January 1 2008 Championship Day Summary
1/1/2008
Female Final
Swift Current Wildcats 6 Red Deer Sutter Fund Chiefs 2
Girls with grit – a combination that only escalates when gold’s involved. The women’s final between the Swift Current Wildcats and the Red Deer Sutter Fund Chiefs went down today at the Dome. The Saddledome hosted the women’s gold medal game for the first time. After defeating Notre Dame yesterday, Red Deer was geared to go against Swift Current, but the Wild Cats came out strong, punching out three goals in the first five minutes of the first period. The Gillanders clan tipped the scoreboard towards the Wildcats, with Kali Gillanders scoring twice. The Chiefs were determined to get on the scoreboard and Lundie Graham put one in just over three minutes into the second. The Wildcats fired back three minutes later with a goal by Katelyn Ptolemy. The Wildcats continued to rack up the score in the third with a goal by the tournament’s top scorer, Shelby Davey. Jessica Abt reminded the fans that the Chiefs were still in the game with a goal less than five minutes left. With the clock ticking down to the remaining ten seconds of the game, the Wildcats slipped one more in before the buzzer. The Wildcats, defeating the Chiefs 6-2, are the new Mac’s Tournament champions.
Male Final
Vancouver NW Giants 0 Russia Severstal 7
This afternoon Russia Severstal stole the show at the Saddledome. They won the gold medal against the Vancouver NW Giants and made it look easy. Most of the action was at the beginning of this game as Russia scored their first six goals of the game in the first period. For Russia, This was a shut-out for their duo of Denis Korovaev and Denis Peretyagin, who combined to stop the Giants 21 shots-on-goal. It was hard to pick a star for this game, as many of the Russian players had a strong performance. There was, Eduard Baklanov (2G), Alexei Trandin (2G, 1A), Maxim Trunev (2G, 1A), Alexander Aleshkin (3A), Pavel Kurazhov (2A), and Nikita Petrov (2A). But, in the end, the Global broadcast crew of Grant Pollock and Perry Berezan chose Alexei Trandin as the game star for this loaded Russian team.
