Comeback win

Revenge is a dish best served on Sunday morning.

Less than 12 hours after falling 4-3 to the Keweenah Storm in the Thunder Bay Queens Showcase Tournament round-robin finale, the host squad got, edging the Storm 3-2 in Sunday morning’s final.

But it took them a while to get there.

The Michigan-based Storm jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second period with a pair of quick goals by Selena Stromer and Megan Yeo, but the Queens battled back, chipping away at their deficit, ultimately tying it before the stanza ended.

Bronwyn Bolduc played the hero role in the third, ripping the puck past Keneeway goalie Stephanie King with less than two minutes to play, the goal standing up as the winner despite the Queens spending the final 87 seconds shorthanded and battling for their tournament lives.

Bolduc, a 16-year-old St, Ignatius student, said the Storm made them work for the win.

“Yeah, we got down a few goals in the second. We all had a slow start. But I know when we went back in the dressing room we just had to recover and get everyone pumped up and work for that win,” she said.

Waking up with a loss so fresh in their minds was also motivation, Bolduc added.

“Obviously you want that revenge, just like any other team would,” she said. “You’ve got to wake up and just think that you can win this game. And we went out there and showed that we could win it.”

It was a Drue Ahola goal in the second that started the comeback ball rolling.

The veteran forward, in her final year in a Queens uniform, one-timed a Natasha Nicholl pass at 8:49, cutting the Keweenah lead in half at 2-1.

“From being down 2-0, we knew we had to come back with some momentum and we knew that we needed to win it because it’s our home ice and we wanted it that bad,” the 17-year-old Ahola said. “We needed a big shift. My goal meant a lot and I just (celebrated) hard so everyone would get pumped up and we could keep our momentum going and score another goal.”

It came before period end when Kaley Tienhaara raced down the left side of the Fort William First Nation Arena ice and blasted a high-hard wrist shot that found the top corner, eluding King’s outstretched glove with 38 seconds left in the frame.
Coach Denis Lavoie, who lifted started goalie Jayde Turcotte after Yeo’s first-period goal as a wake-up call to the rest of his squad, said they knew they were in tough after Saturday’s nail-biter of a defeat.

“We talked a lot about forechecking today. We had to start forechecking a little harder on both sides, instead of just going to one side, and I think that made a little bit of an adjustment,” he said. “We had a little bit of a slow start, but the girls came back.”