The University of Regina's women's hockey team got third-period goals from both
Raea Gilroy and
Heather Fiske in a 2-1 road win over MacEwan on Friday night at the Downtown Community Arena in Edmonton.
Making her first career start in net for the Cougars,
Arden Kliewer made 26 saves in the win. Kliewer had a shutout going until MacEwan's Hailey Maurice finally solved the first-year goaltender with just 76 seconds remaining in regulation.
But the Cougars were able to hold on for the win, giving them a victory in the first-ever meeting between the two teams.
"It wasn't our best game tonight, but I'm proud of the way we battled and were able to find a way to get the win," Cougars head coach
Sarah Hodges said. "We're absolutely going to need to be better tomorrow if we want to win again, but tonight was a decent starting point for us."
The two teams went scoreless for the first 48 minutes of the contest before Gilroy finally broke the goose egg with her first career Canada West goal.
Lilla Carpenter-Boesch chased down a loose puck behind the MacEwan net, then slipped a nifty backhand pass to Gilroy in the slot who buried it.
Fiske's goal was also the first of her Canada West career.
Paige Hubbard made a nice feed over to Fiske, who one-timed it from the left faceoff dot through MacEwan goalie Natalie Bender to put the Cougars up two with five minutes to go.
The evenly played game saw both teams go 0-for-4 on the power play and Regina outshoot MacEwan by a 29-27 margin.
The two teams will meet again on Saturday afternoon (2:00).
