How Boston completed the sweep of Montreal to advance to the PWHL finals
Boston completed its sweep of Montreal with a 3-2 overtime win in Game 3 of the semifinals on Tuesday night. Boston came back from a 2-0 deficit with three unanswered goals in the final 15 minutes of the game. Sophie Shirley scored first for Boston, followed by a short-handed goal by Amanda Pelkey — who is now tied for the league lead in playoff scoring — to send a third straight game in the series to overtime. Susanna Tapani, who was acquired via trade with Minnesota in February, scored the game winner just over one minute into the extra period. Aerin Frankel continued her impressive playoffs with 32 saves, and a .941 save percentage in the game.
Heading into the series, Boston had a nine percent chance at sweeping Montreal, the No. 2 seed, according to Dom’s playoff projection model. Boston is now the first team ever to advance to the PWHL Finals.
The team is finally clicking
No team looked better on paper heading into the inaugural PWHL season than Boston with a mix of elite talent and exceptional depth at all three positions. But the team struggled out of the gate with only three regulation wins in the first half of the season. The offense, despite the talent, was stagnant and led to two separate trades by GM Danielle Marmer — first for Tapani and then for Lexie Adzija at the trade deadline — to try to boost the team’s production.
Those attempts still took some time, and heading into the April international break for the women’s world championships, Boston remained on the outside of the playoff picture. Coming out of the break, though, the team went on a five-game point streak and won four of its games in regulation. Top-six players like Hilary Knight (four points), Hannah Brandt (four points), Alina Müller (three points) and Susanna Tapani (five points) were productive down the stretch and coach Courtney Kessel appeared to find the right mix for her forward lines after a season of tweaks and lines being put in a blender. Boston is now 7-0-1 down the stretch and is clearly peaking at the right time.
More than anything this is what people expected from Boston when looking at the team on paper: depth with elite goaltending.
“I knew we had a special group here and I knew it was going to click at some point,” said coach Courtney Kessel after the game.
Aerin Frankel
Perhaps nobody has been more important to the Boston turnaround than Frankel. She won three of her four starts down the stretch and posted a .932 save percentage. She’s been even better in the playoffs with three straight wins and a .972 save percentage. She’s made 141 saves through three games, including 109 in her first two starts.
Frankel has been making excellent reads, athletic — and sometimes desperate — saves all series and has been difficult to beat.
Tuesday night was the first time Frankel has allowed more than two goals against in the playoffs, but still only one goal — Marie-Philip Poulin’s opener — was scored at five-on-five. It’s both a credit to Frankel’s game, but also a commentary on Montreal’s offense that the team was only able to score one goal at five-on-five and three on the power play.
Frankel is no stranger to excellence in the Boston market. She was a stud starter at Northeastern and became just the fourth goalie to win the Patty Kazmaier Award as the best player in women’s college hockey in 2021. That year, Frankel only lost two games in regulation and led the nation in goals against average (0.81) and save percentage (.965). She’s been Team USA’s starter for the last two years, winning gold at the 2023 women’s worlds and silver in 2024.
Scoring depth
Depth — and the use of that depth — was a major storyline on Tuesday night and throughout the series. In the first two games, Montreal coach Kori Cheverie shortened her bench and rode her stars. It was to be expected, given Montreal is a top-heavy team, but it was hard to watch on Tuesday night and not wonder how much the heavy minutes weighed on some Montreal legs after a triple-overtime game on Saturday where five players hit over 50 minutes of ice time.
Montreal came out strong, with some new-look lines to spread out the offense, and outshot Boston 18-4 in the first period. But as the game went on, Boston’s depth was the difference.
First it was Sophie Shirley, an 11th-round pick and third-line winger with a pretty goal to beat Ann-Renèe Desbien on the doorstep.
Then, Amanda Pelkey, who started the game on the fourth line, scored short-handed to tie the game 2-2 with less than four minutes left in regulation. Pelkey, a 2018 Olympic gold medalist, went undrafted and was signed by Boston after winning a spot out of training camp. Her fourth line with Gigi Marvin and Taylor Wenczkowski was critical in Saturday’s triple-overtime win, scoring the opening and game-winning goals.
In contrast, Montreal’s three goal scorers came only from the top-six or top power-play units.
Madison Bizal, a third-pair defender, was the only depth player to register a point in the series. Eleven different players tallied at least one point in the three-game sweep and five different players from three of the top four lines scored a goal. Boston’s depth looks all the more impressive right now when we consider Jamie Lee Rattray missed the first two games, and Loren Gabel was only just activated from long-term injured reserve on Tuesday afternoon — she played limited minutes (1:31) as an extra forward, likely to get her feet wet before the finals. Not to mention Team USA star Knight continues to be snake bitten — she has 15 shots on goal and zero goals or points to show for it.
It’s also worth noting that both of Marmer’s trade acquisitions — meant to specifically boost the offense — scored in the series. In Game 1, Adzija and Tapani scored the only two Boston goals. On Tuesday, it was Tapani with her second goal of the series and her second overtime winner.
Mehek