Darkangelo nets winner, Charge win 3-2 over Victoire in Game 1 of PWHL semifinal

By Canadian Press on May 8, 2025.

LAVAL — Shiann Darkangelo scored the winner at 9:17 of the third period to lift the Ottawa Charge past the Montreal Victoire 3-2 on the road in Game 1 of their best-of-five semifinal series Thursday.

Brianne Jenner and Ashton Bell also scored for Ottawa, while Gwyneth Philips stopped 31 shots.

The Victoire (12-7-3-8) finished first in the PWHL regular-season standings, earning the right to select third-place Ottawa (12-2-4-12) over the fourth-place Minnesota Frost as their opponent.

Marie-Philip Poulin and Maureen Murphy replied for Montreal, which lost three-straight overtime games to Boston in last year’s opening round.

Ann-Renee Desbiens made 24 saves before 6,570 towel-waving fans at Place Bell.

Thursday’s game marked the first PWHL playoff game between two Canadian teams.

Darkangelo took a pass from Emily Clark and beat Desbiens with a wrist shot from the top right circle to give Ottawa the 3-2 lead.

Philips shut the door the rest of the way, denying Poulin’s backhand from the slot with seven minutes left. Three minutes later, Laura Stacey’s wrist shot rattled off Philips’s cage.

The crowd nearly erupted when Poulin appeared to pounce on a breakaway with 1:56 remaining, but the play was whistled down for offside.

The Charge made their first playoff appearance after Katerina Mrazova’s overtime goal against Toronto on the regular season’s final day clinched a spot.

Jenner opened the scoring with a power-play goal 4:54 into the game after defender Kati Tabin chipped the puck over the glass for a delay-of-game penalty. Former Montreal forward Tereza Vanisova found Jenner alone at the side of the net.

Three of four Victoire players were forward due to the PWHL’s “No Escape” rule, which forces all defending players to stay on the ice after a penalty is taken.

Montreal equalized with a power-play goal of its own when Murphy deflected a pass from Tabin into the top right corner at 12:13 of the first period.

The Victoire went 2 for 2 on the power play, while the Charge were 1 for 3. Ottawa and Montreal ranked last and second last, respectively, with the advantage this season.

Bell gave Ottawa a 2-1 lead by burying a feed from Danielle Serdachny into a gaping net with Desbiens sprawled out at 5:07 of the second.

But Poulin — who scored a league-leading 19 goals this season — evened the score with another power-play marker two minutes later, sneaking a one-timer short side past Philips to lift the fans out of their seats.

Rebecca Leslie nearly helped Ottawa regain the lead, but couldn’t bury her golden opportunity at the side of the net with less than a minute remaining in the second.

Game 2 goes Sunday afternoon back in Laval, Que., before the series shifts to the nation’s capital for Game 3 on Tuesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025.

Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press