Five stars from the Montreal Victoire showed obvious fatigue after traveling with the national team to Edmonton, followed immediately by a road trip to Halifax, Vancouver, Seattle, and back to Montreal. As Pat Laprade questions, where is the PWHL priority?
Edmonton-Halifax-Vancouver-Seattle-Montreal: including the Rivalry Series, that's over 15,000 kilometres in two weeks that five Montreal Victoire players had to cover, including the two top forwards, the best defender, and the team's number one goalie.
And that makes me question the relevance of this series between Canada and the United States.
I understand that the importance of international hockey is not the same for North American players in the PWHL as it is for North Americans in the NHL. I also understand that the players gain a financial benefit from it, since the revenues from these games are shared between Hockey Canada and the players, and players from both national teams are paid wages. But at some point, the PWHL is going to have to become the priority.
Think about it.
Five Montreal players, all of whom play significant roles on the team, along with the head coach and assistant coach, were in Edmonton for a week. Meanwhile, the rest of the team couldn’t normally practise or work on aspects like special teams.
Then, these five players joined the team in Halifax to start a series of three games in seven days, across two time zones opposite to each other, and eventually return to Montreal from Seattle on Christmas Eve to play a game the day after Boxing Day.
I’ve simply summarized the situation in two paragraphs, and I’m exhausted myself!
Imagine a schedule where you have an extra week to space out the games, hold more practices, and maybe Montreal could have scored more than one goal per game. Who knows? It could have turned two losses into two wins.
If on the eve of the game at the Bell Centre, head coach Kori Cheverie had downplayed the fatigue factor to explain the 2-1 loss to Seattle on December 23, she ultimately admitted it, along with captain Marie-Philip Poulin, on Saturday press conference after another 2-1 defeat, this time against Toronto.
Not An Easy Game For Team Canada Players
When we say the team is tired, it’s mainly the members of Team Canada who should be targeted.
Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey finished the game with a -2 differential. Erin Ambrose had an okay game, not much more. Nicole Gosling was invisible. And Ann-Renée Desbiens would certainly like to have another shot at the second goal scored against her.
It's only the fourth time in 58 matchups that Poulin has a plus/minus of -2 or worse. Stacey only fired two shots on the opposing net, after having 23 in her previous four games. Ambrose played 18 minutes, her lowest ice time this season.
That says a lot.
The first line made up of Poulin, Stacey, and Abby Roque may have dominated in the offensive zone, but the best player of the three was the one who logged the least travelling time. Roque took five shots on the opposing goalie and scored her team's only goal.
And like any good team, when your star players aren't at their best, it's the group that suffers.
Many say that things will change after the 2026 Olympic Games, that the emphasis on international games will no longer be the same. In fact, the schedule for the World Championship has already been changed. The last thing left is to get rid of the Rivalry Series from the calendar or, at the very least, stop interrupting the PWHL season for that.
Power Plays Coming To A Standstill
The Victoire only plays its next game on January 2nd in New York before playing three consecutive home games, including the one held in Quebec City on January 11.
The next few days will allow the players to spend more than 48 hours in the same time zone, to rest, but also to practise more effectively. This was one of the challenges during this road trip. The team mostly had practices the day before or the morning of a game, which are not the same type of workouts as a regular practice.
Kori Cheverie's squad will, among other things, be able to work on their power play, which is in desperate need. The team is 0-for-13 in its last four games and is second-to-last in the PWHL with a success rate of 10%.