X-Women suffer road loss to Reds

(FREDERICTON, NB) In an early season contest between the U SPORTS No. 4 and No. 5 teams, the UNB REDS outscored the STFX X-Women 6-2 on Saturday night, at UNB's Aitken Centre.

The win was the seventh straight for the REDS, after suffering a shootout loss to start the 2022-23 season.

"To beat a team like that by four goals is huge," said REDS goalie Kendra Woodland (Kamloops, BC). "Three of those goals being on the powerplay is good. We've had a bit of a shaky start with our powerplay, but now that we've figured it out, it's really affecting our success on the ice."

The home team opened the scoring, just 3:14 in, when Lily George (Nipissing First Nation) took a stretch pass and moved in uncontested, snapping a wrist shot past Amaya Giraudier (Assiniboia, SK) in the STFX net.

At the 12:29 mark, Sydney Oitomen (Mississauga, ON) took advantage of a giveaway in front of the X net, scoring an unassisted goal to put the home team up 2-0.

Just 42 seconds later, the visitors got one back when Lea MacLeod (Dartmouth, NS) beat Woodland.

With less than a minute to play in the period, Ashley Stratton (Mt. Pearl, NL) fed Lauren Carter (Milton, ON) in the slot and she beat Giraudier to put UNB up 3-1.

Maggy Burbidge (Falmouth, NS) scored 65 seconds into the second period to pull the X-Women within a goal, but UNB added power-play goals late in the second, by Payton Hargreaves (Whitby, ON), and at both ends of the third, early by Frederike Cyr (Candiac, QC) and later by Stratton, on route to their 6-2 win.

Oitomen was named Subway Player of the Game.

"X is a great team, they play a very similar game to us, so it's a really big game for us to win," she said.

Hockey Gives Blood was the theme of Saturday's game, with Hockey Gives Blood player ambassadors Woodland and STFX's Anna MacCara (Yellowknife, NT) taking part in the ceremonial faceoff, along with Raj Damhar, of Canadian Blood Services.

"I hope that we can move forward with this as an annual thing and raise awareness across all communities, especially the hockey community, that blood is needed in Canada and using hockey for that is important," said Woodland. "To have that ambassador friendship between me and Anna is good because we're on different teams, but we all work together."

"UNB's a great team, but our biggest obstacle was that we were in the penalty box for a lot of the game," said MacCara. "We broke down and they got a lot of chances, and they took advantage of that."

With the win, the REDS improve to 7-0-0-1 and remain in first place in the Atlantic University Sport standings.

The X-Women are now 4-1-1-0.

"We're only a few games into the season and we've been going through a lot," said MacCara. "We have a lot of potential and I'm really excited to see what this team can do once we get some bodies back."

Up next for the X-Women, a Sunday matinee in Moncton. Game time is 3:00pm.

The REDS will play host to cross-campus rivals, the St. Thomas Tommies, on Friday. Face-off is scheduled for 7:00pm.

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RECAP BY: Andy Campbell/UNB Athletics