Matchday Recap: S01D13
Matchday 13 arrived with the full weight of a season finding its shape—tight games, blowouts, three shootouts, and enough leather dropped to keep the equipment managers busy until spring. Brace yourself, friends. C'est parti.
MTL 4 — RIM 3
The Oldest Rink delivered exactly the kind of contested, chippy affair its old bones were built for. Rimini drew first blood at 4:41 when Luca Ferretti finished off a Francesca Serra feed, but Montréal answered quickly—Philippe Dubois converting less than three minutes later with Sarah-Maude Fortin earning the helper. Eleven penalties and three fights would follow. The first period alone featured Dmitri Volkov's double trip to The Sixth and Alessandro Conti driving Jean-François Tremblay into the glass for good measure.
The second period belonged to the Rinklers early, Nico De Luca threading a pretty setup from Elena Moretti to make it 2-1 Rimini—but then Volkov himself made them pay on the power play, Chloé Moreau with the assist, leveling things at two apiece before the buzzer. The hitting never stopped. Chiara Ricci was absolutely everywhere on the Rimini forecheck.
Third period, the game broke open in a hurry. Marco Rossetti put Rimini ahead top shelf at 2:47. Twenty seconds later, Dubois answered on the power play—his second of the night, Kateřina... pardon, Catherine Lavoie with the assist—to tie it again. Then Élodie Gagnon delivered the dagger at 14:09, Alexandre Paquette setting her up beautifully for the winner. Dubois finishes with two goals. Volkov? Two fights and a power play marker. Quel match.
TOK 8 — JBG 6
Mon Dieu. The Neon Crossing was ablaze on Matchday 13 and Mei Fujita was the one holding the torch. The Tokyo Titans opened the scoring on a Sōta Watanabe power play goal, the Jaguars leveled through Sipho Nkosi, and the stage was set for one of the great second periods you'll see this season.
Seven goals fell in the middle frame alone. Yuki Sato opened it for Tokyo at 1:31, Pieter Botha answered for Johannesburg at 1:47—and then Fujita simply took over. She scored twice in a span of ninety seconds in the first half of the period, both on the man advantage, and added a third before the horn. Watanabe added his second. The Jaguars punched back through Naledi Khumalo and Lindiwe Sithole to keep it close, but Tokyo's 7-4 lead entering the third was a commanding cushion.
Johannesburg showed character in the third—Thabo Mokoena and Nkosi both scored to make it 7-6—but Sakura Shimizu's acrobatic bat-goal at 14:34, set up by Ren Inoue, restored the two-goal margin and iced it. Fujita's line of three goals and one assist is the story of the matchday. Watanabe chipped in two as well. The Titans, at home, were the +1.77 favorites and did not disappoint. C'est incroyable, what Fujita did tonight.
MUM 3 — VLA 1
Vladivostok came into The Salt Pavilion as slight favorites at 1.88, and the early play backed that up—Tatiana Novikova opened the scoring at 2:05, batting a slick Igor Zaytsev feed out of the air. But the Monsoons are a resilient team at home. Rohan Deshmukh converted on the ensuing power play at 3:14, Pooja Verma with the primary assist, and just like that the ledger was even. An upset was quietly in the making.
The second period was a physical affair without adding to the scoresheet for most of it—Ruslan Kozlov and Nikita Sorokin were making their presence felt on the forecheck, Vera Orlova landed a punishing hit on Deshmukh early—but Kavya Iyer found the net at 11:02, Sanjay Pawar setting her up, and Mumbai had the lead they needed. Iyer also delivered a textbook check on Novikova later in the frame to underline the point.
Vladivostok struggled to generate in the third and paid for it. Ananya Kulkarni made it 3-1 at 8:39, Kiran Bhatt with the assist, and the Monsoons held comfortably from there despite a late flurry of penalties. Three different Mumbai scorers, zero fights, and a tidy road-win reversal. The upset is confirmed—Mumbai at +1.93 knocks off the Vodkas on home ice.
PRA 3 — SAO 1
The Stone Opera and a game that took its time to reveal itself, but when it did, Tomáš Novák was right there to write the story. The first period was scrappy and relatively balanced—São Paulo's Isabela Costa gave the Serpents the lead at 10:58, but Barbora Králová answered before the buzzer off a Markéta Polák feed to send teams to the locker room level. The hitting was steady throughout, Lucie Šťastná and Larissa Souza both earning their minutes in the physical battle.
The second period produced nothing on the scoreboard despite four penalty calls, including a Camila Ferreira infraction and an answering call on Eliška Veselá. Neither side capitalized. The game was a grind, honest and hard-fought, exactly what you expect from two teams with something to prove.
Then Novák took command. At 8:02 in the third, with Thiago Pereira sitting in The Sixth for his second penalty of the night, Novák converted the man advantage—Kateřina Dvořáková with the setup. And in the final second, literally at 14:59, Pereira was called again, and Novák punished the Serpents a second time with another power play goal, Dvořáková again with the assist. Two goals, two power plays, one playmaker doing the heavy lifting. Prague, the 1.78 home favorite, wins comfortably in the end.
GDL 3 — STO 2 (SO)
El Rincón Perdido gave us sixty minutes of regulation hockay that produced nothing—then a full overtime period of nothing more—before Santiago Torres ended it in the shootout. Quel spectacle de nerf. The Gatos were 1.73 favorites and needed every bit of the extra session to hold off Stockholm.
The first two periods were a scoreless war of attrition with serious intent behind every shift. A fight between Valentina Ramírez and Lucas Bredberg broke out at 10:40 in the first, and Hugo Wikström went at it with Andrés Rojas in the second—both sets of players leaving their mark on what was shaping up as a tactical battle with simmering heat underneath.
The third period detonated. Hugo Wikström broke the seal at 4:04, Lucas Bredberg with the assist. Klara Åström made it 2-0 Stockholm at 7:07. Then Andrés Rojas immediately answered at 7:22 for Guadalajara—Jimena Castillo with the setup—and Mateo Guzmán leveled things at 10:45, Rojas picking up his second point of the period. Two goals in fifteen minutes of regulation. Still nothing in overtime. Torres stepped into the shootout and delivered. Rojas—a goal, an assist, a fight—was the engine El Rincón Perdido ran on tonight.
HEL 0 — BUS 1
The Dark Sauna. One goal. Twenty-five hits. Five fights. If you want theater, go elsewhere. If you want hockay in its most raw, elemental form—this was your game tonight.
Busan came in as clear 1.60 favorites and the Blizzards earned it the hard way. The first period featured two full fights—Saara Virtanen trading blows with Seung-ho Jung, and Anniina Tuominen and Yuna Kang dropping the mitts in the final seconds of the frame—and not a single goal. Both goalies were locked in, both teams committed to making the other earn every inch.
Yuna Kang, fresh off that first-period bout, found the net at 3:02 of the second—Sang-hoon Bae with the assist—and that was, remarkably, all either team needed. Or all they got. Aleksi Korhonen and Min-jun Lee threw down early in the second, Tae-hyun Lim and Petteri Salonen followed suit. Sang-hoon Bae and Erik Johansson continued the tradition in the third. Twenty-five combined hits. Twelve penalties. Helsinki pushed through the final frame but could not solve the Blizzards' goaltender. Bae was everywhere—four hits, a fight, the primary assist—and Kang's goal was worth its weight in gold. One goal. That's all you needed. C'est la vie.
DKR 3 — ANC 4 (SO)
The Sandy Parlor and a genuine upset—Anchorage coming into Dakar as a near coin-flip proposition (Djinns at 1.88, Auroras at 1.94) and stealing it in the shootout. Tara Alexie buried the winner at 8:31 of the shootout round, completing a dramatic rally. Three fights across the game. Twenty-two combined hits. This one had everything.
Mamadou Guèye opened the scoring on a first-period power play, Moussa Ndiaye with the setup. Sierra Peters answered for Anchorage—Alexie assisting—to level things at one. The second period saw Dakar retake the lead through a beautiful Modou Diouf goal at 10:21, Rokhaya Faye with the helper, but not before Fatou Mbaye and Heather Braund dropped the gloves, followed almost immediately by Kira Naluktaq and Rokhaya Faye doing the same. The Djinns led 2-1 after forty.
The third period was a full reversal. Khady Bâ made it 3-1 Dakar at 0:33—and then Anchorage refused to fold. Paige Riordan cut it to 3-2 at 10:27, Bryce Denison tied it at 12:44, and overtime settled nothing. Alexie—who had assisted Peters' first-period goal—delivered the decisive shootout strike. Heartbreak in Dakar. Anchorage steals two points on the road.
WPG 8 — NRB 7
Fifteen goals. The Cold Lodge wasn't cold tonight, mes amis. The Winnipeg Wendigos, heavy 1.43 favorites, survived a genuine scare from Nairobi—who covered that 2.86 spread with everything they had—to take an 8-7 thriller that had no business being that close and was absolutely thrilling for it.
Winnipeg built a 2-1 lead in the first through Tyler Chicken and Dylan Fife before Moses Okello answered for the Narwhals. The second period was chaos incarnate—nine goals across twenty minutes, the lead changing shape every few shifts. Jake Fehr, Leah Blacksmith, and Brendan Fehr all scored for Winnipeg while Amara Osei, Dennis Wafula, Wanjiku Mwangi, and Okello again answered for Nairobi. Through twenty-two minutes of the second, it was 6-5 Winnipeg—and you couldn't be certain of anything.
Marissa Spence gave Winnipeg a bit of breathing room at 0:26 of the third, but Wafula—his second of the night—made it 7-6 at 3:23. Then Kevin Otieno converted a man advantage at 14:22 to tie it at seven. Seven-seven, under a minute to play. And then Kaya Bearclaw, with Anna Flett setting him up, buried the winner at 14:45. Fehr finished with two goals and an assist. Osei had a goal and two helpers for Nairobi. What a hockay game.
USH 2 — MCM 1
The South Passage and a quiet upset. McMurdo came in favored at 1.76, Ushuaia the underdogs at 2.08—and the Undertow flipped the script with a gritty, physical 2-1 victory built on character and a third-period finish from Camila Aguirre.
The Monoliths jumped out early, Yumi Takeda of McMurdo beating the Ushuaia goaltender beautifully at 1:32 off an Ingrid Solheim setup. The Undertow absorbed it and kept coming. Kofi Mensah was making his physical presence felt in the opening frame, and Ushuaia used the second period to get level—Valentina Giménez scoring top shelf at 4:03, Julieta Ríos with the assist.
The third was where it got interesting. Giménez and Lars Henriksen immediately dropped the gloves. Then Mensah and Martina Vega fought at 2:54—these Monoliths did not go quietly. But Ushuaia's defense held firm, and Aguirre provided the winner at 12:36, Giménez notching the assist. Twenty-two combined hits in this one. Giménez was everywhere—a goal, an assist, a fight, and a key hit. The Undertow rise.
HAV 1 — PER 0 (OT)
Twenty-five hits. One goal. Three periods of regulation and eleven minutes of overtime before Mailén Domínguez finally—mercifully—ended it for the Havana Hammers at 11:43 of the extra frame, Claudia Pérez delivering the assist she'd spent the entire night earning. An upset—Perth came in at 1.60 on the road, Havana at 2.35—and the Pyres will be asking themselves how they left The Rhythm Bureau with nothing.
Regulation was a masterclass in defensive structure and physical attrition. Both goaltenders were superb. Claudia Pérez hit Mia Thornton twice—and then they fought in the second period, matching majors at 3:36. Pérez kept hitting Thornton again afterward. Five hits on the night for Pérez, who was the heartbeat of Havana's forecheck. Sienna Kapoor took two penalties in the third for Perth, both on the power play—neither converted. The Hammers made you wait, but the crowd at The Rhythm Bureau finally erupted when Domínguez found the corner.
One goal. In four periods. Sometimes that's all the story you need.
Matchday 13 is in the books—fourteen games, seventy-four goals, a night that swung from the sublime chaos of Tokyo-Johannesburg and Winnipeg-Nairobi to the austere, single-goal brutalism of Helsinki-Busan and Havana-Perth. That's this league. That's why we show up. Until next time, mesdames et messieurs!
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council notes that Matchday 13 has been completed. Ten games were played. Goals were scored in most of them. The Council has no further comment at this time.