Huskies shut out 4-0 by Concordia in national championship quarterfinal

The University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey team had its dreams of a Cinderella run at a national title ended by the No. 1 women’s hockey team in the country from Concordia on Thursday.

The Huskies were blanked 4-0 in what was a game mostly dominated by the Stingers.

The Huskies came out of the gates jumping thanks to a sold-out Merlis Belsher Place, hitting several goalposts and creating various chances looking to provide an early shock to the Stingers.

But the puck wouldn’t bounce the way of the Huskies on this night.

Concordia opened the scoring 8:29 into the first off of an innocent-looking Emmy Fecteau deflection to quiet the crowd.

The Huskies provided some push back, but once the second period opened up, there was no catching the undefeated squad from Montreal.

Rosalie Bégin-Cyr scored 3:12 into the second putting Concordia up 2-0.

Émilie Lussier netted the 3-0 goal with just over seven minutes to play in the third period and added an empty-netter in the final minute to give the Stingers a 4-0 win.

The score read 4-0, but Stingers head coach Julie Chu felt like her team was able to dodge a bullet in the first period.

“I think we needed to start on time; they definitely started on time,” she said. “We were lucky that Jordyn Verbeek did a great job for us in that first period. We know we were lucky to come out 1-0 out of that, but at the same time, sometimes you have to bend and not break and I liked our response in the second and third period.”

Huskies head coach Steve Kook felt his team had nothing to lose.

“The plan was always to take our swing at these guys. You look at the first period and we hit a post on an empty net, crossbar and then on the power play Sara Kendall slides it through the goalie’s five-hole and it hits the back leg and comes out,” Kook stated. “If two of those go in, it’s a different story.”

“I seriously thought if we would’ve got one, we would’ve got more,” Kook added.

The Huskies loss’ doesn’t mean their season is over quite yet. On Saturday, they’ll play in a consolation game against St. Francis Xavier. The winner of that game will have the opportunity to play in the consolation final on Sunday morning.

Concordia is to play Waterloo on Saturday at 4 p.m. for a chance to go to the championship game on Sunday night.