The scene is easy to imagine: it’s mid-March and the Montreal team of the Professional Women’s Hockey League has just suffered a heartbreaking loss in overtime during a mid-season home game. After the match, head coach Kori Cheverie and forwards Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey, in turn, took a few minutes to express their disappointment to the few media representatives on site. It would have been normal.
On Saturday, we were treated to a completely different scene, which can be explained by the magnitude of all the moments that these three ladies had just experienced.
A clarification is necessary: the result was the same, the Montreal team losing 3-2 in overtime against the Boston team.
Yet at the post-match press conferences on Saturday, smiles lit up their faces, as they had loved the rest of their day, their first in what will, this year at least, be their main castle .
The smiles of Poulin and Stacey were particularly significant when we know that the first thought she had scored the winning goal 20 seconds into overtime only to see that goal canceled by a video check, because it had been determined that the second had committed obstruction against the rival goalkeeper.
“I saw a goal!” “, Poulin said, laughing, when a journalist asked her what she had seen during this sequence.
For more than 20 minutes after the match, Poulin and Stacey looked back on all the great moments of this day of January 13, 2024.
The energy generated by the 3,245 spectators – a full house – from start to finish, even after the visiting club’s heartbreaking goal.
The presentation of the players of the Montreal club, one by one, which culminated with the arrival at center ice of Poulin, the idol of so many young Quebecers, and with a monster ovation, another, reserved for the legend of Beauceville.
The presence of these five pioneers of Quebec women’s hockey, Danielle Goyette, France St-Louis, Kim St-Pierre, Caroline Ouellette and Danièle Sauvageau, invited for the ceremonial puck drop, carried out by Ouellette’s two daughters, as if to illustrate that the past had led to this day, but that there would be continuity, too.
Poulin and Stacey had not forgotten anything about this day and they will never forget. Above all, they understood that despite the defeat on the ice, something had happened that surpassed the final score.
“I think, in all honesty, this game, this moment is so much bigger than a goal, than a loss, than an overtime loss actually. There are so many things that come into play,” Stacey corroborated.
“Seeing the young girls, the young boys, all the fans in the stands today (Saturday) who have waited so long for this, and us too. It was beyond our expectations and I hope we can continue like this for the rest of the year and move things forward, not only in Montreal, but around the world,” added the native striker. from Mississauga.
Stacey admitted that she particularly enjoyed the moment when she and her teammates were gathered around the center faceoff circle during the pre-match ceremony.
“When we all waved to the crowd and the lights came on and the building exploded, I got chills,” Stacey said.
“This is the city where we have trained for so long, these are the people that have supported us for so long. They were all there this evening. They too had to endure a lot. They waited, they hoped. Finally, they came and the match was extraordinary. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment before the first faceoff.”
Poulin was particularly touched by the audience’s ovation at the end of the match.
“To see people still in the stands after a defeat, that says a lot. You can win and have people supporting you, but when you lose and people cheer for Montreal, it’s very special. »
It is undeniable that a love story has just begun between the public of the greater Montreal area and its team in the new professional women’s hockey league.
A love story that Cheverie seems ready to maintain and solidify. The first sentences she spoke to journalists after the match could attest to this.
With the exception of the last three words, she spoke in the language of Molière, and this earned her a well-felt bravo and applause from the journalists!
” Hello everybody. Thank you for your support. Now I’m learning (the) French with my teacher. So, thank you for your patience with me with my French. »