The Montréal Victoire captured the franchise’s first PWHL Walter Cup on Wednesday night, defeating the Ottawa Charge 4-0 in front of over 12,000 fans at the Canadian Tire Centre.
The game was closely contested for most of the contest, before a 10 minute span in the 3rd period saw Montreal break the game open with 3 tallies. Netminder Ann-Renée Desbiens posted a 23 save shutout, while Abby Roque tallied two girls to power Montreal to the series clinching win.
Ottawa outshot Montreal (23-16) and won 37 of the 52 face-offs (71.2%), but went 0 for 3 on the power play as they fell short of extending the series to a pivotal game 5. Roque’s short handed jailbreak goal gave Montreal a 2-0 lead, and effectively took the wind out of the sails of the hometown team from there.
Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin was named the Ilana Kloss playoff MVP after finishing the postseason with a record tying 8 points in the playoffs.
“I tried to live through every moment,” said Victoire head coach Kore Cheverie. “There were highs, there were lows, and we were able to kind of get through all of those adversity moments as a team. Whatever team we had on the ice was a team we were able to win with, so it’s been absolutely amazing with this group.”
Montreal captain Marie-Philip Poulin was visibly emotional after earning her first Walter Cup championship. The all world player had won virtually every trophy imaginable up until this point, except for the PWHL’s top prize. “It was very special,” Poulin told reporters. “It’s been a tough year, I’m not going to lie, since February. It was ups and downs, coming back to this group, just fighting through. It hasn’t been easy—injuries, sickness, a lot of things—but we stuck together. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy in this building when we showed up today, but we remained patient with our game.”
With the win, Montreal broke a streak of 5 consecutive games in the Walter Cup finals that had been won by the home team. For the series, 9 of the 15 total goals were scored in the 3rd period as both Ottawa and Montreal seemed to save their best for last in the back and forth affair. The all-Canadian final also guaranteed that the Walter Cup would be coming north of the border for the first time in league history. The matchup also ensured that regardless of who won, the first female head coach would be crowned a Walter Cup champion for the first time as well.
Afterwards, Ottawa head coach Carla MacLeod tried to summarize the emotions of her team following a year of ups and downs both on and off the ice.
“Obviously when you’re playing for a championship, the objective and the goal is to win the championship. So, obviously there’s a disappointment by falling just a little bit short. So, that’s a very real feeling, a very raw feeling. But it’s amazing how quickly you can turn that into understanding what has actually transpired this season. And for our coaching staff to be able to go into the room afterwards and obviously there’s a lot of emotion, but ultimately the emotion that rises the most in myself and in our staff is just truly pride. This is a group that just kept chugging. We just kept going. Nobody gave us any credit coming into this season, nobody gave us credit halfway through the season. And this was a group of women that were just so, so driven and motivated to get better and to earn their way into a playoff spot, to earn our way into the Walter Cup Finals. You wish a better ending for the group, just because they’re such a special team. But I can tell you the biggest emotion I have right now is pride. I’m very, very proud of them.”
For their efforts, Abby Roque (2G), Ann-Renée Desbiens (SO), and Laura Stacey (1A) were named the games 3 stars.
Photo: PWHL.