The Concordia Stingers defeated the Saskatchewan Huskies 2-0 in semifinal action on Saturday evening to earn a place in the gold medal game at the U Sports women’s hockey championship in Charlottetown, P.E I.
The No. 1-seeded Stingers will face the No. 6-seeded Nipissing Lakers in the national final Sunday at 5 p.m. EDT.
The semifinal was a goaltenders’ duel with Concordia’s Alice Philbert delivering the win. She turned away all 20 Saskatchewan shots to post her second consecutive shutout at the tournament. She now has four shutouts in six playoff games.
Huskie Camryn Drever stopped 37 of the 39 shots she faced.
Both goaltenders were named players of the game.
Stingers captain Audrey Belzile opened the scoring at 3:10 of the first period, and the 1-0 lead held until Maria Manarolis redirected a Rosalie Bégin-Cyr shot to score at 16:20 of the second frame.
“We stayed with our game plan and worked hard,” Manarolis said after the game. “We feel very good but we’re not done yet.”
The Lakers earned a berth at the nationals as the Ontario finalists. They upset the No. 4-ranked UBC Thunderbirds 1-0 in the quarter-finals and took down the No. 2-seeded UNB Reds in the semifinals Saturday.
Nipissing played 14 games in the OUA East, finishing second out of six teams in the conference. The Lakers posted a 10-4 win-loss record in the regular season and were 2-1 in the playoffs, losing the OUA title 2-1 to the Brock Badgers.
The last time the Stingers played in the gold medal game was in 1999 when they defeated the Alberta Pandas 2-0. In 2018, the last time Concordia competed at the national championship, the team won a bronze medal.
The gold medal game will be streamed by CBC Sports in English and televised by TVA Sports 2 in French.
