Box Score In each one of her three previous wins, Waterloo Warriors netminder
Stephanie Sluys (Clinton) had to be perfect to pull her team to victory. So when the Warriors offense erupted on Saturday afternoon, she did the only suitable thing.
She was perfect again.
Sluys made 18 stops for her third consecutive shutout,
Rachel Marriott (Waterloo) registered three points, and the Warriors scored three power play goals to cruise to a 6-0 victory over the UOIT Ridgebacks on Saturday Afternoon at the Columbia Icefield Arena.
In addition to Marriott's goal and two helpers, three other Warriors –
Angela MacDonald (Kitchener),
Marissa Redmond (Ajax), and
Carolyn Burke (Mississauga) – each notched a goal and an assist in the victory. The win is Waterloo's third in a row, improving their record to 4-5-3 on the season.
Sluys, the reigning OUA and CIS female athlete of the week, extended her shutout streak to 186:16 and improved her dazzling save percentage to .949 for the year. Tori Campbell made 19 saves for the Ridgebacks, who saw their record fall to 5-5-1.
Redmond scored the only goal of an evenly-matched first period, and Marriott extended the lead to 2-0 with an unassisted marker less than two minutes into the second. The turning point came midway through the middle frame, when the Ridgebacks took a pair of penalties that put the game out of reach.
With UOIT's Victoria MacKenzie in the box,
Stephanie Digness (Aldergrove) struck on the power play to make it 3-0 for Waterloo. Just seconds later, Ridgeback Samantha Forchielli took a five-minute major head checking penalty, and the Warriors power play made the visitors pay.
Waterloo got power play goals from MacDonald and Burke in the five-minute advantage, and just like that, special teams had turned a 2-0 game into a 5-0 blowout.
Rebecca Rutherford (Ajax) rounded out the scoring for the Warriors in the third, and Sluys shut the door the rest of the way.
The Warriors will now look to make it four wins in a row, but it won't be an easy task – on Sunday afternoon, they welcome the 8-1-2 Queen's Gaels to the Columbia Icefield Arena. Puck drop is slated for 2:30 pm.
