Montreal Victoire coach was impressed by her players’ energy throughout the week

Montreal Victoire's Laura Stacey (7) moves in on Minnesota Frost goaltender Nicole Hensley (29) as Frost's Kelly Pannek (12) defends during first period PWHL hockey action in Laval, Que., Sunday, March 1, 2026. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

It’s been said since Monday: the Montreal Victoire have had a near-perfect season against the Minnesota Frost, with four wins from as many games and 10 points from a possible 12 in the standings.

However, there is a cliché in professional sport that cannot be ignored: the regular season and the play-offs are two very different worlds.

Head coach Kori Cheverie has likely not forgotten that her players have conceded just three goals to the Frost this season, none in the last two encounters. The Frost’s power play – the best in the PWHL – was also shut out on all eight occasions against the Victoire.

But Cheverie also knows that the Frost dominated the Professional Women’s Hockey League in 2025–2026 with 91 goals, and that the Minnesota side boasts the league’s top three scorers in Kelly Pannek (16-17-33), Taylor Heise (13-17-30) and Britta Curl-Salemme (11-18-29), and two others in the top eight, including Kendall Coyne Schofield, who has managed to rack up 23 points in as many games.

Cheverie said this earlier in the week, and she reiterated it on Friday; she expects a very tight game in which, for both sides, it will be crucial to prevent the opposition from creating quality scoring chances.

“We’ll need to be mindful of Heise’s tendencies, her drives into the middle (of the rink), Coyne Schofield’s speed, Pannek’s talent in front of goal, and Curl-Salemme’s physical play,” Cheverie explained after the Victoire’s training session, their third in four days this week at the Verdun Auditorium.

“We need to picture the Minnesota team we’re up against as realistically as possible,” added Cheverie. “And I think we’ve done a very good job of anticipating the offensive threat that [the Frost] pose, while knowing that our defensive discipline must come to the fore and that we’ll have to play a very tight game against this type of attack.”

With just over 24 hours to go, at midday on Friday, until the first game of the series, Cheverie gave the impression she couldn’t wait any longer for the opening face-off at the centre of the Place Bell rink, scheduled for around 2 p.m.

Especially as she seemed to have enjoyed the level of energy displayed by her players throughout the week.

“We have to give our best as the match approaches, and I felt that today we had our best training session of the week. That’s exactly where we want to be,” said Cheverie.

“Over the last two weeks, we’ve played a lot of important games for us. The opposing team also had important games,” added Cheverie when asked to elaborate on her assessment of this week’s training.

“But when you know the play-offs are approaching, it’s normal, natural to want to get there. And I think the players are saying to themselves: ‘OK, here we go, it’s finally here. We’ve known it was coming for a long time, and now it’s finally here.’ It’s like Christmas Eve.”

Painful past

Bringing up the subject of the play-offs within the Victoire camp also means revisiting painful semi-final defeats against Boston two years ago and last year against the Ottawa Charge.

“Hockey players often say you have to learn to lose and that defeat teaches you how to win,” said defender Erin Ambrose. “And that’s sort of the hope you have to have, the mindset you have to adopt. Yes, the last two years haven’t gone the way we wanted, but they’re the last two years, and they’re in the past. So the positive thing about the last two years is that we’ve been able to learn from them. Whether it’s realizing just how much it hurts to lose those games, or simply learning how to handle playoff games and how different they are.”

Beyond the lessons learned from past defeats, Cheverie believes that the Victoire’s mission was to help the team grow as the season progressed.

“That’s something we’re really proud of this year: we’ve developed from within, with our drafted players and our young players who’ve played in all sorts of situations,” said Cheverie. “We’ve played games where we’ve had the chance to use players at different times, whether it was five against six, six against five, or in overtime.

“We’ve had those moments where we perhaps had a bit of breathing room, which allowed us to play different players in different situations. I’m really proud of our internal development this year.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 1, 2026.