Titans bring championship banner to Shaftesbury

Tuxedo

The Shaftesbury Titans finished atop the Manitoba Women’s High School Hockey League’s Division 2, winning the championship banner with a 2-1 victory over the Dakota Lancers on March 18 at the Hockey for All Centre in Headingley.

“It felt amazing,” said captain Megan Humniski. “It couldn’t have gone any better than that. We were all really happy.”

“When playoffs started, they had a goal in mind, and they took it game by game,” said fifth-year coach Tom Miko. “They’re quality people first, and that’s what made the difference. They never got too high or too low. It was fun and at the end of the day they had to go home and do their homework. I’m very proud of the group as a whole.”

Humniski, a Grade 12 centre who has played for the Titans the past three seasons, scored nine goals and seven assists through 21 regular season games. In the playoffs, she scored eight goals and added five assists in nine games, leading the team by example.

“Megan, she’s very humble,” Miko said. “But she took the bull by the horns and away they went for it.”

Shaftesbury finished the regular season with a 10-11-3 record, good for 32 points and putting the team in the middle of the pack, standings-wise, in Division 1/2 West before going on a tear through the Division 2 playoffs.

It took a while for the team to find its stride, admitted Miko, who was joined on the coaching staff by Brianna Bucci and team manager Stephanie Lavoie.

“It’s that learning process, which is what I love about sports. You learn more from failure, and we had a lot of failures that first half,” he said.

“They are students first, and that truly transforms into their ability on the ice. They’re good athletes as well, and that goes hand in hand to get results. We learned what worked and what didn’t, and it all came together, like the perfect storm — goaltending got hot and we were able to find some scoring and it worked out for us.

“When we hit playoffs, we finally figured out we had the people as a team to win. That’s what really sparked us. It just worked,” Humniski agreed. “We’re definitely best as a team. A lot of other teams we played had one or two players who did everything. But our whole team contributed throughout playoffs and that’s what I think got us the win.”

The Titans beat Selkirk in two games in the qualifying round, then eliminated the John Taylor Pipers in straight games in the quarter-finals. In the semis, Collège Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau Canadiennes earned a 3-2 OT win in Game 1 of the best-of-three series, but that would be the Titans only loss of the playoffs. Shaftesbury won the next game 3-2 in OT before eliminating CPET with a 3-1 win on March 12 to set up the final.

In the final, Shaftesbury beat Dakota in straight games, winning 5-4 on March 16 before winning the final game on March 18.

“They played the right way, great defence first, which often leads to good offence,” Miko said. “We don’t need fancy plays, just put pucks on net and went in for the rebounds. It worked out really well. They started seeing the results, and kept to the same boring formula, which led to the final game ending up on top.”