Emerance Maschmeyer, PWHL Ottawa's starting goaltender discusses her pregame preparation, attention to detail, and the fact she feels like a "forward at heart."

 In last week’s game against PWHL Toronto, Ottawa’s Emerance Maschmeyer was in net when a pass to Toronto player Natalie Spooner picked up the pass and threw it on net. Maschmeyer pushed out to reposition herself in front and made a huge pad save to keep the Ottawa lead at 2-0 in the first period.  

Maschmeyer says she’s been working on something called “post integration." Wonder what that is? 

“Sometimes I think as goalies we get stuck on our posts. We use it as a safety net. It's kind of comforting,” Maschmeyer said. “You feel it [the post] and you know where you are, but there's times where if players are coming in and you're trying to make a save well on the post, it kind of pushes you off the post and usually there's a hole that opens up on the near side.“ 

Maschmeyer says she’s trying to free herself from that security blanket.  

“So it's just finding times that I can get free off my posts so that I'm able to move laterally better, but while also being big on the shot. And there's certain situations I have to do both.” 

Before joining PWHL Ottawa, Maschmeyer had been a stalwart with Team Canada. The diminutive, athletic and highly intelligent goaltender has been one of PWHL Ottawa’s better players through the first two games, accumulating a 1.98 goals-against average and a .917 save percentage. 

The 29-year-old Maschmeyer previously played for Harvard University, the Calgary Inferno and the gold-medal winning Canadian team as a backup to Ann-Renée Desbiens in Beijing in 2022. 

Maschmeyer says she focuses on her mindset, routines, technical details and preparation to play at her best. 

“I have a pretty extensive routine,” Maschmeyer told The Hockey News. “The night before a game I'll always write out what my day will look like, because to me, I like to make the least amount of decisions on game day as possible."

“I find when I'm making a lot of decisions, it takes a lot of energy and so with this league we play at all different times…[If] I'm feeling a little tired maybe I'll hop on the ice to get kind of my legs going with a later game.” 

The routine helps Maschmeyer play her best hockey. 

“I can get to that flow state. There’s an area when you play that you'e not thinking,” Maschmeyer said. “So, if I'm finding I wake up and I'm overthinking things, then maybe it's playing an extra game of Spikeball before the game and just getting loose or the opposite maybe. I'm high energy and I need to come back down. So just finding a way to manage the energy.” 

There are also the technical details that Maschmeyer fixates on to improve her game with PWHL Ottawa’s goalie coach Pierre Groulx. Maschmeyer says Groulx has brought a different perspective to her game. 

“Pierre has been awesome. He brings a lot of detail to my game, and he's a fresh set of eyes. For me, I've kind of worked with the same couple of goalie coaches throughout the last probably 10 years of my career. So it's been really cool to see his perspective too and he comes from a different line of hockey right with the NHL and how he operates is a little bit different.” 

Groulx has also helped Maschmeyer with “post integration”. Another thing they are working on is passing.  Maschmeyer says she loves to dish the puck. 

On Saturday, she got an assist on the team’s fourth goal, coming out of her net to launch a pass to Natalie Snodgrass who caught PWHL Toronto napping on a shift change. Snodgrass walked in and scored on a mini-breakaway.  

"I'm a forward at heart even though I'm in the net. Anytime I can help my team transition the puck quickly, whether it's breaking out of the zone or stretch pass. I saw the opportunity when they were all changing so I thought that would be a good time.” 

 And Maschmeyer has another personal milestone she covets, to score a goal. “Yeah, that's the next goal for sure.”