M’CHIGEENG—Despite a loss in its first official preseason game of the season this past Monday, the coach of the Manitoulin Secondary School (MSS) Mustangs girls’ hockey team is looking forward to a good season with his charges.
Mustangs coach Mike Meeker told the Recorder on Tuesday, “we have a really strong team, and overall I think it will be a really good year. We only lost four seniors from last year’s team—originally we thought we had lost five senior players, but Gabby Corbiere came back for one more year. She is a good player and a good leader.”
MSS took part in the annual East-West challenge held in Sudbury last Friday to play two games, losing to Bishop Carter when the latter scored a flukey goal in the last period to win. The Mustangs then played LoEllen, which finished in second place at the provincial (OFSAA) championships last season.
“LoEllen will be the class of the league again this season,” said Mr. Meeker, whose squad got shutout by LoEllen 7-0.
The Mustangs played a pre-season game, again on the road, against Espanola High School Monday evening. “What a wild game,” stated Mr. Meeker. “It seems every time we play Espanola it is a rough, scrappy type of game. And in this game there was a big brawl about half-way through the second period.” Two MSS players were tossed from the game with one player from Espanola (who started the brawl) ejected as well.
Espanola scored two quick goals to start the game, both by the same player, and although MSS scored one to make it close, Espanola eventually won 3-1. The Mustangs had been down two players going into the game, and lost two in the game (ejected in the brawl). As well they had two girls hurt in the game, two players with ankle injuries and one also with a knee injury.
MSS was down to having five forwards and three defencemen for the last half of the game.
“We lost but I was really impressed with the way we played being down all those players,” continued Mr. Meeker, pointing out the lone MSS goal came while they were shorthanded due to a penalty.
Mr. Meeker explained for the first time this season, the first in a lot of years, the girls’ division of the high school league will see all 12 teams play each other once. After that, depending on the points teams attain, the teams will be put into two divisions. “We have a really strong team and I’m confident we will end up in the top six of the league after the opening 11 games,” he said.
The Mustangs lost its senior goalie from last year, Sophie Bondi, but “we have three good goalies, all Grade 9 students. We are pretty solid in goal again this year.”
The Mustangs will play one more exhibition game next week before opening the regular season in two weeks.
