The UBC women’s hockey team won two games to one against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies in the Canada West semi-finals.
They will be moving on to the finals to face the University of Alberta Pandas.
The first game of the weekend ended in a 2-0 win for the ’Birds, with goals from Mathea Fischer and Madison Patrick in the first and final frames respectively. Fourteen saves by UBC's goaltender Amelia Boughn secured the team’s seventh shutout of the season.
With UBC leading 1-0 in the series, the Huskies equalized in the second game with a 1-0 win, forcing a third game. The goal happened a little over two minutes into the game when Saskatchewan’s Rachel Johnson buried a rebound off of teammate Bailee Bourassa. Despite UBC’s loss, shots on goal were 23-17 in favour of the ’Birds.
“We thought it was going to be easy, and we took the foot off the gas and just relaxed a bit. We came out a little flat and [Saskatchewan] jumped on us,” said UBC head coach Graham Thomas.
After a win and a loss, the ’Birds’ moment of triumph came on Sunday night with a 3-1 victory.
UBC was first to get onto the scoreboard a little over four minutes into the first frame, when fifth-year forward Haneet Parhar put it home on a sharp-angle shot after a deflection off of teammate Kathleen Cahoon.
Eight minutes later, the ’Birds doubled their lead to 2-0. This time, the goal went to Kelly Murray. She managed to shoot the puck past traffic in the attacking zone and beat Huskies goalkeeper Cassidy Hendricks.
As the period winded down to the final three minutes, the Huskies’ Alyssa Dobler cut the ’Birds’ lead in half with a shot from the slot.
After three goals in the first frame, the game went scoreless until the final five seconds. Desperate to make up some ground, Saskatchewan pulled Hendricks from the net for an extra attacker. But Nicole Saxvik — who led UBC in scoring during the regular season — was able to find the empty net and secure the 3-1 win.
“We talked about … battling and competing hard, and that’s what we did,” said Thomas. “I give the Huskies a lot of credit. They played really hard and they played really well.”
Thomas was especially proud of his senior players and the amount of leadership they displayed over the weekend.
“I’m just really proud of our senior group. We really relied on our seniors and our veteran group. Our leaders were just phenomenal, so that carried us through and we’re really proud of them,” said Thomas.
UBC now advances to the Canada West finals which begin on Friday, March 4. There, they will take on the University of Alberta Pandas to try and earn back-to-back conference titles. Afterwards, they will travel to Kingston, Ontario for the U Sport national championship.