2005-06 National Women's Team

Canada 7 - Fort Saskatchewan Boston Pizza Rangers 3

Exhibition
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Jubilee Recreation Centre

FORT SASKATCHEWAN, AB – A sellout crowd of 1500 packed the Jubilee Receation Centre in Fort Saskatchewan to see the Midget AAA Boston Pizza Rangers take on Canada’s Women’s Olympic team. Special teams told the story on the evening as Team Canada went 5 for 9 on the powerplay while the Rangers had a 2 for 4 success ratio with the man advantage.

Canada outshot the Rangers 15-11 in the first period but were trailing 2-0 at the end of the frame. Phil Gervais opened the scoring for the Rangers at 10:28 beating Kim St-Pierre while Chris Langkow added to the lead on a late goal with just 5 seconds remaining on the clock.

Canada pulled to within one in the second as Jennifer Botterill scored her first of three on the evening banging home a rebound from a Vicky Sunohara shot on the power play just over 5 minutes into the period. Fort Saskatchewan grabbed their second two goal lead on a powerplay at 15:13 as Devin Kalinski buried a nice centring pass from Travis Wonozia behind St-Pierre. Botterill pulled Canada to within one once again with her second powerplay marker of the period at 17:23 with assists going to Caroline Ouellette and Cassie Campbell.

Charline Labonte replaced Kim St-Pierre in the Canadian goal at the start of the third period. Team Canada outshot the Rangers 12-5 in the period scoring five unanswered goals (three of them on the powerplay) to come back from a two goal deficit and win the game. Botterill completed her hat trick on a pass from Colleen Sostorics to even the score just 2:19 into the third. Rounding out the team Canada scoring were Hayley Wickenheiser on a booming point shot with assists going to Gillian Apps and Colleen Sostorics, Sarah Vaillancourt with a nice wrap around on a pass from Katie Weatherston, Weatherston adding her own marker four minutes later off a beautiful centring pass from Gina Kingsbury and Jayna Heffored burying a rebound off a scramble in front. As in recent preceding games, the evening ended with a five player shootout which saw the Fort Saskatchewan prevail. Hayley Wickenheiser had the lone goal for Canada while Curt Wood and Chris Langkow scored for the Rangers.

Team Canada stayed over in Fort Saskatchewan following the game prior to heading to Leduc on Friday afternoon to get ready to face the Schwab Oil Kings on Saturday night at the Black Gold Arena as part of the AMHL All Star weekend.