Every skater on the Estevan Senchuk Ford atom Mustangs was awarded the hardest working player hardhat after their 5-3 win over the Swift Current Broncos at the Civic Auditorium on Sunday.
“We’re pretty even,” said Mustangs head coach Amanda Minchin on how they stack up against the Broncos. “They’ve got two girls that are a little bit stronger than the rest of their squad. You’re going to have that in this age group in atom (and) especially girl’s hockey. There is a lot of varying abilities, so basically it comes down to shutting down their goal scorers and hopefully they don’t shut down our goal scorers. It was good. We lost to them twice yesterday and it was good to win today.”
Thanks to solid goaltending at both ends of the ice by Estevan’s Cypress Classen and Swift Current’s Aleni Tsougrianis, the teams skated to a scoreless draw through the first 18 minutes and 42 seconds before Mustangs’ forward Morgan Kjersem unleashed a wrist shot from in front of the Broncos’ net that went top corner glove side.
Kjersem made it 2-0 a little over a minute into the second period on a rebound off Mustang’s Paige Anderson’s shot that hit the cross bar and bounced into the crease. Estevan’s Breez Classen recorded the second assist on the goal. Swift Current’s Cydny Price replied for the Broncos 40 seconds later, but a short handed marker by Kjersem on a shot from 10 feet out near the middle of the period put the home side up 3-1 heading into the third.
The Broncos’ Marie Tsougrianis brought her club back to within one seven minutes into the final frame before Kjersem snuck a shot from the bottom of the faceoff circle into the opposition net on a power play with a little over nine minutes remaining. The Mustangs' star scored her fifth goal three minutes later on a feed from Kennedy Dowhanuik. Swift Current’s Kendra Shumaker finished off the scoring with a little over a minute remaining when she deked through two defenceman before roofing the puck into the top corner, which the Estevan netminder got a piece of with her glove.
Minchin said the difference in the Mustangs win on Sunday compared to their 7-1 and 9-6 losses to the Broncos (6-4-1) a day earlier was they focused on shutting down Swift Current’s proven goal scorers by having their defence shadow the players while clogging up the neutral zone. She said the 4-6-2 Estevan club has a number of really strong skaters and that showed in the game, but there is still some work needed on their stickhandling and passing and that will remain a focus moving forward.
“This age group is great to work with,” she said. “The season’s going well. Some weeks things are really clicking, (and) other weeks not so much. That’s how it is with eight, nine and 10-year-olds. We’re having a great season and I looking forward to (some more games) after Christmas.”
