The York University Lions women's hockey team will play in the national tournament for the first time in program history this week as the 2020 U SPORTS Cavendish Farms Women's Hockey Championship gets underway at the University of Prince Edward Island on Thursday.
 
The eight-team tournament runs until Sunday, with the gold-medal final set for 7pm local time (6pm ET) at MacLauchlan Arena in Charlottetown. All 11 games will be available for free on CBCSports.ca. 
 
The Lions enter the tournament as the fifth seeds following their OUA silver-medal finish, the team's best result since also winning silver in 1999. Their quarter-final opponent is the fourth-seeded McGill Martlets, the RSEQ champions who are no strangers to the national championship, having qualified 19 times in 24 years since the tournament began. They have won four titles overall, the most recent one coming in 2014.
 
The two squads will play in the first quarter-final on Friday, with puck drop slated for 3pm (2pm ET).
 
It has so far been a magical season for the Lions. After eight years without an OUA playoff berth, they finished six games above .500 this season and were third in the OUA standings with a 14-8-0-2 record. They continued that momentum into the playoffs, where they started 4-0 and outscored their opponents 19-5 in a pair of series sweeps. The Lions began against the sixth-seeded Waterloo Warriors in the OUA quarter-finals and won the two games by scores of 5-1 and 3-0. In the next round, they rolled to 5-2 and 6-2 victories over the Nipissing Lakers, which advanced them to the national tournament and the McCaw Cup final. Playing against the rival Toronto Varsity Blues for the OUA banner, the Lions scored first but were ultimately defeated 3-1. 
 
The Lions were dominant at both ends of the ice in the regular season, ranking second in the OUA in scoring (2.71 goals per game) and fifth in defence (1.89 per game). Those numbers got even better in the playoffs, as the Lions led all OUA teams with four goals per game (no other team averaged more than 2.83) while giving up just 1.61 goals per game, the lowest mark among all squads.
 
The Lions feature a balanced scoring attack and had five players among the OUA's top 50 in regular-season scoring. Leading the way was defender Taylor Davison, who earned OUA first-team all-star honours for the first time in her career after a stellar season in which she tied for the conference lead in scoring by blueliners with 20 points (four goals, 16 assists) and was eighth overall in the OUA. She added another four points in the playoffs, including three goals.
 
The rest of the top five included Kara Washer, who had 16 points in the regular season and scored a goal in each of the team's first four playoff games, including both series clinchers, Kelsey McHolm, the team's goals leader (13), Courtney Gardiner, who tallied 13 points in only 17 games after missing significant time with an injury, and Brooke Anderson. 
 
Gardiner was a monster in the playoffs, tying for the OUA lead with eight points (four goals, four assists) in just five games.
 
Another impressive player in the post-season has been goaltender Serena Vilde, the team's third goalie throughout the regular season who was called into action after starter Lauren Dubie suffered a season-ending injury the day before the playoffs began (second netminder Julianna Thomson has been out with an injury for several weeks already). Vilde, who is also a goalie for the Lions field hockey team and only played in four games in the regular season, has been tremendous in the playoffs, posting a 4-1 record with a 1.41 goals against average and .933 save percentage.
 
The squad is captained by Erin Locke, who was part of the U SPORTS all-star team at the Hockey Canada Summer Showcase in 2019. She averaged one point per game in the playoffs with two goals and three assists, putting her in fifth in conference post-season scoring.
 
The winner of Friday's quarter-final will advance to the championship semifinal on Saturday night at 7pm (6pm ET) against either the Canada West champion Alberta Pandas or the host UPEI Panthers, while the losers will play in the consolation semifinal earlier in the day on Saturday.