Wildcats take flight sweeping Hawks

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This article was published 27/02/2024 (680 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From the bench, Westman Wildcats coach Guy Williams let his players know when they were not following the game plan against a focused opponent.

“Find the puck,” urged Williams when his under-18 AAA squad found themselves watching the Pembina Valley Hawks control the play around Wildcats goaltender Danica Averill.

“Move your feet,” bellowed Williams when the Wildcats were caught standing still, and the Hawks dominated play, but were unable to put the puck past Averill, who faced 21 shots.

In the end, the Wildcats found their legs and the puck in Game 3 to sweep the Hawks in the best-of-five quarterfinal series with a 5-2 victory on Sunday in Hartney.

The win came after the Hawks pushed the Wildcats in Game 2 on their turf to double overtime, with the visitors prevailing 4-3.

“Boy, am I tired,” Williams said in a post-game interview while his girls celebrated around him near the Wildcats bench. “(The Hawks) played a strong, structured game against us and it does not matter if you finished second (like us) or seventh (like them).

“In the playoffs, it’s all about puck possession. You need to get the puck into the danger zones and get shots on net.”

While the Wildcats managed 41 shots on Hawks goalie Kasia Rakowski, Williams would have liked to seen more quality shots to challenge the opposing goalie.

The Hawks managed to keep the Wildcats to the outside, clogging up the middle, and blocking many of the shots coming from the blue-line.

“Generating shots in the playoffs is a lot more difficult because the game is a different beast,” he said. “You can have plenty of shots, but if the goalie can see the puck, they will save it.

“You need to have traffic in front of her, or make them move side to side.”

The Wildcats managed to do this for much of the game, as Rakowski was beat on screens, or caught out of position in her butterfly slides when the puck eluded her glove hand.

Marie Rutherford paced the Wildcats on offence, scoring twice. Kelsey Huibers added a goal and two helpers, while single goals went to Kadence Mann and Callie Hilhorst.

The U18 AAA Manitoba Female Hockey League’s 2023-24 rookie of the year Ivy Perkin added two helpers in the victory in front of a boisterous crowd, with the Hawks fans winning the noise battle with a much louder horn than the one employed by Westman fans following goals or big saves from their respective goaltenders.

Abigail Bring and Emma Durand answered for the Hawks, who led early in the game following miscues defensively which the Pembina Valley capitalized on.

The Wildcats are now awaiting the winner of the Interlake versus Eastman quarterfinal, with the sixth-place Lightning trailing the third-place Selects 2-1 in their series.

The first-place Winnipeg Ice also swept their opponent, the eighth-place Central Plains Capitals.

The fourth-place Yellowhead Chiefs are looking to extended their series with the fifth-place Winnipeg Avros tonight, with the Shoal Lake-based team down 2-0. The winner of this series will face the Ice in the best-of-five semi-finals.

“The Avros are going to be a battle on Tuesday, but with our girls, we aren’t quitters and feisty for a Game 4 and 5,” said Chiefs captain Hannah Reagh. “Avros better be ready to see what the Chiefs got next.”

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