The Windsor Lancer women's hockey team had a split weekend in taking down the Queen's Gaels on Friday night 4-1 at home while dropping Saturday evening's contest to the Nipissing Lakers falling 4-0 to the visitors at the Capri Pizzeria Recreation Complex in Windsor.
 
FRIDAY STATS
Maggie Mitani, Elissa Benjamin, Elizabeth Coleman, and Olivia Knuff all scored for the Lancers as Windsor's scoring quartet on Friday.
 
Emily Eikelboom and Jessica Gribbon had assists on the Mitani goal while the other three Lancer goals came as unassisted markers.
 
Cadence Petitclerc made a whopping 41 saves in a stellar performance between the pipes backstopping her team to victory over the tri-coloured Gaels.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY
A scoreless first period saw both teams trading shot opportunities on each other's goaltenders. 
 
Petitclerc made more saves in the first turning aside 15 Queen's shots faced off their sticks while at the other end of the ice Queen's netminder Emma Tennant was challenged with 6 Lancer shots to round out the first frame on a goalless note.
 
Queen's opened the scoring in the second period when Mikayla Cranney's shot got past Petitclerc making it a 1-0 Gaels lead at 2:27 into the second.
 
The Lancers would respond on the power play at 9:49 of the second frame when Mitanti managed to take advantage of the 5-on-4 and score to give her team the equalizer at 1-1 from Eikelboom and Gribbon's helpers.
 
Benjamin would add the final goal of the second period at the 16:46 mark to give the Lancers the go-ahead goal and lead to head into the second intermission up 2-1 on the Gaels.
 
No more goals were scored on a goaltender after that as in the third period Tennant stopped 7 Lancer shots that came at her before being pulled in favour of having an extra Gael out on the ice to try and tie up the game late in regulation play.
 
Both Coleman and Knuff would add their empty net insurance markers within the final two minutes of the game to allow the Lancers to close out the game on a winning note with a 4-1 win in Windsor.
 
SATURDAY STATS
Holly Barrett made 28 saves in the Lancers loss which saw none of its skaters record any stats due to the shutout of Nipissing goaltender Chantelle Sandquist's 28 save shutout.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED ON SATURDAY
Sandquist was the star of the show for the Lakers in the first period stopping all 11 Lancer shots faced in the opening period. 
 
She would later be eclipsed by her teammate Malory Dominico who scored the game's opening goal for the Lakers to put Nipissing up 1-0 in Windsor at 8:06 of the first.
 
Dominico would not end her scoring in the Rose City there as she was able to get a second tally at 10:07 of the second frame and give her team a 2-0 lead for the visitors over the hosts.
 
The Lakers would continue to circulate in the Lancers zone which persistently paid off for them when at 12:56 of the second period Katie Chomiak got the third Nip goal of the game to put the Lakers up 3-0.
 
Abby Lunney would be the last Laker to score at 5:43 of the third period capping off the Lancers with a 4-0 score which held true right until the end.
 
With the loss the Lancers now stand at an 8-9 record on the campaign heading into their final week of fall semester competition next weekend on the road.
 
UP NEXT
The blue and gold gals will wrap up the Fall 2023 semester portion of the schedule on the road up in Oshawa on Friday December 1st at 7PM when they visit the Ontario Tech Ridgebacks.
 
Following that they will travel to Kingston on Saturday December 2nd to do battle with the Gaels again but this time in the Limestone City for a 7:30PM puck drop. 
 
Fans can tune into oua.tv to watch both game's action or follow along on X (formerly Twitter) for live in-game updates surrounding the team's upcoming road performances.