Stingers face Capital punishment on home ice

In the coach’s office in between the men and women’s hockey locker rooms, Concordia Stingers women’s hockey head coach Les Lawton stood alone.
Following his team’s 8-3 loss to the Ottawa Gee-Gees on Saturday afternoon at the Ed Meagher arena, Lawton didn’t have to look hard for the reason the score was so lopsided.
“Our mental skills are so, so weak,” Lawton said, referring to the seven-minute span of the second period where the Stingers saw a 1-0 lead turn into a 5-1 deficit.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “We lost complete focus, we were down 2-1 with half the game to go and instead of using that as motivation, we got down on ourselves.”
“Every time we get down in a game, we get down on ourselves,” said Stingers forward Bianca Chartrand. “We think we can’t get back up, like we’re used to it,” she said.
“We have to work on our mental preparation,” she said.
The Stingers scored all three of their goals short-handed, and within the first 3:55 of the third period saw their deficit shrink to 5-3 before Ottawa potted three straight goals in the third period.
“All three of our goals had more to do with hard work than it had to do with the penalty kill,” said Chartrand who scored the first goal of the hockey game at 6:08 of the first period.
“On my goal, I got the puck and I never stopped skating,” she said. “Whether it was on the penalty kill or not, the goals we scored were all hard work.”
Rookie forward Catherine Rancourt and sophomore Kelly Feehan scored the other Stinger goals.
Chartrand blocked a shot at the Stingers blue line and broke away from the Gee-Gee defenders to give her a breakaway against Jessika Audet. Chartrand went backhand on Audet and slid the puck past her. The net was knocked off its moorings, but the referee ruled that the puck crossed the line first.
The Gee-Gees thought they had scored the first goal of the game with under nine minutes to go in the first period. The referee blew the whistle, the Gee-Gees celebrated and the red light went on. However, Concordia goaltender Meggy Hatin-Léveillée and her teammates disputed the goal right away.
The referee then went to talk to the goal judge who said that he only put the light on because of the whistle and the celebration, and never saw the puck cross the line. After further discussion with the linesmen, the goal was disallowed and the game remained 0-0 after one period of play.
The Gee-Gees scoring spree took off in the second. Just 3:23 after Chartrand’s goal, Kayla Hottot blasted a snap shot low blocker on Hatin-Léveillée to even the score at 9:31 of the second period. Then, after a failed power play opportunity the Stingers turned the puck over to Ashley Burrill which created a 2-on-1. Burrill then fed Kim Kerr who put the puck in the net.
Ottawa’s Amber Foster would score 34 seconds after Kerr, and then Kerr would score her second of the period 3:24 later. Burrill would score just 17 seconds later.
The five goals in 7:21 would turn the 1-0 Stingers lead into a 5-1 deficit to end the middle frame.
“We had the goal disallowed early, and I told the girls to take charge in what you control,” said Gee-Gees head coach Shelley Coolidge. “We wanted to be aggressive on the fore-check and when [our team] made the decision to do that it changed the game,” she said.
Kim Kerr completed her hat trick only 37 seconds after Kelly Feehan cut the Ottawa lead to 5-3. Mandi Duhamel and Ashley Burrill (her second of the game) also scored in the third.
NOTES: Concordia remained two points behind Carleton for third place in the Quebec conference. Carleton has a game in hand on Concordia. Both teams play each team in the conference once. Carleton’s extra game is against McGill. Concordia’s next home game is Feb. 16 vs. Carleton. The Stingers play the Gee-Gees this weekend in Ottawa . Victoria Johnstone, arguably Concordia’s top defenceman, has left the team due to personal reasons . Ashley Burrill, in addition to her two goals had two assists. Joelle Charlebois had four assists.