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Concordia lost 2-0 to the Ottawa Gee-Gees on Saturday at the Ed Meagher arena.
Maybe the Stingers underestimated their opponents, maybe they just had a bad game, and maybe Ottawa just performed their game plan to perfection.
Whatever it was, Stingers head coach Les Lawton wasn’t happy.
“We should be ready to play,” said a frustrated Lawton after the game. “I thought they were ready to play and they weren’t. I guess I have to question what I did before the game and how we prepared for the game,” he continued.
“It’s not a question of winning or losing, it’s team performance that’s important to me and we didn’t perform,” Lawton said. “When you don’t perform, you get pissed off,” he said.
The Stingers allowed two power play goals from the Gee-Gees in the second period and couldn’t recover as Ottawa shut down Concordia’s offence for the entire game. It led to an easy shutout for Gee-Gees goaltender Melissa Dipetta, who made the saves she needed to.
Just two minutes into the second period, Sara McLeish found a loose puck at the skates of Meggy Hatin-Leveillee and put it by her while Genevieve Dupuis was serving a cross-checking penalty. The Stingers, whose penalty killing units were fantastic in the Theresa Humes tournament last week, struggled to clear the rebounds after Hatin-Leveillee made the first save.
Four and a half minutes later, following a tremendous blocker save on a Stephanie Fallis shot, Mandy Duhamel put the rebound past Hatin-Leveillee.
The Stingers tried anything they could to try and get a goal to turn the momentum of the game, but couldn’t. Lawton, who had two new lines to start the game, kept on changing his lines up through out the game but the one line that stayed together was the line of Stingers assistant captain Sophie Beaudry, Andrea Dolan and Elana August. In the third period, however, August was switched up with Isabelle Caron to play with Tawnya Danis and Jodi Gosse.
“Those kids work hard. If you work hard you’re going to get results,” said Lawton. “They were about the only line that I could keep together, and the reason I could keep them together is because they were the only line that was working hard together. I wasn’t going to break them up.”
The criticism from Lawton didn’t stop there.
“We have some players who just aren’t performing out there like they should be. Veteran players who should be stepping up and should be leading us on the ice aren’t.”
The Stingers now set their sights on a three game road-trip in Atlantic Canada where they will face off against the hosts of this year’s National Championships, number three-ranked St. F.X. on Friday. They will also play Dalhousie on Saturday and St. Mary’s on Sunday.
“We have three tough games [this weekend] and the players will have to look in the mirror a little bit and the coaches too, and do what’s best for the team in the next week and go forward with that,” Lawton said.
The Stingers have their work cut out for them on the way to a first round bye and home ice advantage in the QSSF semi-final. They are now five points behind McGill. If they want home-ice advantage in the QSSF quarter final, they’ll need to watch out as well because the Gee-Gees are only two points behind them.
