Warren Meredith - If the Gee-Gee's are going to succeed...

As I prepare to leave home and head out for Ottawa's first game of the tournament my thoughts turn towards what the Gee Gees require if they are to defeat a team like Laurier. Shelley Coolidge and the rest of the coaching staff for Ottawa are going to tell there team to take this one game at a time, and they have to. Ottawa comes in ranked 5th and must face a team that only lost twice in the regular season and won the OUA championship. If we were to look into the recent past we'd find that Laurier has in recent years won a CIS championship and made it to the finals multiple times. Ottawa must look at this game as THE game to set themselves up a key challengers, if they win this game they will be regarded quite differently for the rest of the tournament. The Ottawa Gee Gees defeated the McGill Martlets 2-1 earlier in the season, it was the Martlets only defeat. How did they defeat McGill? Goaltending. Julie Lalonde was fantastic and the rest of the team was able to score twice on Labonte and that's quite a feat because her GAA was below 1.00. Ottawa later struggled in the playoffs with goaltending and if they are going to excel in this tournament they need either Lalonde or Takeda to be fantastic. Besides goaltending they will need there top line players of Duhamel, Blain, and Kerr to rise above the other teams top line players and that's easier said then done, especially when Laurier had several players score over 10 goals during the regular season.