Trust is a common refrain in sports. Trust the process, they say. Trust the systems, trust your teammates, trust that your training and preparation will help elevate you in the biggest moments.
For the Warriors women's hockey team, it was all about trusting their identity as one of the country's best – they had, after all, appeared in the national top-10 rankings in every week of the 2022-23 season. But they'd also been pushed to a winner-take-all game three in their OUA quarter-final series against the fourth-seed Brock Badgers, all while carrying the weight of a crushing first-round exit last spring. That's the thing about trust: in the moments you need it the most, it's the hardest to find.
Elizabeth Lenardon (Kelowna, BC/) found some, though. With about a minute left in a 1-1 game that seemed destined for overtime, she trusted her instinct to drive hard to the back post and beat her defender to the net front. And when Leah Herrfort (Palmerston, ON/) slid a crisp, perfect pass across the ice, Lenardon trusted her hands and her eyes and her strength to drop low, flex her stick, and snap a one-timer as hard as she could off the back twine of the Brock net. Trust can be rewarding. For the Warriors and Lenardon, that reward is a spot in the OUA semifinals.
Lenardon's power play goal at the 19:08 mark of the third period ended up deciding the series, as the top-seed Warriors dispatched the defending McCaw Cup Champion Badgers 2-1 in an electric game 3 of the OUA quarter-finals on Saturday night at the Columbia Icefield Arena. The victory gave Waterloo its first playoff series win since 2017, and sets up a semifinal showdown with the Nipissing Lakers beginning next week.
"We have a lot of belief in ourselves," said Waterloo head coach Shaun Reagan. "This group has worked so hard to put themselves in this position, and I'm really proud of the way we stuck together against a really good Brock team."
That belief never wavered, even when the Warriors dropped a 4-1 decision in game two, or when veteran goaltender Carley Molnar (London) was pressed into action late in Friday night's loss at Brock – game three was Molnar's first playoff start since the spring of 2019, when she was with St. F.X.
The belief also didn't waver when the Warriors took the first two minor penalties of the decisive game on Saturday night, or when they surrendered the all-important first goal: after the Warriors killed off the five-on-three portion of the early penalty kill, Mishayla Christenson slipped a wrister off Molnar's shoulder and in. Brock led 1-0 early, just as Western had in their upset over Waterloo in last year's single-elimination round one game.
But again, the trust and belief picked the Warriors up later in the first period. On a power play of their own, Carley Olivier (Sudbury, ON/) sent a point shot that zipped its way through a mass of bodies and past a screened Kenzie Harmison, into the top corner of the Badger net. The first period would end with the score, like the series, tied at 1-1.
Through the second period, as the urgency intensified, the scoring chances plummeted: each team registered only five shots apiece, and the Warriors saw some would-be grade-A scoring chances snuffed out by some untimely ricochets and bounces. A less-seasoned team might have felt the pressure of Déjà vu, since their first round exit a year ago was precipitated by some less-than-fair puck luck. But this Warriors team was undeterred. They believed and trusted in themselves.
The third period was all Waterloo. They drew two early power plays with their speed and cycle strength down low, and came ever closer to the go-ahead goal. They had the first seven shots of the period, and outshot the Badgers 14-4 overall in the final stanza, but the score was still knotted at 1-1 in the final moments.
That speed, though. It was one of Waterloo's most trusted weapons all year, and it paid off again when Herrfort drew a tripping call with 1:18 to play in regulation. Seconds into the advantage, after the puck was cleared to the neutral zone, Olivier gathered the puck in front of her own bench, eluded a Brock forechecker, and sent it up-ice to Tatum James (Stratford, ON/) in one fluid, incredible motion. James saw Herrfort open up on the far side and hit her with a pass, all while Lenardon began her sprint to the back door. One pass and one snapped release later, and Lenardon had the biggest goal of her Warriors career. The clock read 52.2 seconds remaining.
It was a patient play by a trusting team that never panicked, even as they stared down the twin towers of lofty expectation and the team who hung the banner last season. And because they trusted it all, they'll now match up with another opponent who claimed some hardware in 2022 – the Nipissing Lakers are the defending USports national silver medalists.
With a trip to the McCaw cup final and the national championship tournament on the line, the Warriors are well-aware of the challenge. But after the past two years and this first-round triumph, they now know exactly what it'll take to meet it.
