Game On Magazine - April 2017 GameOn-Apr2017-P001-144-ONLINE | Page 124

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA BISONS
Bisons’ Keen Named
First Team All-Canadian
By Johnston Hall
Photo by Jeff Miller
I
t was a dream season for Lauryn Keen.
Keen, who is in her third season as a member of
the University of Manitoba Bisons women’s hock-
ey team, has turned the award for Conference scoring
champion into the Canada West’s Most Outstanding
Player Award. Then, for those honors, she added to it
by being named a member of the 2016-17 U SPORTS
Women’s Hockey First All-Canadian Team.
“Dream season,” might be an understatement.
This season, Keen, the first Bisons player ever to be
named Canada West Most Outstanding Player, cap-
tured the conference scoring title with 34 points and
became second Bison to accomplish this feat. She had
nine goals and 25 assists this season and actually be-
came the second scoring champion from the Bisons in
three seasons, Alanna Sharman won the scoring title
as a rookie in 2014-15. Sharman finished first overall
nationally with 40 points while Keen was fifth in U
SPORTS this season.
Keen finished the 2016-17 conference regular season
with points in nine of last 11 games and ended up with
34 points while playing in all 28 conference games.
She was seven points ahead of the second place
scorer in the conference and had 23 more points in major had the second highest conference game
point streak at seven (from Jan. 20 to Feb. 10);
a conference-high seven game assists streak
(Jan. 20 to Feb. 10) and was tied for the
fourth highest conference goal streak
at four games (Oct. 8 to Oct. 20).
Keen had 10 multi-point games
and the highest point total in a
single game with four assists
on Jan. 21, 2017 against Leth-
bridge.
In just three seasons,
Keen has already had a
tremendous career at
Manitoba. She was se-
lected to 2014-15 Can-
ada West All-Rookie
Team after finishing
third in Canada
West rookie scor-
ing
with
18
points
(five
goals and 13
2016-17 than she had in 2015-16. She was a first team
Canada West All-Star, as well
“I knew Lauryn Keen – she was really one of the only
people I actually knew when I joined the Bisons, but
I had heard of some of the other girls,” said rookie
Jenai Buchanan. “We’d played together on the Hawks
before. She is really having herself a great year this
season.”
Indeed.
Keen, 20, is from Manitou, Man., the same home-
town as Bemidji State University captain Madison
Hutchinson and her sister Mackenzie, who will be a
freshman on the University of Regina women’s team
next year.
This season, Keen was first in the conference with
25 assists; tied for ninth in Canada West with nine
goals; third in shots at 101; first in points per game at
1.21 and first in plus-minus rating at plus 22.
In addition, the Agricultural and Food Sciences assists) and third in team scoring.
A durable player, the 5-foot-9 for-
ward has not missed a Canada West
regular season game in her career
(84) and playoffs (17).
“Lauryn had a fantastic year and was
perhaps our most consistent performer
game in and game out the entire sea-
son,” said head coach Jon Rempel, who
was named Canada West coach of the
year. “She has incredible hockey intel-
lect, an amazing ability around the net
and is very creative and supportive of
her teammates and line mates. Being
named the Outstanding Player is a
huge accomplishment in a confer-
ence that boasts a lot of really tal-
ented, hard-working players.” n
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