Wickenheiser and Ouellette out as Canada routs Switzerland 13-0

Marie-Philip Poulin nets four while Canada outshoots opponent 79-16

Team Canada captain Hayley Wickenheiser is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. 

KANATA, Ont. — Forward Marie-Philip Poulin scored four goals while Canada poured in 79 shots to overwhelm Switzerland 13-0 on Wednesday night at the IIHF women’s world hockey championship.

Brianne Jenner added two goals, seven others scored a goal apiece, and Charline Labonté made 16 saves for the shutout win on day two.

Canadian captain Hayley Wickenheiser and assistant captain Caroline Ouellette sat out for Wednesday’s game with upper-body injuries.

“Disappointing not to have them in the lineup, but sometimes that happens,” said head coach Dan Church. “They just needed a little rest and they’ll be evaluated on a day-to-day basis.”

With two key forwards out of the lineup, the Canadians opted to give three of their defencemen some time at forward.

“Tessa [Bonhomme] almost plays like a forward, so I think it was an easy transition for her,” said Church. “Both Courtney Birchard and Meaghan Mikkelson played forward at some point with our under-22 national program, so they’re both converts to defence, so I think the transition was fairly easy for them.”

Bonhomme, who is the captain of the Toronto Furies in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, was also happy with how she, Birchard, and Mikkelson handled their temporary roles.

“I forgot how much skating you do at forward, but it was a lot of fun out there,” she said. “I think it’s a good thing because you get an appreciation for the hard work the forwards put in and what they put up with.”

Jennifer Wakefield opened the scoring for Canada just under five minutes into the game.

Coming in on a partial breakaway, Wakefield found her own rebound after a bad clearing attempt by a Swiss defenceman to make it 1-0.

Poulin scored the first of her four goals later in the first period with a nice wrist shot from the slot.

The shots were 28-10 in favour of Canada after 20 minutes and ironically, it was Switzerland’s best period.

After two periods, the shots were 54-15. Canada added 25 more shots in the third period while Switzerland managed a single shot in the frame to finish the game.

Swiss captain Julia Marty was understandably disappointed with the result, but tried to stay positive in order to properly prepare for their game against the United States on Friday.

“We knew before that [the Canadians are] stronger and faster,” said Marty, a defenceman. “We said to go shift by shift, we fight the 60 minutes, and I guess the U.S. is going to be a similar game. Tomorrow is a day off, so recover, and forget about this game.”

Although Canada beat the Americans 3-2 in a shootout on Tuesday, the first two periods of the game did not go well for Canada and there were a number of things to fix going into the game against Switzerland.

“We had a slow start, we were a little nervous last night, and it took us to the third period to really get rolling,” said forward Jayna Hefford, who registered a goal and two assists on the night.

“We didn’t want that to happen tonight because we know if we’re going to win the tournament, we can’t let that happen. We wanted to make sure we were ready and play a full 60 minutes and I think we did.”

Up next for Team Canada is Finland on Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET in what will be their final round-robin game of the tournament.

About this article

By: Curtis Ng
Posted: Apr 4 2013 9:08 am
Edition:
Filed under: Amateur Hockey Sports
Topics: