The Varsity Sports ================== WOMEN BEAT PUNCHLESS YORK IN HOME OPENER By Jeff Brennan, Varsity Staff November 18, 1996 URL: http://www2.varsity.utoronto.ca/groups/varsity/sports/Women.html It may only be two-fifths of the way into the season, but this observer is going to go out on a safe limb. If this is the best the opposition can do against them, the women's hockey Varsity Blues shouldn't have any problems in capturing yet another OWIAA title. In their home opener last Tuesday night at Varsity Arena, they defeated the York Yeowomen 4-0. The Blues also defeated Guelph 5-0 Thursday, and Windsor in a two-game set, 5-0 and 13-0 this past weekend to improve their record to a perfect 6-0. U of T has won the provincial hockey championship eight of the last nine seasons, the only season where they didn't win being 1994-95. Blues captain Lori Dupuis can't see the team failing to reach its goal this year. "We've got talent coming out of our ears. There's no reason why we shouldn't win the championship," said Dupuis, who didn't score Tuesday, but assisted on three scores. The Blues had a slow start against a York squad whose best player on the night seemed to be goaltender Colette Good. She made many spectacular saves which kept her teammates in the game for the first half, including two stops on breakaways by U of T's Jayna Hefford. The latter wouldn't be denied a third time, however. With about six minutes left to go in the opening period, left alone once again, the talented rookie faked right, then brought the puck back left, and slid it by Good. For Hefford, there was some sense of relief when she scored after missing her first two chances. "I think I felt a little bit of pressure, but things are gonna come. We have too much scoring power for our club to be shut out." After Hefford's goal, Varsity solved Good three more times. First, Dupuis took the puck along the left side into the York end and passed it into the slot area. The intended receiver, Hefford, missed the puck, but the trailer, Jen Rawson, didn't. She made no mistake and buried it past Good. Not even two minutes later, Rawson had the puck left of the York net. She skated out and fed a nice cross-ice pass to Hefford, who was waiting at the other side of the net and one-timed the puck into the wide open cage. The Blues could have scored more, if not for the acrobatics of Good. They added only one more goal, a third-period marker from Bridget Bates. According to U of T head coach Karen Hughes, it wasn't a matter of telling the team to turn off the offence for the last 20 minutes. "I thought the York goalie had a pretty good game. We don't talk really about running the score up or not running the score up," she said. The coach was also impressed with the team's final period effort. "We had some things to work on in the third period, like cycling and better transition play between our defence and our forwards. And I thought we did those things very well in the third period, so I was pretty happy with that," said Hughes. Varsity goaltender Keely Brown had an easy night. She only had to make 14 saves in earning the shutout, and only a select few stops were of the tough variety. Her counterpart Good made all kinds of saves out of her 32, but in the end, the vaunted Blues offence exposed the holes in the Yeowomen defence. Before the game started, U of T had a former teammate drop the puck for the ceremonial face-off. Andria Hunter, who retired last year after playing five seasons with the Blues, made an appearance to the delight of the crowd on hand. Aside from being the former team captain, Hunter also played on the 1992 and 1994 Canadian women's world championship teams. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 1996 Varsity Publications, Inc.