The Concordia Stingers women’s hockey team lost their first game of the 2014 season 8-1 to the Montreal Carabins on Sunday. Carabins forward, Ariane Barker, scored four goals and led her team to victory, handing the Stingers their worse loss in over a year.
Disorganization was the killer for the Stingers, as they took eight minor penalties and suffered for it. The Carabins managed five power play goals, notably two to end the first period and one to start the second for a 4-0 lead, putting the game completely out of reach for the Stingers.
“Nothing was working,” Stingers left winger, Audrey Morand, said of the performance. “Our forecheck wasn’t working, our zone coverage wasn’t working. We were all very passive while the other team was really aggressive. We just didn’t show up.”
Stingers head coach, Les Lawton, was quick to echo Morand’s remarks, saying that it was uncharacteristic of his team to put in such a poor effort, since they’re usually the ones outworking the other teams.
“To beat that team we need good goaltending, we need to be disciplined, we need to play well in our end of the ice and we have to establish a forecheck,” he said. “That was our goal going into the game and we didn’t do any of that, so hopefully we learn that when we don’t do the things that we do well, we’re gonna have games like this.”
This marked the third time this season that the Stingers have met the Carabins, the first two meetings both ended with 2-1 result in favour of the Carabins.
The Stingers will host the Carabins this Thursday, once again at the Ed Meagher Arena, and Morand notes that this is a great opportunity for the Stingers to get revenge for the lopsided loss.
“We’re going to put this loss behind us and use it as motivation for Thursday’s game since we’re getting the chance to get revenge in a back-to-back situation,” she said.
Lawton was also looking forward to Thursday’s rematch.
“Going into the third, we wanted to make a bit of a statement towards our game on Thursday, but we’ll be a completely different team on Thursday I can guarantee you that,” said Lawton. “Our players are really disappointed in their performance and hopefully we can bounce back from that and get right back on track.”
Despite the loss, the Stingers still sit in fourth spot in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) standings and are currently en route to making the playoffs after a two-year absence.
“I’m disappointed, we wanted to take a step forward today and we didn’t,” Lawton said. “It’s not the way we wanted to start our second half of the season but I’m still confident we’re going to do some good things and I really like our team character. We’ve got a really good bunch of girls who are working extremely hard both on and off the ice and I’m confident that they’re going to rebound from this.”
