January 27, 2024
Montreal 2 – Ottawa 1
The inaugural season of PWHL women’s hockey is now eight games in and so far has provided some great hockey to fans through its six fledgling cities. Tonight, Montreal played at home against Ottawa with hopes of remaining at the top of the league, tied with Minnesota for first place. Meanwhile Ottawa have been outshooting their opponents practically all season long, but find themselves in the middle of the pack.
Montreal started the game strong, flying out of the gate probably energized by the large crowd that had turned out to cheer them on. Laura Stacey gave Montreal the lead midway through the first period, tucking a wrap around past Ottawa goalie Emerance Maschmeyer, in what proved to be the only goal of the first act. While the action was fairly even, Ottawa edged Montreal on shots by a tally of twelve shots to Montreal’s eleven.
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Early in the second period, Stacey went in alone on a break away but was hauled down by Ashton Bell and went crashing into goalie Maschmeyer, who spent several minutes recuperating from the collision with her trainer on the ice. Once recovered, she instantly had to face a penalty shot and was able to out-maneuver Stacey who tried to deke her and slide the puck by the right post. Maschmeyer was having one of it and the game remained tied.
The second period was a fairly even battle that grew more and more feisty as time wore on. Montreal took several penalties and were forced to defend short-handed against at Ottawa team that weren’t quite able to assert any sort of dominance with the extra player. Several scrums broke out following a boarding call against Montreal, and both goalies were run by aggressive attacking plays. As it isn’t permitted to fight in the PWHL, these scrums merely resulted in pushing and shoving that were greeted by cheers from the crowd.
Ottawa double up Montreal’s shot count in the second, with a tally of twelve to six, but neither club was able to score.
The third period was dominated by Ottawa, and the momentum shift could be felt throughout Place Bell. Ottawa showed strong work ethic and grit, especially along the boards where they won a good portion of their puck battles. Their hard work eventually paid off, with Hayley Scamurra firing home a nice wrist shot to tie things up at 6:10, assisted by Brianne Jenner and Savannah Harmon.
Hockey fans in Montreal are used to having stellar goalies and the play of Ann-Renée Desbiens was exactly that, as she made 43 saves on the night – the second game in a row that Montreal have faced more than 40 shots against. Ottawa’s Meschmeyer was also solid, turning away 22 shots and making a tremendous save on Stacey on the a penalty shot to keep Ottawa in the game.
With the score even at the end of regulation, the game went into overtime; which closely follows the current NHL system – three on three for five minutes followed by a shootout if neither team scores during that prolongation period. Despite Montreal being greatly out played during the third period, then came into overtime looking the better team and had all the momentum that they turned into a top-shelf snipe from Maureen Murphy, winning the game by a score of two to one.
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Ticket sales throughout the league have been rather good so far, and tonight was no exception. In fact, 8646 people turned out to Place Bell tonight, setting a Canadian attendance record for women’s hockey in Canada.
Ottawa will be back in action against at home on February 4th as they host New York while Montreal takes on Boston the same day. Montreal’s next home game will be against Minnesota on February 18th.
