About Last Night - PWHL Final Ends With Minnesota's Second-Straight Title
PWHL Season Ends With More Bonus Hockey
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PWHL Final - Minnesota Frost Defeat Ottawa Charge to Capture Second-Straight Walter Cup Title
You’d be forgiven for missing this, since women’s sports are criminally underappreciated, but the Minnesota Frost captured their second-straight PWHL Walter Cup title on Monday night.
If you did see it, you understand why it was such an excellent series.
A League of their Own
Last year in the middle of the NHL season, we were all treated to the beginning of a new hockey league. Years of hard work and dedication to growing the women’s game had finally columnated with the puck dropping on the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).
We’ll skip to the end and give the Minnesota ladies their due: Led by team Captain Kendall Coyne Schofield (one of the more prominent names in women’s hockey), the Frost were able to outlast the Ottawa Charge to win the series 3 games to 1, and capture their second title. Liz Schepers scored in overtime to bring over 11,000 Minnesota hockey fans to their feet in celebration.
I say outlast because literally every game in this series went to overtime, with Saturday night’s third game going to triple overtime. So, lots of bonus hockey in this series. And that made for some truly fun hockey to watch, with Saturday’s game being a true classic.
The fun part of long OT games is that as teams begin to fatigue, mistakes become more common, leading to moments where a player can become a hero. All four games in the series saw plenty of incredible chances and beautiful goals (although all four games also ended with a 2-1 score, so the goals were less frequent).
I also want to give proper kudos to the Ottawa Charge and especially their goaltender Gwyneth Phillips, who captured the PWHL’s Ilana Kloss Playoff MVP Award (think Conn Smythe for the uninitiated). Phillips finished the playoffs with an insane .954 save percentage and 1.15 Goals Against Average. Ottawa only trailed once in the entire series (Monday’s game when Minnesota took the lead in the second), and Phillips played a big role in that.
That’s just one of her many dazzling saves in this series, not to mention the many more she made through the playoffs. So much more could be said about the PWHL’s sophomore season and how excellent it was.
But I’ll take this time to commend the league on continuing to advance the game to a whole new level and bring these talented women into the spotlight that they deserve. The league is going to expand to eight teams next season, adding Seattle and Vancouver to the mix. I hope this is just the start of a blossoming league that not only advances the women’s game, but pushes the NHL to be better. My hope is that the PWHL and NHL begin working hand in hand…something I’m not confident the NHL will do since it’s mostly run by tired old men living in the past.
Worth reading:
PWHL - MINNESOTA WINS SECOND STRAIGHT WALTER CUP, PHILIPS VOTED ILANA KLOSS PLAYOFF MVP
Carolina Beats Florida 3-0 for First Conference Final Win Since 2006, Defying Odds of “Florida in 3” Bets
Well, I guess they were bound to win one.
Logan Stankhoven scored about halfway through the second period and Freddie Andersen stopped all 20 Panthers’ shots for a 3-0 win Monday.
As we’re enroute to a likely second year of Edmonton vs Florida in the cup final, my interest in this series is admittedly not too high. I was happy to see Florida win last season because I felt players like Barkov deserved some glory (he has always been woefully underrated). This year I was hoping for Winnipeg to finally get a moment of glory, so I’m just riding the season out with the “whatever happens, happens” mentality.
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