How Ottawa has frustrated Montreal’s stars to the brink of elimination
Montreal’s top line has gone cold, and the Victoire are running out of time to solve Gwyneth Philips
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They might not have said it postgame, but it’s a fact now: The Montreal Victoire is in trouble.
After a 26-save shutout in Game 3 of her team’s PWHL Walter Cup semifinal series, Ottawa Charge goaltender Gwyneth Philips has allowed just a single goal in more than two-and-a-half hours of play, stretching back to Laura Stacey’s second-period marker in Game 2.
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How Ottawa has frustrated Montreal’s stars to the brink of elimination Back to video
Ottawa, which tied with the New York Sirens for the most goals allowed this season, has suddenly become impenetrable at the most critical time of the year. Now it has the Charge one win away from a massively satisfying series upset and a PWHL Finals berth.
Coming into the series, Ottawa’s path to victory was clear: Find a way to neutralize Montreal’s top line of Marie-Philip Poulin, Jennifer Gardiner and Stacey. The belief was that beyond those three players, the Charge held the superior depth down their lineup to grind out wins.
All of this has come to pass. Montreal’s first line has mustered only a collective four points in the series after racking up 35 goals and 66 points in the regular season together. Meanwhile, the Victoire has also had the fewest depth contributions of any playoff team.
It’s not as if the top unit hasn’t had its chances. The three players collectively fired a whopping 53 shots on Philips through three games, with only two goals to show for it.
And while Philips is turning in an elite, MVP-worthy performance, her teammates played lockdown defence to close out Game 3, especially after Montreal pulled goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens for an extra attacker in the final two-and-a-half minutes.
“The frustration was there the whole game from both ends of the ice,” Philips said about the lack of scoring. Between Brianne Jenner’s game-tying goal in Game 2 and Mannon McMahon’s third-period goal in Game 3, Desbiens and Philips combined to stop 105 of 106 shots. “You can feel that they’re pushing, but I can feel that my teammates are pushing back just as hard, if not harder.”
Defender Zoe Boyd showed that pushback when she angled Poulin into the back boards and off her feet in the final minutes of the game. It was just one of many examples of the Charge dictating how much time and space its opponent was allowed. Stacey’s dangerous one-timer was suffocated all game by forwards clogging passing lanes. The power play was unable to move pucks anywhere closer to the net than its umbrella setup above the faceoff dots.
“Ottawa is playing us very aggressively high in the zone right now, so we have to find a way to get pucks to the net,” Montreal coach Kori Cheverie said. “We have to find a way in that moment, and we didn’t, and so we start to turn the page.”
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The fans, including Tiana “Tee Ball” Richer, went wild when Ottawa moved ahead 1-0 in the third.[/caption]","type":"image","channels":["desktop","tablet","phone"]}The failure to convert started to show with Stacey, as she nearly landed herself a five-minute major penalty in the third period for her hit on Ashton Bell. While the call was reduced to a two-minute minor penalty after a league review, the emotions were running higher than usual.
The series is bringing back ghosts of Montreal’s playoff past against Boston’s Aerin Frankel last postseason. It was a low-scoring series in which Frankel, another young American netminder, shut the door on Montreal’s stars. Poulin scored just once on 18 shots while Stacey was held scoreless on 17 shots.
Philips is posing a similar hurdle this year. Montreal’s top line directed 14 shots on net in Game 3, but anything Philips saw, she stopped.
“I think we need to do a better job of taking her eyes away,” Montreal defender Erin Ambrose said. “I think that she is an elite goaltender … but I also think that we have elite goal-scorers on this team, and we’ve just got to find a way to get dirty ones at times.”
If the Victoire stars can manage even a modicum of offence, it might just be enough to turn the tide of the series. It’s not as if the Charge is blowing the doors off with an offence of its own: The Charge played the equivalent of more than two full hockey games without scoring a goal — its longest scoreless stretch in team history. That’s largely because Desbiens has also been lights-out for her team, sporting a .949 save percentage in the series.
Even so, it’s Montreal that’s on the ropes in this semifinal series. Poulin admitted there is pressure on her group to deliver better results, but that’s nothing new for the battle-tested veteran.
“There’s always pressure,” Poulin said. “It’s how you accept it. It’s how you manage it.”
The last game of a series is always the hardest to close, so Ottawa coach Carla MacLeod isn’t betting on her opponents staying cold for this long. Especially when the Charge’s adversary is Poulin, a proven clutch performer who could catch fire at any given moment.
“You get to this point in the season, I don’t think anyone’s getting rattled too quickly,” MacLeod said.
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