‘Determined, urgent, desperate, but no panic’: Montreal knows what’s at stake in Game 2

With an extra day off between Games 1 and 2 of their PWHL semi-final, the Montreal Victoire gave their players a full day off before heading back to practice on Saturday morning.

When they did get back to work, it was a group aware of the challenge ahead of them, but also one that was confident of getting the job done.

The stakes are quite simple for this Victoire team heading into Sunday afternoon’s game against the Ottawa Charge [2:00 p.m., TSN/RDS in Canada and YouTube internationally]. Find a way to win the organization’s first playoff game, or head to Ottawa for Game 3 down 0-2 in a best-of-five series.

“You don’t lose the series in game one, and you don’t win the series in game one,” said Montreal defender Erin Ambrose. “It’s all about how we respond, and I thought we looked great today.”

The Victoire are aware that they didn’t play their best game in the playoff opener, and they are focused on ensuring that it doesn’t happen in Game 2.

“We’re determined, urgent, desperate, but no panic,” said Montreal head coach Kori Cheverie. “I think there’s an unwavering confidence among the players that they can get the job done.”

“We expect more from ourselves,” said Montreal goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens. “If we could say that we had our best game and we still came away with a loss, it would be hard to come back with that perspective. When you know that there are things you can improve, that are within your control, that us as players can do, it gives us some optimism.”

Desbiens looking forward

Desbiens is the first to admit that there’s room for improvement in her game. She says Ottawa did a good job at creating traffic and that she has worked on video to make sure she does a better job at fighting through it. When discussing Ottawa’s second goal, Desbiens was even more critical of herself.

She says that she lost sight of the puck and by the time she found it, it was already back in the net.

“The pass was made when I turned my head, I lost sight of it, and I looked stupid, I’m not going to lie.”

Depth scoring still a question mark

All four lines generated scoring chances for Montreal on Thursday, but the team did not score a goal at even strength. The second power play unit did score a goal when Maureen Murphy tapped home a Kati Tabin pass. It was Murphy’s fourth point in four PWHL playoff games, which leads the team.

The constant talk about the team’s lack of offence from depth players is not something that goes unnoticed by those players. Their confidence isn’t shaken, however.

“Obviously we hear about it all the time, but at the end of the day, we didn’t have a ton of secondary scoring and we still finished first. We still had a great regular season,”said Murphy after Thursday’s game. “If we can get that in the playoffs, no one’s stopping us. Especially as someone that likes to put the puck in the net, just like a lot of people on our team, it sucks but I think when you can be process-focused, eventually little bounces are going to come.”

“We want, we need that secondary scoring,” said Cheverie. “I like where our group’s confidence is at right now. I think they’re putting themselves in good positions to find the offence. It’s just a matter of putting it in the back of the net now.”

“Like I said, we did pretty damn well without it, so I can’t wait to see what happens the next few games when we get it going,” Murphy said.