Pandas hockey look to win finals for higher seeding at nationals
Rebecca Medel
Sports Editor
Feb 20, 2012
A two-win series over the Saskatchewan Huskies last weekend in the Canada West semi-finals means the puck Pandas are headed to Calgary this weekend to face-off against the Dinos for top spot in CanWest.
The Green and Gold outscored the Huskies 4-2 on Friday and 5-2 on Saturday, an improvement from the single-point wins and losses the two teams have been trading all season. Huskies head coach Steve Kook said the two teams play a very similar style.
“They’re both good offensive teams. They’re both solid in terms of defencemen and goaltending. We didn’t expect anything less than good, close games coming into it. We didn’t get into this game until the third period obviously, but you know, they play an extremely similar game to us and we just couldn’t get balanced and stay out of the penalty box this weekend.”
Alannah Kedra, Pandas forward and the weekend’s top scorer with two goals in both games, knew going into the weekend that it would be a tough go against the Huskies.
“They’re a hard team to play. (They’ve got) great coaching and great players on their team so we just stuck to our system and we played it as a team and it just really paid off in the end,” Kedra said. “It’s always nice to win two games and we just played like a team this weekend and showed everyone what we could do and it paid off.”
In the other half of the CanWest semi-finals, the Dinos’ 3-0 and 7-1 wins over the Lethbridge Pronghorns last weekend means they’ll be hosting the Pandas in finals and hoping to join them at nationals in Edmonton March 8-11. Pandas goaltender Kaitlyn Chapman, the top keeper in CanWest, said taking two wins from Saskatchewan is a good lead into these Calgary games.
“To be honest (Calgary’s) got about three talented forwards that take their play the whole way. But we’ve proved every game that we can have close games with them….we can beat them, we’ve done it before,” Chapman said.
Calgary has managed to stay a step ahead of Alberta all season, winning three of four matches. But they only pulled ahead by a point each time, and two of those wins in overtime. Both the Pandas and Dinos are headed to nationals but a win this weekend will secure a higher seeding and that’s what both teams will be fighting for.
“Calgary’s going to be a tough team. Obviously we’re looking forward to the challenge. They haven’t lost a lot of games but we’ve beat them once and I felt that in all the games we’ve played against them we could’ve won the ones that we didn’t. So we’re confident going in there and we just want to do the best we can,” said head coach Howie Draper.
The best-of-three can be viewed on Canadawest.tv Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 6:15 p.m.
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