Graham's goal boosts confidence
Jan. 12, 2010 - Regina Leader-Post
By Ian Hamilton
Kelsie Graham credited Stefanie Banilevic with an assist Monday.
"I was talking to her before Friday's game and she said, 'You're looking to set everybody else up before you take your own shot,' " Graham said as the University of Regina Cougars women's hockey team prepared for practice at the Sherwood Ice Sports Centre. "Having a teammate tell you that really makes you realize what's going on."
Graham hadn't scored a goal this season before Friday's contest against the visiting UBC Thunderbirds. Taking Banilevic's words to heart, Graham sniped once in the Cougars' 3-1 victory Friday and added another goal in Saturday's 3-2 triumph.
"Personally, I've always been a playmaker," said Graham, who leads Regina in assists (eight) and points (10) this season. "But I'm a fifth-year player who's looked to to score. When it finally clicks for you, you think about it every time you're on the ice.
"I don't measure if I'm playing well or not by whether I score a goal or not," she added. "But it was in the back of my mind that I hadn't scored. When I finally did, it was a big relief."
And now, she said, "the light has gone on for me" -- and she didn't mean the goal light.
"As soon as I score a goal, my confidence level goes way up," said Graham, who had seven goals for the U of R last season. "Now that I've got that first one, I have no worries going forward."
"It was just her confidence around the net," noted Cougars head coach Sarah Howald. "She's a goal-scorer, but she'd look to pass to somebody else when she should have been looking to shoot. That's the biggest thing.
"It was the same for all of them, actually. Their confidence was so low that they'd get in good shooting position and look for somebody to pass to."
After 14 games, Regina has just 22 goals -- better only than the Lethbridge Pronghorns and Calgary Dinos (each with 16) in the seven-team conference. Prior to UBC's visit, the Cougars had six two-game series in which they recorded goal totals of two, four, zero, three, six and one.
Kelcie McCutcheon leads the Cougars with five goals, Rianne Wight and Paige Wheeler have four apiece, and Graham, Gina Campbell and Rae-Lynn Somogyi have two apiece. Three other players -- Banilevic, Jacey Jones and Angele Richmond -- have one goal each.
"Sometimes we can't buy a break or we miss the net," Graham said. "We haven't been shooting the puck as much as we should, either. You can't score if you don't shoot the puck and our shot totals haven't exactly been skyrocketing."
The Cougars had 16 goals over their first 12 games this season, and they lost one contest in overtime and three others in shootouts. That explains why, during the Christmas break, Howald had the players focus on offence through 2-on-0 drills -- "The goalies probably hated it," she said -- and through deception.
"When they came in ready to shoot, everyone in the rink knew they were going to shoot, or if they were looking to pass, everyone knew they were going to pass," said Howald, whose team struggled offensively last season as well with 49 goals in 24 regular-season games.
"The other thing we did was work on driving the net. That's the one that paid off the most this weekend."
Howald and her charges hope it continues to pay off this season. Regina, which took a three-point lead on UBC in the race for fourth place in the conference, visits Calgary this weekend.
"It takes putting the puck in the net a couple of times to get a feel for it and to get you to loosen up on your stick," Graham said. "Scoring like that -- six in a weekend is big for us -- is going to help all of our confidence going forward."
"We'll continue to hammer on the habits and everything will come," added Howald. "Six goals in two games may not be a ton, but it's an excellent step in the right direction for us."