BOSTON – The Boston Fleet fell to the Montréal Victoire behind an overtime game-winner from Cayla Barnes 21 seconds into the extra period at the sold-out Agganis Arena on the Boston University campus.
With Victoire’s Marie-Philip Poulin hustling toward the net alongside Barnes, Frankel chose to keep her eye on Poulin, who scored the first goal for the Victoire and leads the league with 14 goals.
Montréal got an early start against the Fleet on Saturday, grabbing a 2-0 lead within the first eight minutes of the contest.
Poulin opened the scoring for the Victoire on her, and the Victoire’s second shot of the game.
The captain, and former Boston University Terrier, grabbed the puck from off the boards in front of Fleet goaltender Aerin Frankel’s net. Then, Poulin put it on the front of her stick to slide it past Frankel at 3:41 in the first.
Four minutes later, Catherine Dubois doubled the Victoire lead when she buried a rebound through a packed crease for Montréal’s first goal in six games that didn’t come from a member of the top line of Poulin, Laura Stacey and Jill Gardiner.
“Our last 40 was much better than our first 20. So we gotta find a way to come out and make an impact in the first 20,” Fleet coach Courtney Kessel said. “We gotta play physical, get pucks behind their knees and pressure them, make them turn pucks over.”
The Fleet responded toward the end of the period as Lexie Adzija and Jamie Lee Rattray headed down the ice with a 2-on-1 opportunity. Adzija sent the puck to Rattray, who buried it top-shelf behind Ann-Renée Desbiens.
Boston tied it up midway through the second period, thanks again to the Fleet’s fourth line.
“You don’t win a Walter Cup with just one line. I think you need four lines contributing in some way,” Kessel said. “That line works hard, and sometimes, you know, their roles are undervalued. And I think it’s so great when you get to see them put the puck in the net and find ways to impact the game and help the team in different way.”
Jillian Dempsey made a great play in the Fleet’s offensive zone to get the puck to Adzija, who clanged one off the post. Amanda Pelkey grabbed the rebound and blasted it past Desbiens.
Adzija had the primary assist on both of the Fleet’s goals, for her third and fourth assists of the season.
“On the first one we had a 2-on-1 pretty much from our blue line, so I had a lot of time. Sometimes that doesn’t work in your favor. But (Rattray) drove the net hard on that, was calling for the puck and a great finish by her,” Adzija said. “On the second one, (Dempsey) had eyes in the back of her head so big shout out to her and Pelkey was in the perfect spot back door.”
The third brought relatively equal opportunities for both the Fleet and the Victoire as they both searched for the difference maker. Boston outshot the visitors 7-5 in shots on goal and had a handful of shots blocked in the increasingly physical game.
In the teams’ previous three meetings – the most recent on March 1, when Montréal came out with the identical 3-2 overtime outcome – the Fleet and Victoire combined for 63 penalty minutes. On Saturday, there were only two penalties for each team called.
The Fleet, in their new second-place spot in league standings after getting a point against Montréal, will look to secure three points against Ottawa on March 15, before returning home to the Tsongas Center in Lowell on March 18 against Montréal once again.
Boston will play once again at Agganis, against Toronto on March 26.
“It was great,” Dempsey said of the environment at Agganis. “Getting to play in the city and having the fans turn out for this, it was exciting to have nearly full capacity in the building. … We were thrilled with the turnout that we got today.”
