The Walter Cup Finals

The PWHL Finals are upon us and on Tuesday we get Game 1 of this year’s run to the Walter Cup. The Ottawa Charge, making their first entry into the playoff structure; will take on the defending champion Minnesota Frost who are looking to build a dynasty in the infancy of the league.

How’d we get here?

I thought you’d never ask. Let’s dive in.

The Ottawa Charge vs. The Montreal Victoire

The Charge beat the Montreal Victoire 3-1 in their opening round series. Montreal came into the playoffs as the #1 seed with a 9 point cushion over MIN and OTT, and a 5 point margin over Toronto (who finished in 2nd place.) Well, with great power comes great responsibility and MTL was able to pick their first round opponent and they chose OTT for what was said to be ease of travel. They clearly learned nothing from watching TOR get dusted by their pick in last year’s playoff, and the scout team clearly didn’t do their due diligence on The Great Wall of Gwyneth.

^{(yeah I know, I need to update this photo)}

Gwyneth Philips has led the PWHL playoffs in GAA (1.14) Save Percentage (.956%) and is the only goaltender to post a shutout: oh yeah and this is her first year in the league. I’m not sure, but is that good? Not to be outdone, the runner up in these same stats was in net for MTL: Ann-Renée Desbiens. These 2 made this a nail-biter for the entire series as all 4 games were decided by a one goal margin. Add to that, the only game the Victoire won was the epic 4OT thriller that was Game 2. Catherine Dubois notched the GWG with less than 4mins to play, but the enduring image of the game was when the Charge trainers put packets of mustard up on the glass for the players to recharge with.

Next year’s PWHL playoffs brought to you by French’s?

As one series featured a goalie duel and where goals were at a premium, the other series featured some wide open hockey and scoring to spare.

The Minnesota Frost vs. The Toronto Sceptres

For the 2nd season in a row these 2 squads faced off to open the playoffs. This time the Sceptres didn’t pick the Frost, but found themselves in the exact same position as last year as they fell 3-1 to the defending champs.

Whereas the other series saw a total of 14 goals scored, this series saw that number nearly eclipsed in Game 3 alone. Both teams had goalie changes and featured plenty of scoring as the sides combined to put 22 different skaters on the scoring sheet with at least one goal each. And the 9 leading scorers for the entire playoffs all suited up in this series.

At the end of the day, the Big Dogs on the Frost ate and were supported by the rest of the roster and with the backline chipping in nicely. The goalie tandem for the Frost continued their rotation with Nicole Hensley putting up the better statistical numbers but Maddie Rooney didn’t lose a game in the series. Kendall Coyne Schofield, Taylor Heise and Michela Cava continued to prove how big time players show up in big time moments and I know this isn’t true, but it seemed as if Lee Stecklein and Sophie Jacques were on the ice for every offensive sequence.

And speaking of local legend Heise, how sick of her are the Sceptres? For the second year in a row she sends them home with a series clinching Geno.

I also want to give a quick stick tap for the goalie room of Toronto. This was a wide-open series and Kristen Campbell saw a lot of rubber in these games and hung in there. And a special shoutout to Carly Jackson who came in for just their 2nd start of the year and battled the final game to overtime. Stick taps for both Soupy and CJ.

Ok, so it’s the Walter Cup Finals. The young upstarts from Ottawa with their first taste of post-season play vs. the wily vets who’ve “been there, done that” and are chasing another ring.

Not sure if you’ve listened to the podcast where we made our picks, but guess who’s got 2 thumbs and picked the final correctly?

The league has the Finals schedule posted and it all kicks off on Tuesday night in Ottawa. There’s a lot of familiarity between these 2 teams from not only the regular season, but also the NCAA and international play, so let’s see how long it takes to get the nasty ramped up (I’m guessing about a half a period).

And am I the only one that would love to see the Finals be a 7 game series? Maybe I’m being greedy, but the more we get to see all of these teams play the better.

And if you haven’t checked out our podcast, I’ll ask first of all: how dare you? And secondly I’ll tell you that you’re missing out. On our most recent pod we had Sadie Lundquist from College Hockey Inc. on and we had a great convo about what she’s doing and how she’s helping grow and support the players and the game that gave so much to her.

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