CWHL Mid-Season Report
Jan 5, 2009
If there were any questions as to how the Stars de Montréal would fare without its top three scorers in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League’s sophomore season, newcomers Caroline Ouellette, Sabrina Harbec and rookie Noémie Marin have more than answered the call. Through the first three months of the season, the Stars are once again on top of the league standings.
After a two-week Christmas break, all six CWHL teams resume action this weekend. This Saturday, the Stars host the Ottawa Senators, the Vaughan Flames host the Mississauga Chiefs, and the Brampton Canadette-Thunder host the Burlington Barracudas. On Sunday, the Stars host the Senators again while the Chiefs host the Canadette-Thunder.
Just before Christmas, the Stars opened a seven-point lead on second-place Brampton after back-to-back weekend shutouts on home ice. Kim St-Pierre, the reigning CWHL Top Goaltender, earned CWHL Performance of the Week honors’ on Sunday 21 December as she established a new league record for shutouts in a season (four and counting).
In 2007-08, the Stars won the regular-season title while the Canadette-Thunder won the playoff championship. The Stars three top scorers were Marie-Philip Poulin (now at Dawson College), Leslie Oles and Caroline Laforge (now a CWHL linesman), but all three were missing at the start of this season. Poulin has come back as a part-time (associate) player with the Stars, but the new big three Ouellette, Harbec and Marin are three of the league’s top four scorers.
Ouellette in particular has been fantastic, winning back-to-back CWHL Top Scorer of the Month honors’ in November and December. With 48 points in 16 games (three points per game), she holds an 11-point lead on Brampton’s Jayna Hefford in the Angela James Bowl scoring race. She has also tied Poulin’s league record 16-game scoring streak established last year.
Hefford, the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player, does hold a two-goal lead in the goal-scoring race. With 24 goals in 16 games, she is well on her way to establishing a new league mark (she led the league with 26 goals last year). Hefford is also the league’s all-time leading scorer with 95 points, so the century mark could be eclipsed as early as this weekend.
In Brampton, the team’s best new player has been rookie goaltender Laura Hosier. Hosier is second in the league with 7 wins and a 1.91 goals-against average. She trails Montréal’s Kim St-Pierre (11 wins, 1.58 GAA), but has a small edge on Mississauga’s Sami Jo Small (7 wins, 1.92 GAA).
The Mississauga Chiefs lead the other four teams chasing Montréal and Brampton. With three games in hand, the Chiefs are technically much closer to Brampton than the standings suggest. Right up behind Mississauga is Burlington in fourth place, Vaughan in fifth place and Ottawa in last place.
The last-place Senators are no where close to Montréal or Brampton, but they do have six games in hand. Ottawa has also shown that it can stick with the big teams when everything is running perfectly. On 13 December, Ottawa held Montréal tied until 1:12 left in the third period.
As for the other two Saturday match-ups, Burlington has defeated Brampton twice already this season, so it will be looking to make it three straight. Goalie Tania Pinelli beat Brampton on 19 October (CWHL Top Defender Becky Kellar scored the winner) while goalie Erika Vanderveer beat Brampton in the shootout on 5 December. Vaughan, meanwhile, has beaten Mississauga only once on three tries this year. The Chiefs’ Jennifer Botterill (last year’s Angela James Bowl winner) set a single-game record by scoring seven points in the last Mississauga-Vaughan contest (a 12-3 win on 11 December).