A second-place finish at the Canadian Crown U18 women's hockey tournament is another big boost for the Swift Current Innovation Federal Credit Union Wildcats.
"You hope over the weekend like this is that our group you know starts to believe that they're a real good hockey team," said Wildcats coach Terry Pavely. "We played four to five really good games in Edmonton and three of the last four league games have been really good. We've played a pretty good stretch of hockey. If we continue to do that, we're going to hopefully find success."
For a team that sometimes has a harder time scoring goals, the offence showed up in Alberta.
"Lots of positives on the weekend," Pavely said. "I think we averaged 2.8 goals a game we'd like to get that over 3. We only gave up on average two goals a game. I thought that was pretty good and against good teams. All our games were pretty tight, so for us to come out on the top most of our games against good competition and teams we don't see very often. It was very good, and I think there was lots of learning that went on."
The Wildcats spread out their scoring during the tournament with ten players who had at least two points.
"That's going to be our team this year," Pavely said. "I mean, we don't have that superstar player that might score 3 or 4 a night. We just got to have contributions from everybody, and we had lots of different goal scorers, lots of people help out offensively. We're hoping that we're going to have three lines that can contribute at any time and hopefully that makes us a little bit tougher to play against."
It was tough battle with the Prince Albert Bears in the championship game on Monday. They also split their regular season games with Prince Albert earlier this season.
"They're a really good team," Pavely said. "Well coached. They played pretty good structure. I thought it was kind of the tale of two teams. They seemed to have a little more energy. We really competed hard, and our scoring chances were really in tight. We had a couple posts and crossbar, so we had some chances. When it comes down to a shootout it's kind of the way it goes."
The Wildcats are off this weekend before hosting Weyburn twice October 26th and 27th.