Young and bright-eyed Saskatoon Stars headed to Esso Cup

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They’re young and bright-eyed.

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They’re excited and they don’t know what to expect.

The Saskatoon Stars are headed to the Esso Cup female under-18 national hockey tournament April 20-26 in Lloydminster.

The youthful Stars feature nine rookies on their roster, and nobody who had ever played in the Esso Cup national championship prior to this.

The team, led by head coach Alana Serhan and team captain Maggie Freeman, will open tournament play on Easter Sunday against the North York Storm from Ontario.

They’ll also have preliminary round-robin games next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before the playoff round begins.

Here’s what you need to know about the Stars and the Esso Cup:

What is the Esso Cup?

The Esso Cup is the national championship tournament for Canada’s top female under-18 hockey teams and players.

This year’s tournament includes the host Lloydminster Steelers, North York (Ontario), Edmonton Jr. Oilers (Pacific), Etoiles de Laurentides-Lanaudiere (Quebec), Eastern Stars (Atlantic) and Saskatoon (West).

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Saskatoon — which finished second overall behind the Battlefords Sharks with an 18-8-8-0 Saskatchewan Female AAA Hockey League regular-season record — qualified as the western regional champion after defeating the Eastman Selects, from Manitoba, 2-1 in a best-of-three final.

Earlier, the Stars advanced to regionals with a 2-1 win over the Sharks in a best-of-three SFAAAHL provincial final.

What do the Saskatoon Stars expect at the Esso Cup?

“A little bit of  ‘expect the unexpected,’” says coach Serhan. “Only one of the teams we’ve actually played against before, and that’s the Jr. Oilers. We actually played them for our first exhibition game of the season. That’s the only opposition we have familiarity with.

“What would I expect? Physicality. Pace. But as the week goes on, it’s going to be determined and focused on fitness. We hope to be playing seven games in seven days. How do we prepare for that longevity? Our team’s been preparing for that all year long, so that will be a benefit for us.”

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Adds captain Freeman: “I honestly don’t know what to expect. It’s one game a day and we played the Jr. Oilers before in past years. I played against them my very first year, and then every year after that. They have a very good team. So we’ll have to watch over them, for sure.

“We don’t know a whole lot about all the other teams. We don’t really see them during the season. I don’t really know what to expect, but it will be a lot of fun.”

Who will lead the Stars at the Esso Cup?

Saskatoon has four players who were double-digits in scoring, with the likes of NCAA Division 1 Mercyhurst-bound Halle Duchene (20 goals, 21 assists, 42 points), rookie Sadie Green (17-19—36), NCAA Div. 1 Rochester Institute of Technology-bound Kolbee Ashe (17-18—35) and rookie Mikayla Broadfoot (14-18—32).

Forward Rachel Pavlove has five goals, but four of them have come on the power play unit, the most on the team.

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Everybody has scored throughout the line-up as contributions come from everywhere and every place.

“If anything, I’d say we were definitely the deepest team in the province, which propelled us to a provincial final and provincial championship,” says Serhan. “We’ve been able to consistently play all players in all situations. I’m a huge believer in making sure everybody’s got a role, whether that role is power play or penalty kill.

“Very, very few players on our team play both power play and penalty, and that’s to ensure that everybody has an opportunity in the line-up. It’s how can we put players in scenarios where they can thrive and give an impact to the team? The last time this group was at an Esso Cup championship (in 2019), the coach at that time, Greg Slobodzian, actually made a quote about how deep he had to play his line-up all season long. If you went back and looked at the quote and read it for today, it would still ring true.”

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What’s going to be the key for success?

“I think just sticking to our game, sticking to the details. We really have to work as a unit of 20, and we can’t veer away from our own team game to an individual game,” says Freeman.

“We almost have an unspoken thing between us. Everyone wants to win, everyone has a love for the game, everyone has that grit and we all just work together. We don’t have a lot of superstar individualism. Of course, we have our (star) players but we work together as a unit of 20 once we step onto that ice and nothing stops us.”

How exciting is this for the Stars?

“It’s incredible,” said coach Serhan. “This group has worked so hard all season long. (Tuesday) marked our 81st practice of the year. We’re starting to peak at the right time and, really, we had carried momentum throughout playoffs and westerns and now we’re off to Esso Cup.”

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“I’m so excited,” adds Duchene. “I’ve been dreaming about this for years, and I’m just so excited for this opportunity to play against some of these amazing teams and see some good competition.

“I’ve been hoping for this, and I knew we had a great group of girls. We also have a really young team, so I wasn’t fully sure. But as the season went on, I could tell that we would be able to make it this far.”

dzary@postmedia.com

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