On Saturday afternoon the Concordia Stingers women’s hockey team beat the Ravens for the first time this season and is using this win as a stepping-stone towards the playoffs. Concordia’s 2-0 win was their best performance of the season, and proof that the young team might be peaking at the right time.
“Carleton had never won a game, and to have them win not only their first game against us, but four is very disappointing,” said Stingers rookie forward Donna Ringrose. She mentions that even though she is in her first season, the losses against Carleton brought the entire team down. Carleton is in their second season as a varsity program and defeated the Stingers in their first four meetings of the season, two in shootouts.
“Since the beginning of their program, every time we played Carleton, we beat them,” said Stingers assistant captain Angela Di Stasi who scored the team’s first goal and added the assist on the second in the win. “This year, they have improved and the league is more even but it is still nice to beat them,” she said.
The win was Concordia’s second in conference play, and fourth overall.
They hadn’t won a game in over a month (Jan. 6 against the University of Toronto in the second round of the Theresa Humes tournament).
“I feel like playing [Carleton] really helped.” Ringrose said. “They are not as strong as McGill or Ottawa and by beating them, it is our first step back up the ladder,” she said.
With the win, Concordia moved within two points of the Ravens for third spot in the conference, both teams having three games left.
It is possible for the Stingers to catch and pass the Ravens, but they would need Carleton to lose its three remaining games in regulation (including one Feb. 17 against Concordia) and the Stingers would need to pick up at least one point in one of their two other games against McGill and Ottawa.
On Saturday, Ottawa broke no. 1 McGill’s 26-game winning streak against Canadian Universities.
“We have three games left, and we needed this win to pull ourselves back up,” Ringrose said. “We hit rock bottom when the teams from the Maritimes came and we’ve been building back up as a team on and off the ice, and this was do-or-die to set the tone going into the playoffs,” she said.
“We haven’t really been blown out this year,” said Stingers head coach Les Lawton.
“But there always seems to be points in the game where we get down on ourselves and we dig a hole for ourselves and we have a tough time coming back from those negatives.”
“Today we might have learned a little bit about ourselves because we did play hard for 60 minutes, [goaltender Meggy Hatin-L
