Savvy vet and two rookies shine in Ottawa Charge first PWHL home win over Montreal Victoire

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Charge 3, Victoire 1

In the days leading up to the first-ever Ottawa-Montreal pro hockey doubleheader in the nation’s capital on Saturday, Gwyneth Philips of Athens, Ohio, thought she might be going on a mini-tour of Canada.

Philips, the 25-year-old rookie goalie for the Charge, was in the last group of players to make it through all the flight changes and delays caused by bad weather and the Delta plane crash in Toronto after Sunday’s “Takeover Tour” game in Edmonton.

While most of her teammates arrived back in Ottawa on Tuesday, Philips and her traveling companions didn’t get back until Wednesday at 10 p.m.

“It was … it was a trip,” she said while humorously recalling her adventure late Saturday afternoon. “At one point it looked like I was going to Vancouver, which I was kind of excited about because I’ve never been to Vancouver.

“My flight out of Calgary was leaving (Wednesday) afternoon, so I was going to explore Calgary, too. I was pretty stoked. And then I wake up and someone’s yelling at me, ‘Yo! You’re on a flight!’ I was like, ‘Who is this?’ She said, ‘It’s Shiann (Darkangelo, a teammate).’ I’m like, ‘What are you doing calling me?’

“It’s not lost on us that it was an unfortunate plane crash. I mean, that’s horrible. I’m glad everyone made it out, and, with the weather, I think the league and the team and our ops (department) did an amazing job of handling it.

“It was a little bonding trip for some of the girls.”

You could call the Charge’s 3-1 victory over the PWHL-leading Victoire at TD Place a bonding experience as well.

While savvy veteran Emily Clark had two goals and an assist and rookie Stephanie Markowski scored her first goal as a professional, Philips outdueled Ann-Renée Desbiens, who is regarded as Canada’s No. 1 national team goalie.

It was the second straight victory for Philips over Desbiens, which was also the goaltending matchup on Feb. 6, when the U.S. defeated Canada 2-1 in a Rivalry Series shootout.

In that one, Philips was much busier as her team was outshot 33-15 by the Canadians.

On Saturday, the tables were turned for the two tenders, with the Charge outshooting the Victoire 28-16.

“I wouldn’t say I beat her … She was also playing goalie,” Philips quipped. “This one was a little bit tough for me to come back into … My last P-Dub game was against this team, and I didn’t play the best (allowing three goals on 12 shots before getting yanked halfway through a 4-1 loss in Montreal). I wanted to prove that wrong a little bit and have a better outing this time, and I think I did. But, I mean, I didn’t have to do a tremendous amount today because my team was doing a lot
of work for me.”

An example of that was how the Charge held the Victoire, the second-best offensive team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League with an average of 2.82 goals per game, to period-by-period shot totals of five, four and seven.

“We talk a lot about consistency as a group, and we were able to sort of just put it into three different chunks this game,” Charge head coach Carla MacLeod said. “What can we do in first 20? OK, park it, that’s done. What do we do in the next 20, and obviously in the third? So maybe the verbiage was slightly different, but it helped us sort of just put it into manageable pieces. And, obviously, the gals did a great job managing each of those segments”

Ottawa was able to contain Montreal star Marie-Philip Poulin, who Philips stoned on a shootout attempt in the Rivalry Series game, but didn’t put a puck on net Saturday.

When asked if she felt like she had Poulin’s number, Philips gasped.

“No. No. No,” she said to laughter from the assembled media. “Like, what do you want me to say to that? She’s so good. I love playing against her. It’s a challenge, and it’s a lot of fun. But, you know, she’s the best in the world, and every time she’s coming down with the puck, I’ve got to be at my
best.

At her best on Saturday was Clark, who stepped up in a game the Charge desperately needed.

‘When you watch Emily play, she just leads with her heart, and her work ethic is always one that’s admired by her teammates,” MacLeod said. “Again tonight, she put that on display, and it’s nice to see her be rewarded offensively. For our group, she’s a great leader and everyone’s looking to do very similar things that she put on display. So it’s just nice for her to be rewarded offensively for the details she does defensively that maybe go unnoticed too often.”

Markowski is a defender but looked like a pure goal scorer with the way she deked and deposited the puck past Desbiens before picking up her souvenir puck.

“I don’t know where that came from,” she joked of the moves. “To score it against such a good team, in what was a really close game, it felt awesome.”

That word also aptly describes the day as a whole for a Charge team that played its best game of the season in front of a capacity crowd and looks ready to go on a strong run down the homestretch of the season.