Bad second period costs Trojans

CALGARY, ALTA., (Nov. 2, 2019) - A bad second period came back to haunt the SAIT Trojans women's hockey team.

The Trojans gave up three goals in the middle frame, as they fell 6-3 to the visiting NAIT Ooks in their Saturday night Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) game played at SAIT Arena.

"Well, we just gave the puck away and took a whole bunch of penalties," said Trojans head coach Tom Molloy about the second period. "Certainly had a lot of shots tonight. We were all around the net, and were tougher on pucks. We battled in the first and third, but in the second, we were losing battles all over the place."

SAIT falls to 0-6 on the season. NAIT improved to 4-2.

"We just talked in the locker room about what we can do to be successful," Molloy said. "We feel we can compete with anybody, and now we're as close as we have been to having a full lineup. I think we're just going to keep getting better and better."

Saturday's game saw the Trojans take it to NAIT early on. That pressure allowed Aki Fujimori (1st year, Hachinohe, Japan, English Language Foundations) to score her first of the season, giving the home side a 1-0 lead just 68 seconds in.

From there until the end of the second period, it was all NAIT. Well, Megan Lablanc to be exact.

The Ooks forward scored four goals in that timeframe to give her team a 4-1 lead after 40 minutes of play.

In the final 20 minutes, SAIT made an early push to get back into the game.

Hailey McCallum (3rd year, Strathmore, Alta., Business Administration) scored her third goal of the weekend to cut the lead in half before teammate Davina McLeod (4th year, Aklavik, NWT, Business Administration) scored a short-handed marker to make it 4-3.

However, on that same power play, the Ooks' Livia Lucova dampened the mood when she scored to regain her team's two-goal lead.

Brittney Savard added an empty-netter for NAIT to cement the win.

SAIT will look to secure their first win of the season next Thursday and Saturday night when they take on the Olds College Broncos in a home-and-home series - Thursday in Olds and Saturday at SAIT.