Once Again, Montréal's Red-Hot First Line is a Double-Edged Sword

The story of the game looked all but written through two periods last Sunday as Montréal Victoire took on the Minnesota Frost. Entering the third, the Victoire were shutout and their goalscoring woes looked poised to punish them with a fourth-straight regulation loss. That is until late heroics from Marie-Philip Poulin and Abby Roque forced overtime, where the captain put the game away for Montréal.

Saturday's win highlighted just how dominant the Victoire's top line of Roque, Poulin, and Laura Stacey has been so far this year. Through nine games, they now have 11 goals and 28 points between the three of them. Poulin's 11-point tally is tied for the league-lead and she sits atop the PWHL with 1.22 points/game. Roque is currently on pace for a career-best season, and sits second behind Poulin with 1.11 points/game. Stacey has had a slightly slower start with two goals and seven points, but leads the league in shots with 43. It's only a matter of time before she starts finding the back of the net more consistently as she's apt to do.

But outside the top line, Montréal can't seem to get any consistent scoring going. Roque, Poulin, and Stacey account for over half of the team's points, and have seven of Montréal's last eight goals. If this all sounds a little familiar, it's because it is. Last year, Jenn Gardiner played alongside Poulin and Stacey on the top line, and the trio formed one of the league's most dominant lines. But beyond those three, the team lacked any consistent secondary scoring. That missing depth became costly come playoff time, leading to their second-straight first-round exit.

Now back in the same situation, head coach Kori Cheverie is faced with a lineup conundrum once again. It's hard to make an argument for breaking up the first line right now, considering their dominant performance on Sunday. But if the Victoire want to make a deeper playoff run this year, they need more than one line that can score, and that might mean having to get creative with the lineup. The return of Lina Ljungblom and Jade Downie-Landry offers an opportunity to do that without breaking up the top line, but the urgency to find a winning combination needs to be there.

Altogether, the chemistry between Roque, Poulin, and Stacey is too strong to split up right now, but the team's recent three-game slump is a reminder of what can happen when they have trouble scoring. Depending how the next few weeks go, Cheverie may be left with no choice but to divvy up her top talent.