Matchday Recap: S01D10
Matchday 10. Six upsets in ten games—six. I've been calling this league since the beginning and I'm not sure I've seen a slate quite like this one. Attachez vos tuques solidement, mes amis. Let's go through it all.
SAO 4 — MTL 1
The Montréal Maples came into The Green Canopy as modest favourites at 1.71, and they drew first blood. Amélie Bouchard, fresh off absorbing a Gustavo Ribeiro hit at 3:03, answered right back at 7:31, finishing beautifully off a Dmitri Volkov feed. That early lead looked like it might hold.
But the second period belonged to the São Paulo Serpents in the most dramatic way imaginable. Volkov—who had just assisted Bouchard's opener—took a penalty at 12:10, and Amanda Barbosa made him pay instantly, converting on the power play at 12:57. Then, eight seconds later, Larissa Souza buried one to give the home side a lead they would not relinquish. Eight seconds. C'est incroyable.
The third period was a demolition job. Bruno Nascimento extended it at 3:42, and Gustavo Ribeiro added insult at 4:00—just eighteen seconds apart. Volkov, perhaps frustrated by how the night had unraveled, put Barbosa into the boards at 12:53 and they immediately dropped the gloves. Both left for five minutes and the damage was already done.
Ribeiro and Barbosa were central to everything tonight—one goal each, and their physical presence set the tone throughout. A genuine upset in the jungle.
MUM 1 — GDL 2 (OT)
The closest thing to a coin flip on the board—Mumbai Monsoons at 1.90, Guadalajara Gatos at 1.91—and it delivered every bit of drama those odds promised. This one went the full overtime distance at The Salt Pavilion, and the finish was worth every minute.
Camila Flores opened things up in the first period with a slick power play conversion off Alejandra Ríos' feed at 6:51, after Arjun Patil's penalty gave the Gatos their opening. The Monsoons responded with physicality throughout the second—fourteen total hits in this game, and Mumbai had plenty of them—but couldn't find the equalizer until Rahul Nair, beautifully set up by Kavya Iyer, buried a gorgeous goal at 8:35 of the third. Quel but!
From there, both teams played smart, cautious hockay into overtime. The Monsoons had the crowd behind them, but it was the Gatos who struck decisively. Mateo Guzmán, feeding off yet another Flores assist, beat the Mumbai netminder at 5:10 of overtime and that was that.
An upset on paper—the visiting Gatos were the slight underdog—but in truth this could've gone either way on any given night. Flores was magnificent: a goal, an assist, and a hand in both Guadalajara tallies.
BUS 2 — JBG 4
Nobody expected this. The Busan Blizzards were favoured at 1.60, the Johannesburg Jaguars priced as 2.35 underdogs, and The Frozen Dock was supposed to be a comfortable home night. Instead, the Jaguars walked out with a four-goal win. Upset doesn't even begin to cover it.
Thandiwe Radebe got Johannesburg moving early—a spectacular bat-out-of-the-air goal at 2:29—before Min-jun Lee equalized just before the first horn with a sharp finish off Jae-won Kim's setup. The game's temperature rose immediately: Eun-bi Han and Kagiso Molefe dropped the gloves at 6:55, the first of three fights on the night.
The second period was back-and-forth and physical, Jae-won Kim giving Busan the lead before Thabo Mokoena tied it on the power play. Then the third period unraveled for the Blizzards entirely. Another fight—Yuna Kang and Mandla Zulu going at it eleven seconds in—and a Lindiwe Sithole penalty opened the door for Zanele Ndaba to score at 2:51. Lerato Dlamini earned his second assist of the night on that one, and Dlamini's fingerprints were all over this Jaguars win. Bongani Mthembu sealed it with six minutes to play.
The Jaguars were tougher, nastier, and ultimately better tonight. Johannesburg takes the upset.
RIM 4 — DKR 2
The Dakar Djinns came into The Coastal Pavilion as 1.68 favourites, and they looked the part early. Moussa Ndiaye opened the scoring just 1:38 in off Aminata Sow's feed, and The Djinns were playing with authority. But Lorenzo Fabbri answered ninety seconds later for Rimini, and from that moment on, the Rinklers believed.
What followed was a relentlessly physical affair—eighteen hits across sixty minutes, the second-highest on the matchday. The Djinns held their own in the hitting game, but Valentina Colombo was becoming the story. She assisted Matteo Galli's power play goal in the second to make it 2-1 Rimini, and Mamadou Guèye's leveler at the end of the period reset things for the final frame.
The third period was where Rimini proved their mettle. Elena Moretti scored just nine seconds after serving her own penalty—avec culot!—at 5:04, and then Moretti added another at 8:00 off Nico De Luca's feed. Two goals in three minutes. The Djinns tried to respond, but Ibrahima Sarr's fight with Colombo at 13:18 was frustration boiling over, not a strategy. Colombo finished with a goal, two assists, and a fight—the night's most complete individual performance.
The 2.21 underdogs get the result. Rimini earns a statement win.
NRB 6 — TOK 2
The Tokyo Titans came to The Ochre Reserve as comfortable 1.63 favourites. They left having been run off the ice 6-2 in what was this matchday's most lopsided upset. Quelle performance des Narwhals.
The first period set the tone immediately—and brutally. Wanjiku Mwangi put Nairobi up at 5:18, Amara Osei doubled it twenty-five seconds later, and though Ren Inoue pulled one back for Tokyo at 6:27, James Odhiambo made it 3-1 before the period was a minute older. Four goals in under two minutes of game action. The Ochre Reserve was absolutely electric.
The Narwhals didn't let up. Peter Kimani was distributing beautifully all night, setting up two goals across the second and third periods. Kevin Otieno, equally influential with two assists and two thundering hits, controlled the game's tempo. Moses Okello and Riku Mori had to settle their differences with their fists in the second period, but Okello was back at full force in the third, adding a goal at 1:17 to put the game firmly away. Zawadi Mutua added a sixth for good measure.
Tokyo's Shūta Tanaka scored a nice second-period goal, and Haruto Nakamura set it up well, but this was never a game the Titans could claw back into. Nairobi was simply dominant from the opening faceoff.
VLA 3 — USH 4 (OT)
Now this—this is the kind of game you remember. Vladivostok Vodkas were installed as 1.52 favourites at The Last Terminal. The Ushuaia Undertow were priced at 2.54. One of the heavier mismatches of the night on paper, and the Undertow walked away with it in overtime. C'est une victoire magnifique.
The first period saw the Undertow take a surprising two-goal lead, Tomás Peralta scoring on a gorgeous top-shelf effort at 3:15 before Agustín Medina added a second right at the buzzer—14:59—assisted by Ignacio Herrera. Twelve penalties in this game, the most of any on the matchday, and the chaos was evident early. Valentina Giménez and Artyom Volkov fought in the first period, setting the combative tone.
Vladivostok roared back in the second. Olga Smirnova got one, Artyom Volkov tied it with a goal of his own—justice, of a sort, after his earlier fight—but Martina Vega restored the Undertow lead before the horn. Then Maxim Petrov delivered a crucial equalization at 13:00 of the third off Igor Zaytsev's feed, sending The Last Terminal into overtime.
Overtime was brief and decisive. After Giménez and Anastasia Ivanova fought at 3:37, a Darya Kuznetsova penalty opened the door, and Santiago Figueroa buried the man-advantage winner at 5:04. Ignacio Herrera's two-assist night was the quiet engine of this Undertow victory. A remarkable result.
PER 2 — PRA 3 (SO)
When the data says 21 hits and two fights, you know the Red Furnace delivered everything its name implies. Perth Pyres hosting the Prague Phantoms, neither team particularly favoured—Perth at 1.99, Prague at 1.82—and it took a shootout to separate them. Du hockay comme on l'aime.
The first period was wild in all the right ways. Eliza Cartwright converted a power play for Perth, then Jakub Černý equalized on his own man-advantage chance, before Kateřina Dvořáková fired a top-shelf beauty to give Prague a 2-1 lead heading into the second. Sienna Kapoor tied it back up at 10:01 of the second off Cooper Hale's feed, and from there the teams traded hits with vicious enthusiasm but couldn't find a winner.
The third period descended into pure physicality. Markéta Polák and Sienna Kapoor dropped the gloves at 6:50, then Kateřina Dvořáková and Riley Dawson did the same at 11:31. Perth had every chance to steal it in regulation, Oscar Whitfield finishing checks all over the ice, but neither team could solve the other. Overtime offered chances but no goals.
And then: the shootout. Martin Procházka, who had spent the first period in The Sixth on a penalty, delivered the winner at 6:31. The man served his time and came back to win the game. You cannot write it better than that.
STO 2 — HAV 1
The Still Strait was barely nine seconds old when Yanelis Peña and Maja Forsberg went at it—9 seconds, ladies and gentlemen. That fight set the tone for a game featuring four separate brawls and thirteen total penalties between Stockholm Sirens and Havana Hammers. The odds were essentially dead even (Stockholm 1.88, Havana 1.93), and nobody who watched this game would argue with that assessment.
Filip Nyström converted a power play at 10:33 of the first for the game's opening goal, Klara Åström picking up the assist. Then Maja Forsberg—who had started the night in the fight box—scored a power play goal herself in the second period, her redemption arc complete, off Freja Sandström's feed at 8:38. Hugo Wikström and Lázaro Valdés had already been fighting by then, the second of four scraps in the contest.
Havana got one back in the third—Reinier Cruz with a top-shelf beauty at 8:24, assisted by Adonis Reyes who had himself been in the penalty box earlier. The Hammers pressed for the equalizer, and Hugo Wikström and Lisandra Álvarez even found time for a third mutual engagement at 14:50. But the Sirens held on.
A proper battle. No upsets, no overtime—just two teams who genuinely dislike each other putting that animosity on display for sixty minutes.
MCM 5 — HEL 2
Out at The Remote Range—the coldest, most isolated rink in the league—the McMurdo Monoliths put on a comprehensive performance against the Helsinki Howlers. No upsets, no overtime, no fights. Sometimes the story is simply one team being better, and tonight that was McMurdo.
The first period featured the kind of opening that sets a game's emotional pitch: Mikko Hämäläinen buried a beauty at 0:57, under a minute played, before the Monoliths pushed back. Natasha Borova and Ingrid Solheim both scored in the final seconds of the period to give McMurdo a 2-1 lead, with Amira Hassan and Lars Henriksen providing the assists.
The second period belonged almost entirely to the Monoliths. Yumi Takeda kept Helsinki alive with a goal at 0:56, but Sven Lindberg, beautifully set up by Ingrid Solheim, made it 4-1 at 5:09. Solheim was everywhere tonight—a goal, an assist on Lindberg's tally, and another finish in the third at 5:01 off Ji-hoon Baek's feed. Two goals and an assist for the night. Formidable.
Erik Johansson capped the scoring with McMurdo's fifth at 9:42, and the Howlers' only comfort was a final scoreline that reads more respectably than the game felt. The Monoliths were dominant. Full stop.
ANC 3 — WPG 6
The Winnipeg Wendigos were 1.53 favourites at The Watch Station, and they earned every bit of that designation with a convincing six-goal night. But the story here wasn't just the outcome—it was Leah Blacksmith, who had perhaps the most complete individual performance of the matchday: two goals, one assist, two hits, and the kind of relentless motor that changes games.
The first period was level. Sierra Peters gave Anchorage the lead at 2:17 off Isaiah Tobin, and Tyler Chicken equalized on a lovely Kaya Bearclaw setup at 8:19. Nineteen seconds later the second period began, and everything came apart for the Auroras. Jake Fehr and Tara Alexie fought at 1:52—Alexie went on to score a power play goal herself, which is a remarkable pivot—and Winnipeg then exploded for three goals between 3:56 and 9:21. Blacksmith scored twice in that stretch, the second on the power play.
Anchorage clawed to 3-4 heading into the third, and there was a moment where The Watch Station dared to believe. Then Anna Flett—a Wendigo—put it away at 1:56, and Dylan Fife added a sixth late to close it out. Curtis Favel's two assists were the connective tissue of the Winnipeg attack all night. The Auroras simply couldn't handle the Wendigos' depth.
No upset here—the favourite won. But it wasn't a cakewalk, and Blacksmith made sure everyone in the building remembered her name.
Matchday 10 is done, and what a ride it was. Six upsets from ten games—the underdogs bit back hard tonight, and the league standings will look considerably different come morning. We've got overtime thrillers, a shootout winner who served a penalty in the first period, a fight at nine seconds, and a second-period double-tap that took all of eight seconds to unfold. This league, I tell you. Je l'adore absolument.
Until next time, this is Jean-Michel Laflèche, voice of Hockay. Stay warm out there—and if you can't stay warm, play like you've got nothing to lose.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council notes that Matchday 10 has concluded. Le Council does not have further comments at this stage. Le Council will inform you if further statements are required