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Queens hockey team ends season with Silver medal

Mar 10, 2018 | 9:37 AM

The RDC Queens 2017-2018 hockey season has ended with a Silver medal.

This, after a 3-1 loss to the Grant MacEwan University Griffins at the Enmax Centrium in Red Deer Friday night. It was game four of a best-of-five ACAC Women’s Hockey league final which the Griffins won three games to one, earning Gold in the process.

It was the Griffins that struck first in this one when Amanda Murray scored on the power play at 16:26 to give Grant MacEwan a 1-0 lead after twenty minutes.

The second period however saw RDC respond when Landry Derdall earned a power play effort of her own, lighting the lamp at the 1:40 mark to tie it back up at 1-1.

The Griffins would regain the lead though when Chantal Ricker scored at 9:05 to make it 2-1 for the visitors. Then with the period winding down, the Griffins added a little more breathing room when Nikki Reimer scored at 18:14 to make it 3-1 in favour of Grant MacEwan after forty minutes of play.

Neither team was able to get a puck past the goalies in the third period, leaving it in a 3-1 final.

In a release, Queens Head Coach Kelly Coulter credits the Griffins for being a good team and shutting them down defensively.

“Their special teams showed a little better tonight and ours didn’t get the job done,” said Coulter. “Sometimes that is the biggest difference in the game and hats off to them. They are the defending champions for a reason and they made it hard on us. I’m very proud of our players and the effort that they gave all year.”

Friday night’s game also marks the end of the Queens tenure of playing out of the Enmax Centrium. Next season they will move to their new permanent home at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre on the campus of RDC. It is slated for occupancy in August of this year.