GAME INFORMATION

Date: Friday, Mar. 11, Saturday, Mar. 12 & Sunday, Mar. 13 (If Necessary)
Time: 9:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. & 4:00 p.m.
Opponent: UBC Thunderbirds
Location: Vancouver, B.C. 
Venue: Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
Watch: Canadawest.tv
Listen: HuskieFAN

"We're focusing on one banner at a time."

Despite punching their ticket to the Canada West Final last weekend with a sweep over the nation's number-two ranked Mount Royal Cougars, the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women's hockey head coach Steve Kook isn't getting ahead of himself.

He knows what's at stake. 

The Huskies have in front of them an opportunity this weekend to win their second Canada West Championship in program history.

They've been dominant this postseason. Off the backs of Camryn Drever's 4-0-0 playoff record, as well as a 0.74 goals-against-average and .976 save-percentage, the Huskies are hot — Drever Fever has taken over.

The Huskies recorded back-to-back sweeps to get to this point — now the nation is starting to take notice. The Huskies enter the weekend as the number-four ranked team in the country, according to Tuesday's U SPORTS Top Ten. They'll have one more opportunity to boost that rank this weekend, as they head west, looking to become the best of the west.

The Huskies will take on the UBC Thunderbirds, who are fresh off a semifinal sweep of their own. They took down the Pandas on back-to-back nights, recording 2-1 and 5-1 victories to get them to this point.

Mount Royal had just two regular-season losses entering the semifinal series — Saskatchewan beat them on back-to-back nights to end their season. The Huskies will now look to do the same to the Thunderbirds, who have won nine of their last 12 entering the weekend.

Saskatchewan and UBC split their pair of meetings during the regular-season, as the green-and-white recorded a 4-2 win on Nov. 26 before falling 2-0 the following night.

But this matchup is different. It's the playoffs. This will be the fifth meeting between Saskatchewan and UBC in conference postseason history — but the first in a Canada West Final. 

Before the Huskies head to the Maritimes in two weeks time, they have some unfinished business to handle in the pacific. Two wins this weekend and there will be another banner hanging down at Merlis Belsher Place.

Thoughts from Kook:

Kook on what they learned from the regular-season meetings earlier this season against UBC:

"Well we went back and watched the match up and they're a different team as well. From what we saw against Alberta, they bring a lot of up ice pressure from these guys. We're a different team as well, too. But we just, we're just gonna take our priests code off the last time, or the last two games that they play against Alberta, obviously in their barns to see how they play in their barn. So but we don't we don't really go back and watch much of that.

Kook on the postseaon play of Drever and how influential she's been on the playoff run:

"She's just a calming factor back there. It helps, especially when you get an onslaught like that, just to know that, she can handle the first and second wave if we're not quite there. It gives us a little bit of breather, and then we can skate it and get it another zone, but it's like having three defencemen back there — plus a goaltender. It's like having another body back there. She's so smart. She reads the play so well. If you'll watch her play, I think it was Game 2. She helped us out on breakouts as much as our defenceman did, because they put the pucks deep, try to win races, put a lot of pressure on our defence and she was out initiating our breakout a lot of times for us. The best thing about Cam's game on Saturday was that she really understood when to just take the momentum away. If you watch the games, there are a lot of pucks from the blue line, from hash marks out and it was just sucked in. No second shot, whistle. Start again. That's how you don't let the other team get some momentum and get some structure into what they're doing."

Kook on having the opportunity for his team to get the experience of a Canada West Final and U SPORTS National Championship and what that means going forward for the program:

"Oh, for a young crew like this — I was talking to one of our coaches, should Abby (Shirley) leave this year because she graduates and Bailee leaves this year, we would have not had anyone that has been through a national championship experience. That's so important because A. they learn how hard it is to get there and B. once we've been there, you can see it, you can taste it and it can be part of, you know, what you're striving for every year. So, we had that championship experience leaving the room should we have had had we not been successful. So it's so important — now we got a whole big crew of third years and all of those first years that have gone through it. Now they at all know how hard it is to play in a Canada West playoff series and how hard it is to get there. It's like coming from U18 hockey to this level. You don't know until you get here and you don't know how hard it is to get to a national championship until you actually do it."

Kook on Bailee Bourassa having the opportunity to play in a Canada West Final and U SPORTS National Championship in her fifth-and-final year:

"She was so happy on Saturday. And it was a mixture of happy, relief, just like yes, 'we did it.' And just knowing like the total satisfaction that all the work and all the stuff that she went through in that COVID year to decide to come back. We had a long hug and I've never really hugged players before, but I just felt so good for her. It's hard. She graduated. She's got a full time job. She's trying to decide should I be a grown up and get on with my life? Or should I come back for a sixth and seventh year and she was even questioning at the beginning. It's like, this is so hard work, school and hockey. So I was just so happy that all of this — it lets her finish that way. To play at the longest part of the season that you possibly can —  that's all you want to hope for."

Kook on the focus on Rylind MacKinnon, who was named the Canada West Defenceman of the Year on Thursday:

"We got to know where she is. In the offensive zone, we got to know where she is. She has a big shot and she finds ways to find loose pucks. We just got to know where she is."

"She drives a lot of their play from the back end. Yeah, right. So not just offensively but you have a veteran defenceman back there — much like Isabella Pozzi is for us — just a presence back there and a calmness. She just drives a lot of it, getting first plays out, finding players with the puck out of their zone and. Not that she jumps up into place, but she sure finds a way to find an open spot."