PWHL Montreal set sights on inaugural Walter Cup

MONTREAL – PWHL Montreal’s quest for the first-ever Walter Cup gets underway in a best-of-five series against PWHL Boston, starting Thursday at Place Bell.

TICKETS: PWHL Boston @ PWHL Montreal

Marie-Philip Poulin and Montreal enjoyed a successful inaugural campaign in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, finishing second in the regular season standings on the strength of a 10-3-5-6 record (W-OTW-OTL-L).

Poulin, Laura Stacey and Erin Ambrose – all members of Team Canada – drove the force for Montreal with 23, 18 and 18 points respectively in 2024. Ann-Renee Desbiens and Elaine Chuli split goaltending duties. Desbiens, who’s also part of Team Canada, owned a 2.28 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage across 16 games played, while Chuli recorded a 1.61 GAA and a .949 SV% in eight appearances.

The team’s runner-up finish in the regular season means Montreal will own home ice advantage in their first-round series against Boston. “Home ice” took on multiple different meanings for Kori Cheverie’s club in their debut season, having played home games in three different buildings: Place Bell, the Verdun Auditorium, and the Bell Centre, where on April 20 a new record was set for the largest attendance (21,105) for a women’s hockey game worldwide.

Though the location sometimes changed, the fan support never altered. That, Ambrose says, is something that doesn’t go unnoticed inside the PWHL Montreal locker room, or across the League for that matter.

“Every other team in our League says it, that our fans are louder than everybody else,” Ambrose told reporters following the Canadiens Skills Competition presented by RONA in February. “It’s a testament to the city, a testament to the hockey culture here and the fans that truly have loved and embraced us from the very beginning.”

For the length of the postseason, PWHL Montreal will settle into Place Bell, the home of the Laval Rocket. The organization announced on April 26 that all of Montreal’s playoff games will be hosted inside the 10,000-plus capacity arena, where the team played four times this year, posting a 2-1-0-1 record.

Standing in Montreal’s way for their opening-round matchup is Boston, who finished in third place with an 8-4-3-9 record during the regular season. Alina Müller, Megan Keller and Susanna Tapani paced Boston’s offense this year with 16, 15 and 13 points respectively. Captain Hilary Knight, Lexie Adzija and Jamie Lee Rattray followed with 11 apiece. Aerin Frankel carried most of the weight in net, posting an 8-6-2 record, to go along with a 2.00 GAA and a .929 SV%.

Montreal and Boston split their season series at two apiece with three of the four games decided by one goal. The American side won the first and last matchups, 3-2 (OT) on January 13 and 4-3 on May 4, while the Canadian club was victorious in the middle meetings by scores of 2-1 (OT) on February 4 and 3-1 on March 2.

One of the storylines heading into this series is the head-to-head between Poulin and Knight, both of whom are trailblazers and dominant leaders in the women’s game. Poulin, who captains Canada’s national team and Knight, who wears the “C” for the United States, were also at one-point teammates with Les Canadiennes de Montréal in the defunt Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL). May the best the player (and team) win.

See below for PWHL Montreal’s complete first-round schedule:

Like the NHL, games requiring overtime will be settled five-on-five until a winning goal is scored. Where the leagues’ playoff formats do differ, however, is the way in which first-round matchups are determined. While the NHL follows a wildcard system, the PWHL awards the first-place team the choice between the third- (Boston) and fourth-place (Minnesota) teams as their first-round opponent. This year, Toronto finished atop the PWHL standings and opted to play Minnesota (fourth place) in round one.

The winner of the Montreal-Boston semifinals will meet the winner of the Toronto-Minnesota series in the best-of-five finals of the PWHL playoffs.

Puck drop for Game 1 between Montreal and Boston on Thursday is at 7:00 p.m. ET. For tickets, click here. Fans can catch the game on TSN1, TSN5 and RDS.