Ottawa Charge players hope to still be flying high heading to women's world championship

Article content

Goalies are a different breed, indeed.

When Ottawa Charge puckstopper Gwyneth Philips was asked about all the commercial flights she has been on the past two weeks — covering 5,589 km going from Ottawa to New Jersey, New Jersey to Ottawa, Ottawa to St. Louis, St. Louis to Ottawa, Ottawa to Boston — before the 12,674 km round trip she’ll embark on for the women’s world hockey championship in Czechia (April 9-20) later this week, she said she didn’t mind at all.

“My teammates freak out, but I kind of enjoy the life-threatening idea … that someone else is in charge of your life,” Philips said after practice at TD Place on Tuesday. “It doesn’t bother me. People are freaking out, white-knuckling, and I’m like ‘hands in the air, woohoo!'”

For some perspective, the 25-year-old rookie will have traveled 18,263 km — or almost halfway around the world (the earth’s circumference is approximately 40,075 km) — to get to the world championship.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

If that shouldn’t be tiring enough, Philips also has carried the Charge’s playoff hopes on her back for the past six games since starter Emerance Maschmeyer was injured, while heading into Wednesday’s critical showdown with the Fleet at Tsongas Center.

In that game, she will be 200 feet down ice from Aerin Frankel — who is not only one of the top two goalies in the PWHL, but also Philips’ old college teammate at Northeastern and her goaltending partner with Team USA.

Philips claimed their previous head-to-head matchup, making 27 saves while Frankel stopped 28 shots, when the Charge defeated the Fleet 2-1 at Enterprise Center on Saturday.

“It’s a fun little rivalry, a friendly rivalry, I would say,” said Philips, maintaining she feels fresh and uncertain of how much ice time she’ll get in Czechia. “I’m really excited. This will be my second worlds, but I’ll have a little bit more of a foothold with the team because, going into worlds last year, that was my first event (since graduating from school).

“I think I’m going to feel a little bit more comfortable. I haven’t been told what my role is, but regardless, everyone shows up ready to compete and push each other, so I’m just there to make sure everyone’s going hard.”

The Charge will have eight, possibly nine, players competing for the global title, while Anna Meixner will head to China to represent Austria in the women’s world championship, Division 1.

At the top tournament, Philips will be the only member of the Charge on the U.S. squad and defender Ronja Savolainen will be the lone member on the Finnish team, while Ottawa players on Team Canada will be Brianne Jenner, Emily Clark, Jocelyne Larocque and Danielle Serdachny — who scored the overtime winner on Frankel in last year’s gold-medal game — while Aneta Tejralova and Tereza Vanisova — who was named the PWHL’s second star of the week after scoring both goals in the win over Boston — will be representing the host nation.

A third Czech, Katerina Mrazova, is also hoping to play for her country, but she has been scratched from the Charge lineup with an undisclosed injury since Feb. 13.

“She’s still out and she’s still getting healthy,” said Charge coach Carla MacLeod, who also is the bench boss of the Czechia squad. “It’s been a long haul for that gal and the mission is still the same. We’re trying to get her healthy.”

Being without Mrazova for the past month and a half has been a taxing for the Charge. Last season, she had 18 points (six goals) in 23 games for Ottawa and this year she had six points (two goals) in 11 games before her injury.

The 32-year-old native of Kolin has been described as Ottawa’s best centre.

“To every team she’s ever been on, she’s an important player,” MacLeod said. “It’s no different here in Ottawa and it’s no different there for the Czech national team. Definitely, this year we’ve missed her here but injuries are part of the game. You’ve just got to take it day by day.”

Asked if there’s a chance Mrazova will play in the worlds, MacLeod said that decision is out of her hands.

“It’s still in the medical world,” she said while refusing to divulge the nature of the injury. “But I know everybody’s working collaboratively to try to ensure she’s got everything she needs, to get to where she wants to go, at the timeline she wants to be there.”

Philips confirmed there’s been “just a bit” of chirping among Charge players heading off to battle for global supremacy.

“Clarkie said to me, ‘Oh, we’re gonna have to be enemies soon,’ so it’s starting,” said Philips, who made 31 saves to defeat Canada 2-1 in a Rivalry Series shootout last month. “It’s fun to play against your teammates, but it’s always more fun to get back with them after the game.”

Canada’s first game will be April 10 against Finland, which opens the tournament the day before against the Americans.

Savolainen, a physical player who has two goals, eight assists and a team-leading plus-10 rating for the Charge, was asked if she has any advice for her Ottawa teammates who are about to become foes over the 11-day tournament.

“Yeah, they should keep their head up,” she said with a laugh, before jokingly adding that she’s also looking forward to facing Vanisova, who is the only PWHLer to have two hat-tricks in the same season as well as the only player to be involved a scrap. “She’s a good fighter. So we can put up a good fight there too.”

On a more serious note, Savolainen stressed that she’s “super excited” to be representing her country again.

“We have the best team we’ve ever sent that I can remember,” she said of the Finns. “We have a lot of young players, a lot of talented players. So I just hope we can put something together in this short time. I really believe we can do something big this year.”

The three-week break comes at a terrible time for the PWHL, as the action has been heating up with Boston, Minnesota, Ottawa and New York battling for the last two playoff spots while Montreal has clinched a berth and Toronto needs one more victory to secure another.

All teams will have three regular-season games left when the tournament is over.

“Every time there comes a break, it’s bad timing, I would say, because you’ve been working on something for a long time, and then it comes,” Savolainen said. “Especially now, because it’s almost a month break.

“But I think it’s also good people get their head into winning something else, for their own country and people who stay here, we work their ass off, so I mean, I think it’s something good too. In the end, we’ll also get new energy for the three last games after the worlds. So I think it’s both good and bad.”

Said MacLeod: “At the end of the day, you don’t pick and choose how it’s going to work. We knew it was going to work this way. So we’ve got a job to do on Wednesday, and then we’ll have more jobs to do when we get back.”

The Charge should be carrying some momentum into the coming meeting with the Fleet after Vanisova’s two goals within 32 seconds late in the third period in last weekend’s victory put Ottawa in a playoff spot for the first time since Jan. 31 — although one night later, Minnesota bumped the Charge from that spot by defeating Toronto.

Ottawa can leapfrog the Frost again, and move to within one point of third-place Boston, by defeating the Fleet in regulation time on Wednesday.

“It was opportunistic,” MacLeod said of Saturday’s win over the Fleet, the first time Ottawa has defeated Boston in five attempts this season. “I think in the third period is when we started to play our game. It showed statistically, it showed on the scoreboard, and with the momentum, we were able to carry it and have more O-zone time. I think we just stayed our course.

“That is where you want your starting point to be for game two. We’ve been fortunate now a couple of times to see the same opponents in back-to-back games, and that’s the closest the playoffs that you’re going to get. So we get another opportunity at it, and I think that’s the important piece, learning from what we talked about going into the third period the last game.

“We needed to make a statement for ourselves, that we could take a game over in the third period, and we’ve got to have that mission now in all three periods on Wednesday.”