History is defined by moments of grandeur and genius. On Saturday night pure genius was achieved at the Olympic Oval in a game featuring the University of Calgary Dinos women’s hockey team. Calgary defeated the NAIT Ooks 2-1 with one of the most beautiful shootout goals ever seen in hockey outside of the NHL.
Calgary preceded this game with a 3-0 win over the Ooks on Friday night in Edmonton. With the two wins Calgary continues its dominance of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference.
In the first period Calgary outshot NAIT, but was unable to get a puck past netminder Lauryn Dzioba.
The best Calgary chance came late in the period with Alana McEvoy blocking Dziobas’ view. Calgary took a shot towards the open net, assured of the easy goal. Suddenly, out of nowhere a left pad shot out and the puck bounced harmlessly to the side of the net.
NAIT came alive in the third period and was able to match Calgary in speed and intensity.
“I think our team’s based around speed,” said NAIT head coach Deanna Iwanicka. “I feel like we are one of the faster teams in the league for sure. We’ve done performance skating, we brought somebody in to work with us on it. It’s something we do a lot of.”
The Dinos attribute their lack of intensity and speed in the period to an extremely hard week of training.
“Right now we are doing a lot of off-ice training during the week,” said Dinos captain Beccy Niehaus. “Our coaches admit that we had a hard week. It just caught up with us [tonight].”
The third period finished tied 1-1. Dinos forward Tiara Schoenroth said Danielle Goyette simply stated, “It is 1-1; we have played good so far, we have gained a point, so we might as well go prove ourselves in overtime.”
The players took those words to heart and the Dinos dominated the extra frame. But the Dinos were unable to beat Dzioba and the game went to a shootout.
With the first Ooks skater denied by Peterson, Schoenroth took the puck from centre and flew down towards Ooks goalie Dzioba.
While skating towards the goalie Schoenroth noted that all she could think was, “Don’t lose the puck, don’t fumble, don’t f-up, pretty much all of the above.”
With a move that finds itself more at home in the NHL, she kept her legs still and moved the puck in and out and up and down until it was a black blur. With Dzioba fooled, she put the puck in the net, scoring the game-winning goal.
After the game, speaking with a nonchalant attitude and proud aura, Schoenroth noted the move was simply called, “the T-move.”
The game was a hard fought battle at both ends, but Calgary owned the game statistically. Calgary outshot NAIT 34-9 on the evening and controlled possession of the puck throughout the game. Despite these stats, the game was the first real test of the season for Calgary.
“Red Deer, they had the heart and this was the first game where we had to come back and fight hard,” said Niehaus. “We won it in the end though.”