LAVAL, Que. — Abby Roque scored the overtime winner on Thursday night to cap an incredible comeback that saw the Montreal Victoire take Game 1 of the Walter Cup Finals, and after she slid on the ice in celebration, Roque hugged her teammates and she started laughing.
The game-winner against the Ottawa Charge was the second goal Roque scored, and the big one in overtime at Place Bell actually deflected in off her face.
“I just saw the puck go into my eyes and I was like, ‘OK,’ and then it somehow went in,” a grinning Roque said shortly after her team’s 3-2 victory, which saw the Victoire lead only at the very end. “I was just hoping: ‘That’s a goal, right? That’s a goal.'"
It sure was, a goal that came off a point shot that deflected off Laura Stacey’s stick first, and then Roque’s cage. And it followed what Roque described — very accurately — as a “crazy sequence of events” in a game the Charge led 2-1 until just 2.1 seconds were left in the third period.
It was about 18 seconds before that when Stacey was hit awkwardly into the boards and stayed down on the ice, writhing in pain. Captain Marie-Philip Poulin waved trainers over and later helped Stacey, her wife, off the ice. It was heartbreaking to watch, and the arena fell quiet as the Victoire star headed down the tunnel.
But when the game resumed, it was none other than Captain Clutch herself who got the puck behind the net in the game’s dying seconds, and Poulin fired it toward the net-front to give her team a chance at extending the game.
“You almost knew that Pou was possessed in that moment, and Pou doing Pou things,” said Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie.
Rookie defender Nicole Gosling started moving toward the net when she saw Poulin with the puck, and Gosling got a hold of it near the blue paint and fired it through traffic. Gosling said she wasn’t sure if it was the goal horn or the game’s final buzzer she heard at first. “I was like, ‘How much time is left? Is it actually a good goal?”
It actually was a good goal, and it set off the raucous crowd in Laval, which was amplified by a nearly non-stop in-arena DJ. The Victoire bench went nuts, too, and the team's coach was caught in the middle of it.
“I got hit in the face with a stick. They jumped on the bench. I thought my ear was bleeding. I didn’t know what was going on,” Cheverie said.
“But for our team to be able to pull something off like that, I just feel like it has gone with how we’ve played through this entire playoff series, never quitting. We could have been down and out after their second goal, and all playoffs long, we just never quit in those moments.”
One of the loudest moments of the game came just before overtime began, when Stacey returned to the ice and skated a couple of test laps. Cheverie had been planning lines with and without Stacey, and it wasn't until she did that skate that everyone realized Stacey could play.
“Abby and I looked on the ice and saw her doing hot laps and I’m like, ‘Well, there she is,’” said Victoire goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens, who made 23 saves to record the win. “Obviously she’s a fighter, she’s somebody that’s willing to do anything to help her team. She didn’t only come out on the ice. She came flying, and she generated momentum for us…”
“That’s quite the character person and player to come back after that,” Cheverie added. “In terms of medical, I don’t know at this moment, but I love that she was able to come back and continue playing.”
Just a couple minutes into the extra frame, Stacey drove the net and planted herself in front of Charge goalie Gwyneth Philips, last season’s playoffs MVP, and Roque planted herself on the other side of the net. Then came the point shot from Maggie Flaherty, and Stacey redirected the puck into Roque’s cage, and in it went.
Roque, who’s sporting a now faded left black eye from the semifinal, said she’s pretty sure that’s the first time she’s scored with that part of her body. “Maggie made a great play to try to tip it back door and somehow, face and in,” Roque said. “I’ll take it.”
“I told her she scored with her black eye,” Cheverie said, with a grin.
The opening game of the first all-Canadian Walter Cup Finals truly had it all.
It was Ottawa’s very own Rebecca Leslie who scored first in this best-of-five, and accounted for both of the Charge’s goals thanks to incredible individual efforts. Her first goal came late in the second period when Leslie toe-dragged her way into open space in the slot, and then jumped on her own rebound.
Roque tied things up for Montreal with 7:48 to go, cashing in on a beautiful cross-ice pass from Nadia Mattivi and beating Philips with a quick glove side wrister, but not even four minutes later Leslie struck again. This time it was textbook patience as Leslie delayed in the zone, peeled her way around a skirmish in front, then beat Desbiens five-hole to give her Charge the 2-1 lead.
“Obviously scoring goals is nice, but I think to win the Walter Cup, it’s going to take more than that,” a straight-faced Leslie said when it was over.
Of the chaotic end to the game, nobody involved expected anything less. “Welcome to the Walter Cup,” said Charge head coach Carla MacLeod. “What a thrill. There’s nowhere else on the planet we want to be. And the fact that we’re here, we’ve got some business to take care of, and we’re excited about that.”
The battle between a pair of rivals located a little more than 200 km from one another, between a pair of captains in Montreal’s Poulin and Ottawa’s Brianne Jenner, the long-time Team Canada teammates and frequent national team linemates, has just begun. At the end of it, one team will be Canada’s first to win the PWHL title.
Next up is Game 2 on Saturday afternoon back at Place Bell, before the series flips to Ottawa.
Asked how she might describe the Walter Cup series opener, Desbiens used one word: “Resiliency,” before adding “and a whole lot of heart ... That would probably be all.”
Resiliency, heart — and Roque’s face helped, too.
