Brian Swane, Special to Canada West
EDMONTON – The team with the most championships meets the team with the most recent championship in the 2019 Canada West Women's Hockey Final in Edmonton this weekend.
The Alberta Pandas, winners of a record 12 conference titles, host the defending champ Manitoba Bisons in a best-of-three series at Clare Drake Arena. Games 1 and 2 are set for Friday and Saturday, and Game 3, if necessary, is on Sunday.
Alberta is hoping for a repeat of 2015, when it last captured the conference crown by sweeping Manitoba in the championship series in Edmonton. The Bisons, meanwhile, hope to join Alberta and UBC as the only schools with back-to-back Canada West women's hockey titles.
While Manitoba lost just eight times during the 2018-19 regular season, half of those came against the Pandas, who won all four of their meetings with the Bisons. Those head-to-head games couldn't have been much closer, with three decided by just a goal, including a double-OT affair in January.
The cream of this season's Canada West crop, Alberta and Manitoba ranked first and second, respectively, in goal differential. Manitoba was tops offensively, scoring 2.89 goals per game, including 10 contests notching four or more, while Alberta ranked first with a minuscule 0.86 goals against average and had 13 shutouts.
Stars abound, with each team having two players selected to the 2018-19 Canada West All-Star First Team: Alberta forwards Alex Poznikoff and Autumn MacDougall; and Manitoba forward Lauryn Keen and her teammate on the blueline, Erica Reider. MacDougall, however, is questionable after suffering an injury last weekend in the semifinals.
Last year, Manitoba hoisted the Catherwood Cup by defeating Saskatchewan 2-0 in the best-of-three final at Wayne Fleming Arena. The Bisons went on to win their first U SPORTS title, out-dueling Canada's best teams at nationals in London, Ont., where they defeated the host Western Mustangs 2-0 in the championship final.
Arguably Manitoba's toughest challenge on its 2018 championship path came from the Pandas in an incredible Canada West semifinal series in Winnipeg that went the distance and then some. After the teams split Games 1 and 2, do-or-die Game 3 lasted over 133 minutes before Manitoba's Jordyn Zacharias scored with six and a half minutes left in quadruple overtime and sent the crowd into a frenzy.
Alberta hopes home cooking is the difference this time around. Including playoffs, the Pandas are 15-1 at Clare Drake Arena, and since Canada West adopted a best-of-three championship series format in 2004, they've hosted Manitoba for the final seven times, capturing the title all but once.
Both teams have qualified for the U SPORTS Women's Hockey Championship, hosted by the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, P.E.I., March 15 – 17.