Courtesy: Ryan Flaherty
Huskie men's and women's team visit Regina

Women’s and men’s hockey teams register road wins

Nov 5, 2022 | 6:52 AM

Doubleheaders are usually reserved for baseball but on a rare night where both Huskie hockey teams were in action at the same rink, they managed to sweep a pair of games against the Regina Cougars.

Due to a water main break at Merlis Belsher Place, the Huskies women had to play in the provincial capital rather than opening the planned home-and-home set in friendly territory. The start time was also moved up to 3 p.m. because of the men’s game scheduled for the evening, but the Huskies didn’t seem to be bothered by the change of venue or the earlier start. Saskatchewan raced out to a 3-0 first period lead, en route to a 4-1 win over Regina.

“I was happy that things turned out the way they did, that on short notice we had to adapt and refocus, because that’s what we need right now, is to find a way to be successful after a mishap on the ice or in this case a mishap at the rink,” head coach Steve Kook said.

Taylor Wilkinson, Kennedy Brown, Kara Kondrat and Sara Kendall each tallied their second goal of the season in the victory. The offensive outburst came after the Huskies scored just 11 goals in their first eight games. They also notched three power play markers, another positive sign for a team that had scored just four such goals coming in.

“The saying ‘getting the monkey off your back’ is certainly something that holds true in hockey and for us. It was just getting some momentum and getting that feeling under our belts again,” Brown said.

The victory snaps a three-game losing skid for the Huskies, which improves to 4-3-2 on the year. They’ll face the Cougars again on Saturday night in Regina.

“We kind of took the bye as an opportunity to reset and get some good practices under our belt, focus on our systems and the way that we wanted to play coming out of the bye, so to start with that in the first period and then finish the game felt really good,” Brown said.

Later Friday evening the Huskies men followed the lead of their female counterparts, but in somewhat different fashion. The Dogs struggled out of the gate, being outshot 20-7 by Regina in the first period, perhaps a sign of rust after enjoying a bye last weekend. However, Roddy Ross was his usual solid self, holding the Cougars to just one goal in the opening frame courtesy of Riley Krane, as the Huskies posted a 5-1 victory.

“The bye week always scares me. I thought we had a great bye week, we worked on some things, but whenever we have two weeks off you’re gonna have some rust and it’s gonna take some time to get our timing back. But Roddy held us in it in the first and we were able to weather it a little bit,” head coach Brandin Cote said.

As the game progressed the Dogs began to find their legs. Cael Zimmerman knotted the score at one late in the second period, but even into the third the game felt like it was destined for overtime. That is, until Dawson Holt, making his season debut after recovering from a meniscus injury, lasered a gorgeous shot over the shoulder of Cougars netminder Curtis Meger with 6:05 left in the third, putting the Huskies in front for good.

“It felt really good. They’re a hard-checking team, they’ve got some big bodies and they sure made it difficult on us. On that goal, we had a lot of speed going in and the middle was taken away by the d-man. I just saw an opening so I took the shot and luckily enough it went in,” Holt said.

The Dogs added three more goals in the late stages of the game. Jaxan Kaluski finished the night with two goals while Jared Dmytriw added to his team-leading point total with three assists. Dmytriw has 16 points in nine games. Mark Rumsey also scored for the Huskies.

The Huskie men move back into second place in the Canada West with the win and now sit at 7-1-1 on the year. Saturday’s rematch with Regina, which was set to be played in Saskatoon, will be rescheduled. The Huskies next game is Friday in Edmonton against the MacEwan Griffins.

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