Marie-Philip Poulin scored her first goal of the playoffs at 4:02 of the third overtime, as the Montreal Victory snatched a 1-0 win over the Minnesota Frost in front of a crowd of 7,530 on Tuesday night at Place Bell.
At 104 minutes and two seconds, it was the fourth-longest game in the history of the Professional Women’s Hockey League playoffs. Three of them took place in the Laval amphitheatre.
Poulin finished a three-way play with Abby Roque and Laura Stacey, beating Maddie Rooney with a one-timer from the right faceoff circle on the game’s 52nd winning shot of the game.
Almost half of those shots, 25 to be precise, came in overtime.
Three days after one of the most difficult games of her professional women’s hockey league career, Ann-Renée Desbiens was impeccable, stopping 38 shots.
The Victoire tied the best-of-five semifinal series with one win apiece, but will need to win a game in St. Paul to have any hope of returning to Place Bell for a fifth and decisive duel next Monday night.
The third game will take place on Thursday night at the Grand Casino Arena and the fourth the following day.
Victory is a must
The first half was going to be a good indicator of the state of mind of the Victory players after Saturday’s difficult defeat. It took a little less than 10 minutes for the Montreal team’s fans to be reassured. All that was missing were some really threatening shots and a first goal.
In goal, Desbiens faced nine shots in the first period, five of which came on a penalty to Kati Tabin. The last one on the Frost’s power play came at 7:14, and it was his last of the period.
From there, the Victoire controlled the puck and outshot the Frost 10-0 for the rest of the period, but couldn’t beat Rooney despite two power plays.
Lina Ljungblom had the best chance to open the scoring for the game on a shot from the slot midway through the period.
Kori Cheverie’s squad was unable to find that rhythm when the second period began. to the point of being frequently pushed back into its territory for most of the period and particularly during the first half of the engagement.
Desbiens kept the score at 0-0 thanks to three consecutive saves, in the first half of the period against Sidney Morin and Kelly Pannek, on two occasions. In the second half of the period, Desbiens made two more saves on awkward shots from Katy Knoll and Taylor Heise.
The Victory’s best scoring chance in the second period came with 25.1 seconds on a backhand shot from Tabin that she couldn’t lift over Rooney, who was sprawled across the ice.
The first tense moments of the third period came midway through the period when Maggie Flaherty was called for a slash.
The Victory limited the Frost to a single shot on the penalty kill. In fact, it was Montreal that had the best chance to score when Laura Stacey was able to get alone in front of Rooney, except that her backhand shot, after a nice deke, missed the target.
The third period was very evenly split and both teams struggled to generate sustained offences. The number of shots on goal — five on each side — provided proof of that.
The Victoire started the overtime with authority to the point of getting the first seven shots of the extra period, all in about five minutes.
However, the Victoire was unable to capitalize on a minor penalty to Abby Hustler at 7:35 of the period. In fact, Grace Zumwinkle had the best two shots during that stretch, but Desbiens didn’t flinch.
Desbiens also had to be alert in front of Pannek with just over six minutes left in the extra period.
Then, just a minute later, Rooney saved the game for the Frost by making a blocker save on Dara Greig, who had received a nice pass from Kaitlin Willoughby and was forgotten in the slot.
Greig had two more chances to end the game, first in the first minute of the second overtime and then with just under eight minutes to play.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
