Of all the top-40 pointgetters playing women’s hockey this season in Atlantic University Sports, only one has yet to score a goal.
As the second-year captain of the St. Mary’s Huskies in Halifax, N.S, defenceman Kiana Wilkinson of Prince George is aiming to break that goose egg this weekend when the Huskies wrap up their regular season schedule on the road in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.
Wilkinson has been a prolific passer and is tied for fifth in the league scoring race, but goals have been tough to come by. Not the Huskies have suffered for it.
They lead the league in scoring with 85 goals in 26 games, a 3.27 average and heading into the final weekend of the season they still have a shot at finishing first in the eight-team AUS. The Huskies are also quite stingy, allowing just 40 goals this season.
Known as a two-way defenceman, lighting the lamp has never been Wilkinson’s forté. In 123 games over five seasons she’s scored five goals and had 49 points. She has 23 assists this season, nearly half her career point total. No other U Sports women’s hockey player in the country has more assists.
“I’m hoping to get one (goal in the next two games,” she said. “I’d rather have 23 assists and zero goals than the opposite.”
Leaving home for North Vancouver when she was 16 to pursue her hockey dreams in the Junior Women’s Hockey League with Pacific Steelers was a tough decision for Wilkinson but her two seasons with the Steelers exposed her to quality opponents in the team’s travels all over Canada and the United States and she used that experience as a springboard to a scholarship at St. Mary’s.
She didn’t start playing hockey until she was 13, after nine years with the Prince George Figure Skating Club. She suffered broken arm figure skating and while recovering pulled out some of her older brother Kyler’s hockey gear from the attic. She started playing hockey that year and spent her 15-year-old season in the B.C. triple-A midget league for the Northern Cougars, coached by Stew Malgunas and Don Knoop, before heading to the JWHL.
Wilkinson joined the Huskies in 2015, the year the rebuilding project started by head coach Chris Larade blossomed. As a rookie, she helped the Huskies win the first of three consecutive AUS titles and they went on to capture bronze at the U Sports/CIS national championship in Calgary. She thinks this year’s team has a shot at another title and their 20-5-1 record is a true reflection of the strength of the Huskies.
“Last year we had more of a building year and had eight rookies come in and no fifth-years and this year we have four rookies that came in and they’re killing it, it’s been an awesome year,” said the five-foot-nine, 160-pound Wilkinson.
“Chris is the best coach I could have asked for, for these last five years. He won two coach-of-the-year awards and he’s an incredible person and coach. We’re hoping for not only an AUS championships but a national championship as well.”
Based in Halifax, the Huskies moved back to the St. Mary’s campus for home games in the newly-opened 875-seat Dauphinee Centre, built with a $2 million donation.
While she’s sad to see her university career coming to an end Wilkinson has made the most of her time as a varsity athlete, on and off the ice. The second-year captain of the Huskies won the AUS student-athlete community service award last season. She’s co-lead of the Huskies’ athletic council, which organizes student events and community fundraisers.
“As a player I’ve grown a lot but, I think, as a person too,” she said. “The time change has kind of built my independence, I can’t really rely on my parents (Coralie Wilkinson and Shane Lapierre) as much for everything and I think my leadership skills have grown tremendously.”
Wilkinson, who turned 23 on Monday, is majoring in biology with a minor in psychology and hopes to get into forensics with the RCMP once her hockey career ends. That likely won’t be anytime soon. She’s exploring her options to play in one of the women’s leagues in Europe.
“It’s kind of now or never,” she said. “I’m talking to a few teams now and I’m not quite sure where I’ll end up yet.”
