It took over two months of regular season action and a big effort from the defending provincial champs to finally solve the Richmond Devils.
South Fraser TNT scored in the late stages of the third period, then hung on to hand the Devils a 4-3 defeat on Saturday to close out the first half of the regular season in the South Coast Women’s Hockey League. The loss was Richmond’s first in 12 games (11-0-1) despite outshooting the hosts by a 39-25 margin.
The result did little to dampen the enthusiasm of Devils head coach Tony Cheema.
He has watched his team elevate its game to another level this season thanks to a deeper line-up that thrives playing an up-tempo transition game.
The Devils will take a five-point lead atop of the SCWHL standings when they head into 2017 and look poise to take a serious run at their first provincial championship in franchise history come March.
“Everything has changed. Big time,” said Cheema. “Just the whole mentality of the team. I feel we are even faster and playing smarter too. Things we have been trying to do the last few years, they are grasping it all of a sudden. It’s making things so much simpler.”
The Devils never trailed Saturday until South Fraser’s Michelle Ziegler banged home a rebound with 4:38 remaining. A pair from Nicole Lim and Yvonne Mikulcik had staked Richmond to early leads before the rivals settled into over a 27-minute stretch with the score deadlocked at 3-3.
“Today was an odd one off for us,” admitted Cheema. “We knew we had to come in here and play an almost perfect game but we just weren’t all the way there. At last we got the (bullseye) off our backs. Now they know they can’t go into any game thinking they are going to win playing here or there (rather than 100 percent).”
The Devils’ roster features a whopping 15 players who graduated from the Richmond Ravens Girls Hockey Association. One of the few imports is Lindsay Dipietro and the Ottawa native has made an impact. She currently sits second in league scoring with 17 points.
“She has made a difference on and off the ice,” said Cheema of the former Wayne State University standout. “She is making passes that our girls see and are trying to do too. There is just also way more talk in the dressing room. It’s a big change. A great change.”
Cheema is looking forward to a challenging remaining schedule that will begin Jan. 7 with a key two-game series in Kamloops against the second place Vibe (7-1-3). The SCWHL is not only the top senior women’s league in the province, it puts an emphasis on fitness with no intermissions or ice cleans. Maintaining the same tempo on slow ice in the third period can be the difference between winning and losing.
“Everyone in our league has got better and it’s even a faster game now,” added Cheema. “We practice fast and the girls are taking care of themselves. You can see it in the third period at just how hard we are still coming at teams. The scoreboard doesn’t show it all the time but the shots and stats do.
“Nothing is going to be easy for us here on out but we are all really looking forward to it.”
