Aigles Bleues hand X-Women second loss of season

Antigonish, NS - The visiting Universite de Moncton Aigles Bleues skated to a 3-0 win over the CIS #6 ranked StFX X-Women in AUS hockey action Sunday afternoon at the Keating Centre. The loss marked only the second one of the season for the X-Women.

In a match-up featuring the top two teams in the conference, the X-Women were without injured fifth-year defender Jenna Downey (Stratford, ON), along with forwards Alex Normore (Bedford, NS) and Daley Oddy (Cranbrook, BC), who are members of Team Canada attending the FISU Winter Games in Granada, Spain. Normore and former X-Women defender Jenna Pitts of Antigonish were members of the 2014 gold medal winning squad.

Moncton scored the lone goal of the first period, when Marika Lacroix (Orleans, ON) connected on the power play. Manon Lamarre (Regina, SK) and Katryne Villeneuve (Casselman, ON) notched the assists at the 9:38 mark.

The visitors doubled their lead in the second period with another power play goal. At 14:55, Catherine Dumas picked up the puck on the edge of the X-Women's crease and lifted a shot in the top corner through a traffic jam of players from both teams. The goal was unassisted.

Dumas, with her second of the game, wrapped up the scoring with an unassisted empty-netter at the 18:50 mark.

"We have to outwork the other team and we didn't do that a lot today," X-Women assistant coach Willie Jo Sofan said after the game.

Sojung Shin (Seoul, Korea) made 27 saves in the loss while Gabrielle Forget (Joliette, QC) turned aside 22 shots for the shutout win.

The three stars of the game were Forget, Dumas and Shin.

With the victory, Moncton improves to 16-4-2 while StFX drops to 20-0. The loss snapped a 20-game regular season win streak for the blue and white.

Moncton will return to action Wednesday, Feb. 4 when they travel to Charlottetown to face the UPEI Panthers.

The X-Women will be back on the ice Friday, Feb. 6, when they host the Panthers at the Keating Centre. Puck drop for both games is 7 p.m.