OTTAWA — Marie-Philip Poulin cracked open a Molson Canadian tallboy and poured it into the Walter Cup, and then the Montreal Victoire captain took a couple of chugs with a massive smile on her face while her teammates whooped and hollered around her.
Laura Stacey took sips, Ann-Renée Desbiens took sips, Abby Roque took sips — every Victoire player drank from that cup at centre ice at the Canadian Tire Centre — and then players drenched head coach Kori Cheverie with a celebratory beer shower.
History was made on Wednesday night as Montreal became the first-ever Canadian winner of the PWHL title with an emphatic 4-0 win over the Ottawa Charge to end the best-of-five series in four games.
“Oh, it’s very special,” Poulin said, wearing a black Coupe Walter Championnes ballcap on her head and a big grin on her face. “Honestly, lots of emotion, but being able to do that with this group, it’s surreal and we’ll take it in, for sure.”
When Poulin was presented with the Walter Cup, she held it over her head and pumped it in the air while her teammates cheered and confetti exploded behind her.
“She deserved this more than anybody in the world,” veteran defender Erin Ambrose said with tears in her eyes, just before she cracked open a beer.
The Victoire were paced by two goals from Roque, including a highlight reel short-hander with 10:02 to go that saw Roque out-skate a Charge defender and roof a backhand before dropping down on one knee for an impassioned fist-pump.
“It felt good — and we didn’t want to wait,” Roque said of her third goal of this post-season, which gave the Victoire a 2-0 lead. “Sometimes if we get up a goal, we’re kind of playing passive. But we got up one, we want to get up two. Then we got up three. That was the goal today, keep on trying to score.”
The Victoire did: Maggie Flaherty made it 3-0 with about six minutes to go and Lina Ljungblom struck less than two minutes later, but Roque’s short-handed marker was the biggest of all in a series that was low on goals. Roque pointed out it was Stacey who set it up by “putting her body on the line” to allow Roque to pick up the loose puck and go while they were short-handed.
“She calls herself a playoff player, and she proved that, holy hell,” Stacey said of Roque. “I would take a hit, put a body, anything, if she’s gonna put that puck in the net, time and time again.”
Poulin was in the penalty box at the time, and as per the PWHL’s jailbreak rule, the Victoire captain got to leave early (there were 13 seconds remaining) thanks to the goal.
“I think I peed a little in the penalty box, I was so excited,” Poulin said, pointing out she had never celebrated so hard in a penalty box before, and got to hug her teammates immediately when she got out. “I thought they were gonna go straight to the bench, but I’m so happy they came to see me.”
Victoire players were jumping and hugging on the bench after Ljungblom’s goal to put them up by four with as many minutes remaining in the game. They jumped as the seconds ticked down, then threw their gloves and sticks in the air and skated toward Desbiens to celebrate.
Poulin was named playoffs MVP after putting up eight points in nine games, tied with Roque for the lead in the post-season. No. 29 shook her head after her name was announced and looked directly at her goaltender, who made 23 saves to record the shutout, because she felt Desbiens deserved the honour. “I mean, she was unbelievable all year long, all playoffs long,” said Poulin, with her classic humility.
“She’s the best player in the world, and she still won’t accept it,” Ambrose said.
“She deserves every single award that she gets,” Desbiens added. “She brings the best out of me on a daily basis, and we could not have done it without her.”
Poulin assisted the game-winner, which came 3:49 into the second period thanks to a lucky deflection from Roque, who scored the game-winner in the series opener with her face. This time, Poulin dropped the puck for Roque, who fired it on net and saw it go in off Charge defender Rory Guilday’s stick, under the pads of Gwyneth Philips.
Ottawa couldn’t manufacture much offensively. Winger Sarah Wozniewicz hit the inside of the post in the second period, Emily Clark used her speed to generate a chance in close alone, and Charge captain Brianne Jenner had an opportunity on the power play, but Desbiens made the pad save. That’s as close as the Charge got to finding the back of the net.
With the league championship win, Poulin, 35, adds to her incomparable legacy as the first Canadian captain to hoist the Walter Cup over her head, beefing up a resume that already included game-winning goals in three Olympic gold medals, which puts her in a category all her own.
She scored two game-winners in the semifinals series and authored the game-winning assists in Games 2 and 4 of the Final, and she did it all while playing hobbled by a lower-body injury that saw her wincing in pain at times on the bench. She missed 10 games at the end of the season after hurting the same knee she injured at the Olympics, and returned for the regular season finale, just in time for the playoffs, though far from 100 per cent.
“Lots,” Poulin said, of the pain she was in. “But it’s all worth it.”
“This team picked her up and helped her and honestly, I’m really, really proud of what she did because not many people would be able to do that,” Stacey said of her wife and captain.
When it was over, Stacey and a teary-eyed Poulin found each other for a hug and they both said: “We did it.”
“Those were our first words to each other, because there’s been a lot of moments of doubt, moments of frustration, two years of some tough exits out of the playoffs and doubting whether we could do it, and the injuries this year,” Stacey said. “It was like, ‘Do we have it? Can we do it? How do we keep going?’
“And honestly, to put all that down, to put all those question marks in the back of your head, out the window and lift that cup, to do it with this group of girls is pretty…”
As Stacey was talking she was interrupted by Poulin, who'd skated over and put an arm around No. 7. “Proud of her. Let’s go!” Poulin said. “Yes, we did it!”
“Oh man, we’ve cried about this cup, we’ve laughed about it, we’ve dreamt about it, and now it’s ours,” Stacey said, adding that it “hurt like hell” to lift it overhead after Poulin passed the hardware to her. “It’s heavy as hell, especially when you have nothing left in your body…”
Stacey’s right shoulder was wrapped, and in Game 1, she went down in extreme pain with a leg injury, but returned for overtime and the rest of the series.
“Honestly, I’m not sure I came back in (Game) 1, 2, or 3,” Stacey said, applauding her team’s medical staff. “They found a way, they got me back in here. I owe a lot to that whole team for me standing here to be holding that cup.”
“She was in pain — big time, and to see her step up like she did today was special,” Poulin said, wearing a giant blue chain necklace around her neck, with a rubber Victoire logo dangling from it.
The Victoire on-ice celebration lasted long after Charge players had left the ice. When the game ended, many of them looked down at the ice, and there were tears in a lot of eyes. This is the second straight year Ottawa has lost in the final.
Before they headed to their dressing room, the Charge players raised their sticks in the air to thank their fanbase and got a loud ovation from the crowd of 12,362.
Not long after that, Poulin got that Walter Cup in her hands. She skated with it toward her teammates, crouched down low, and they all crouched down and rose together as she raised the trophy in the air again in the middle of her teammates.
For Poulin, this win comes the same year she became the all-time leading scorer in women’s Olympic hockey history, and one year after she was named the IIHF Player of the Year and the PWHL MVP after leading the league in goals and points.
And now, in the third year in PWHL history, Poulin is a league champion. She was twice before at the pro level in the now-defunct CWHL, which also featured best-on-best. The difference this time is Poulin stars in the most visible and successful of any pro women’s hockey league in existence, a league that’s expanding from eight to twelve teams for its fourth season, and at a time when women’s sports are getting more than ever of the investment and shine they have long deserved.
Soaked in beer, Cheverie thought about what it meant to see her captain lift that Walter Cup.
“Oh, it’s everything,” the Victoire coach said. “I remember her face when we lost in Boston. I have the picture of it saved on my phone, and I can’t get that face out of my head, of how disappointed she was when we lost in Boston in Year One.
“And from that moment on, I was like, ‘This means the world to every single person, I’m gonna do whatever it possibly takes to get her that trophy.’ And I mean, the whole team did.”