Lighting 2-0, Okotoks Oilers 5-0 and the Sherwood Park Force 5-0. Leading up to provincials she backstopped the Hit to the EMHA city championship with 0-0 and 5-0 efforts against the Edmonton Inferno in the final.
The Hit ended the round robin with a hard-fought 3-2 decision over their archrivals from Edmonton. At stake was first place in pool two and a semifinal date with the Calgary Dinos, the second-place 2-2 team behind the Rockies in pool one.
“They’ve been getting better and better all year, getting tighter and tighter with us,” Kidd said of the Inferno, 2-2 in pool two and 5-2 losers to the Rockies in the semifinals. “We had a couple of injuries come up and we had some adversity. We knew we had to find a way to win and the girls dug deep and they came through in flying colours.”
In the crossover playoffs Jenna Jewell, Kennedy Newton, Jaime Kidd and Lauren MacMaster scored and Megan Webb added two assists as the Hit doubled Calgary 4-2.
Jewell, Newton and Jamie Jones were credited with two assists apiece in the final.
Games were 45 minutes in length except for three 20-minute periods in the final.
The Hit wrapped up their impressive undefeated season with 318 goals and only 65 against in 49 games.
“We are all-around really good. Our forwards were relentless. We had great goaltending in the playoffs and provincials. We had stay-at-home defencemen who always pinched at the right time,” Kidd said. “Even in some games that we were down we always found a way to win. It happened in the city championships and provincials. In both games we had some adversity and managed to pull it off.”
The former junior B scoring star with the St. Albert Merchants knew his team was destined for glory.
“I was very confident with the girls we had even though it was kind of two teams coming together this year that have never been together,” he said of the Hit’s line-up that featured several girls from the 2008 peewee A provincial championship team. “This group is very lucky to have a core group that has been together for a long time. There are some phenomenal hockey players. The girls that stepped into this team this year that haven’t been part of this little package are also very impressive.
“Everybody came together and worked their tails off. I’m so excited for these girls. I’m very proud of them.”
Kidd credits the St. Albert Minor Hockey Association’s female program under long-time director Chad Jenkins for boosting the profile of girls’ hockey.
“He’s really pushing to make it better and trying to find more girls for the program and it’s paying off. He’s put a lot of time and effort into it and I congratulate him for everything he’s done,” he said. “As for all the girls in St. Albert, there is some good talent at every level, from midget right down to novice — even in initiation there is girls’ teams. There are some good years to come still for the program in St. Albert.”
ICE CHIPS: Rounding out the Hit roster were MacKenzie Dechaine, Julia Kormysh, Robyn Kormysh, Kelsey Lusis, Madison Lusis, Rachel Rochat and Angie Sherstan. Affiliates were Allyson Short, Carly Umbach and goalie Natalie Bender, who saw action in the last period of the team’s third game. Assistant coaches were Glenn Jones, Gary Skoye, Phil Webb and Stefanie Grant. Trainer was Barb Newton and the manager was Karen Gouge.
