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Scotiabank Arena was filled to the rafters tonight as 19,285 fans bore witness to the home team’s win in the Battle on Bay Street. For once, Montreal didn’t give an insane number of shots on net, but that might have been because Toronto, who is reputed for shooting a lot, chose quality over quantity. Whatever the reason though, the real cause of Montreal’s defeat was its anemic power play unit. Kori Cheverie’s team had six power plays and failed to score, giving the team a 3% success rate on the season. One of Montreal’s glaring issue was managing to find lanes to shoot on goal as the Toronto penalty killing unit did a wonderful job blocking shots.
All game long, Toronto players were closer to Marie-Philip Poulin than her own shadow. Montreal’s ace did manage to take six shots on net, but she never had space or time to take them. Poulin was positively fuming on the Montreal bench as the clock trickled down to 0, as Maureen Murphy told me in an
interview a couple of weeks ago talking about the Toronto-Montreal rivalry: “They have a lot of Canadian national team players, we have a lot of Canadian national team players, and you know they’re competitive people, so they don’t want to lose to their friends.”
Montreal did manage to keep Natalie Spooner off the scoresheet, which is no small feat of late, but Toronto’s offence came from elsewhere. The score was still 0-0 after 40 minutes when Jesse Compher broke the deadlock five minutes into the third frame when Montreal’s defense left her all alone in front of the net. Brittany Howard and birthday girl Hannah Miller got the assists on the play. Miller wasn’t done celebrating her birthday though as she scored the insurance goal 10 minutes later. Ann-Renée Desbiens could only partly stop her effort as she had no eyes on the puck before it was too late.
Montreal still had hopes for a comeback and Cheverie kept Desbiens on the bench to get a sixth skater, but the strategy backfired when Victoria Bach scored her first goal of the season in just her third game. She started the year as a reserve player but was signed to a two-year standard player agreement (‘SPA’) on February 1st, prompting Jess Jones to go from an SPA to a reserve contract.
Catherine Dubois played the last game of her second 10-day SPA with Montreal, meaning if Daniele Sauvageau wants to keep her on the roster, she’ll have to sign her to a standard contract. To do so though, the Montreal GM would have to void one of the 1-year contracts given to another player on the roster, as explained in this
interview with Jillian Dempsey.
Montreal will have little time to lick its wounds as the team will be back in action Sunday afternoon as they’ll welcome PWHL Minnesota at Laval’s Place Bell. Tickets to the game are reportedly sold out so there should be plenty of atmosphere, just like there was in Toronto tonight. There’s no doubt whatsoever that a PWHL Toronto crowd is a lot noisier than a Maple Leaf crowd. Toronto has now beaten Montreal twice in the season and only three games remain to be played between the rivals. The next duel will take place in Toronto on International Women’s Day aka March 8, before the two teams meet again, this time in Pittsburgh on March, 17. The final showdown between the two bitter rivals is set for April 21st at the Verdun Auditorium.
With tonight’s win, Toronto moves into third place in the standings tied in points at 17 with Montreal, but Kori Cheverie’s team has got a game in hand. Sunday’s visitors in Laval Minnesota are currently in first place with 18 points. In other words, Sunday’s winner will hold the first place come Monday morning.
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