Ottawa Charges Past Montréal, Earns Canada's First Finals Berth

For the first time, the Walter Cup Final will be contested by a Canadian team, and just as we all predicted, that team will be the Ottawa Charge. The representatives of the nation’s capital peaked at the right time and blazed past the regular season champions in four games.

Coming into the series, there were questions about how much scoring the Montréal Victoire could get from their depth players. In the second half of the regular season, the majority of the Victoire’s goals came from their top line players in Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey, and Jennifer Gardiner. However, Victoire forward Maureen Murphy expressed confidence in the team’s ability to bring the offense in the post-season:

“We didn't have a ton of secondary scoring and we still finished first, we still had a great regular season. So if we could get that in the playoffs, no one's stopping us.”

The Charge seemed willing to take that risk. At every opportunity, head coach Carla MacLeod matched up Ottawa’s dogged top line of Emily Clark, Mannon McMahon, and Gabbie Hughes against the Victoire’s top line. Their attentions held the Victoire’s most prolific players to two goals and six points across four games, far below their usual standard. And while Murphy herself scored two goals in the series, only one other Victoire player from outside the top line put away a goal.

On the other side of the ice, it was a different story. While harrying the Victoire’s best scorers, the Charge’s top line also managed to put away two goals, including the only goal scored in game three from McMahon. But the Charge’s other three lines also contributed four goals, and their defenders scored twice. That depth proved to be the difference in a closely contested series in which all four games were decided by a single goal.

Since the series was so tightly contested, the other big storyline was the goaltending. Both Ann-Renée Desbiens of Montréal and Gwyneth Phillips of Ottawa are finalists for the Goaltender of the Year Award. The same two women were in net for the gold medal game of the 2025 Women’s World Championship, where Phillips’ Americans took the victory in overtime.

Across the four games of this series, Desbiens saw 140 shots and allowed eight goals for a .943 save percentage, better than every regular season goaltender to play more than a single game. Although her team lost the series, Desbiens deserves accolades for her performance; she truly gave her team a chance to win every night.

Phillips, a rookie who had only started five games prior to Emerance Maschmeyer’s injury in March, showed why she was the first goaltender taken in the 2024 Draft. Even aside from her game three shutout and a sterling .956 save percentage, Phillips showed she was capable of defending her net against one of the top scorers on the planet, and the top team in the PWHL besides. She was excellent when the Victoire challenged her at the top of her crease, from a distance, and on lateral passes.

Throughout the series, the Charge focused in on the Victoire’s strength to neutralize them, and their weaknesses to exploit them. Aside from the pressure against Montréal's top scoring line, the Ottawa penalty kill was aggressive, preventing the Victoire’s attackers from utilizing their typical strategies. That strong forecheck disrupted the Victoire all series, particularly cancelling out one of the Victoire’s top strengths: their ability to move pucks up the center of the ice through their defense corps.

Perhaps the greatest strength the Charge displayed was the scoring prowess of their second line. The combination of Shiann Darkangelo, Tereza Vanišová, and Brianne Jenner accounted for more than a third of the Charge’s shots on goal throughout the series and three of the team’s eight goals. Two of those goals came against Montréal's top line.

While the Charge’s gameplan in this series—prioritizing the neutralization of their opponent’s highest-scoring line—was successful, they will be facing a very different team in the Walter Cup Final. The Minnesota Frost have not been struggling to find scoring outside of a single line. But if Ottawa finds themselves able to target their new opponent’s particular strengths and weaknesses as well as they did in the opening round, they may be poised to bring the Walter Cup to Canada for the first time.