The Laurier Golden Hawks had a busy weekend of hockey playing host to the Guelph Gryphons and the University of Toronto Varsity Blues.
The weekend began on a sour note as the Hawks dropped a 4-1 contest Saturday night to the Gryphons with the Hawk’s lone goal coming from first-year Emily Woodhouse.
“I wasn’t really happy last night. I thought Guelph was a team that could be had last night in the first period. They showed up and took us a bit lightly and we weren’t ready to play,” said head coach Rick Osborne.
Sunday evening, the Hawks were looking for some redemption against the Varsity Blues — a team that sits third place in the league.
The Hawks got off to a fast start, but it was the Blues that were able to score first, as Katherine Gale was able to beat Amanda Smith and put the away side up 1-0 with 10 minutes to go in the opening period.
There was some eaerly controversy at the four-minute mark. It appeared that the Blues had found their second goal of the game, but it was waived off by the referee who lost sight of the puck and blew an early whistle.
After the first period, the Blues led 1-0 and were outshooting the Hawks 13-7.
The second period got going with Smith flashing the leather to keep the Laurier deficit to one.
The Hawks got the first power play of the game, as Jessica Robichaud was shown the gate for hooking .
The Hawks main advantage came to an early end as they took a penalty of their own.
Just after the midway point in the second period, the Hawks found the equalizer as Julia Talman was able to was able to jump on a rebound and tie the game at one.
The teams would break for the second intermission all tied up with the Blues still outshooting the Hawks 26-15.
It was a close third period but the Varsity Blues were able to find the back of the net just before it was knocked off its moorings and restore the Varsity Blues’ one goal lead.
That’s all it would take, the Hawks were hemmed into their own zone for almost the rest of the game, even unable to pull their goaltender to push for the tying goal.
Osborne was reasonably displeased with his team’s effort in not only this game, but the way that the Hawks played the entire weekend.
“Sometimes our team gets its priorities a little bit upside down, they put school and social ahead of hockey,” he said.
Osborne, however, noted another solid performance from Smith, who he referred to as the Tim Thomas of the second period.
With a disappointing weekend all wrapped up, the Hawks will look to get back on track as they visit Nipissing and Laurentian next weekend.
“Nipissing and Laurentian are both teams that we usually play tough, strong games against,” Osborne said.
“Tables are turned a little bit on us this year. We need to take time and space away from other teams. More often, they need to take it away from us. We need to be really good when we don’t have the puck in order to give ourselves a chance