Ottawa Charge upsets top-seeded Montreal Victoire in team's first PWHL playoff game

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Advantage Ottawa.

The Charge lost a couple of early one-goal leads in its first PWHL playoff game, but then held on to the only one that mattered.

Shiann Darkangelo’s wrist shot from the top of the right faceoff circle at 9:17 of the third period stood as the winner as the Charge grabbed command of its best-of-five opening round series with a 3-2 victory over the Montreal Victoire at Place Bell in Laval.

Darkangelo, who had three goals and four assists in Ottawa’s last five regular-season games, continued her hot run when she took a short pass from Emily Clark before finding the mesh behind Montreal goalie Anne-Renee Desbiens.

Also starring for Ottawa was rookie goalie Gwyneth Philips, who stopped 31 shots while her teammates directed 27 pucks at Desbiens.

The Victoire finished the regular season in first place and with that, chose the third-place Charge as its first round opponent rather than the defending Walter Cup champion Minnesota Frost, which finished in fourth.

Brianne Jenner and Ashton Bell had Charge’s other goals while Maureen Murphy and Marie-Philip Poulin scored for the Victoire.

Jenner opened the scoring for Ottawa with a power-play goal at the 4:54 mark of the first period, but Murphy replied with the Charge shorthanded a little more than seven minutes later and the teams went to the intermission deadlocked.

Bell, whose three regular-season goals were all scored against Montreal, put the Charge ahead again when she snuck in from the blue line and fired a high shot into the back of the net after a scramble in front at the 5:07 make of the middle frame.

But again, the Victoire knotted the count on the power play a little more than two minutes later when Poulin found the short side with a one-timer.

The Victoire lost Catherine Dubois, who has scored in each of the team’s final three games, with an apparent hand injury in the first period. She did not return,

Game 2 goes Sunday afternoon (2 p.m.) at Place Bell before the series moves to Ottawa for Game 3 Tuesday at 7 p.m.