Ann-Sophie Bettez found the back of the net after 64 seconds of play in overtime and she gave the Montreal team the first victory in its history in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, 3-2 against the Ottawa team Tuesday evening at TD Place.
Bettez recovered a puck in the slot and without hesitation, she fired a sharp shot that slipped to the right of goalie Emerance Maschmeyer.
Claire Dalton and Laura Stacey scored the other two goals for the Montreal team.
Hayley Scamurra and Katerina Mrazova scored for Ottawa, which held leads of 1-0 and 2-1 before losing.
Failing to have witnessed a multitude of goals and a victory for their favorites, the 8,318 spectators present – a full house and a record for a professional women’s hockey match – saw, first and foremost everything, a high quality match played with intensity from the first to the last minute.
They saw solid contact along the boards as well as quality saves from goalkeepers Ann-Renée Desbiens for Montreal and Maschmeyer, who faced 28 and 22 shots, respectively.
Spectators were even treated to a video replay that canceled the first goal of the match, much to their dismay, and a penalty shot skillfully blocked by Maschmeyer against none other than Marie-Philip Poulin, his teammate with the team. National of Canada, which made them jump out of their seats.
It must also be recognized that the spectators, representing all age groups, contributed to the quality of the show, not only because there were many of them in the old amphitheater on Bank Street, but through the energy they transmitted to their favorites from the start to the end of the confrontation.
Now that this first game is behind them, the players of the Montreal team will prepare for their second outing of the season, against Minnesota at the Xcel Center, the Wild’s NHL home, on Saturday afternoon.
Visits to the dungeon
It is plausible to think that several fans of the Montreal team had ventured to predict that Poulin would score the very first goal in the history of the team.
The Montreal captain did indeed achieve a first, but a little less honorable: she received a minor penalty for knocking down a rival behind the opposing net, the first of three against Kori Cheverie’s troop during the initial period.
The infraction against Poulin, called during the fourth minute of play, was the starting point of a widespread trend in the first period as Ottawa controlled the puck and spent the majority of the period in the Montreal zone.
The shots on goal after 20 minutes — 10 to 4 in favor of Ottawa — demonstrated this
During Poulin’s punishment, Desbiens had to be vigilant to prevent Ottawa from taking the lead. She was particularly solid on quality shots from Gabrielle Hughes and Katerina Mrazova.
Desbiens continued to look invincible until Mikyla Grant-Mentis slipped the puck into the net at 11:21 of the middle period.
This goal caused an outpouring of joy among the spectators, who warmly applauded the feat for two or three minutes.
However, while the ovation lasted, the referees began to consult each other. They went to the video replay to finally notice that the puck had slipped under the net, and not between the post and Desbiens’ pad, thus canceling the goal.
Almost five minutes later, the spectators were able to show their joy again, and this time without bad news following.
Scamurra beat Desbiens with a quality slapshot, fired from the left faceoff circle, during a power play.
The advance, however, was fleeting. Just 81 seconds later, Dalton scored the first goal in the history of the Montreal team on a wrist shot that slipped to Maschmeyer’s right.
The third period kept the fans on the edge of their seats until Mrazova slotted the puck behind Desbiens, taking advantage of a nice pass from Ashton Bell, whose second assist of the evening at 5 :18.
Stacey, however, would tie the game with just over five minutes remaining in regulation time.