Matchday Recap: S01D34
Five upsets. Two shootouts. Thirteen goals between two teams at The Oldest Rink. Brody Flett winning a game for Winnipeg with one second on the clock. And a matchday that added four more entries to the growing dossier on the Anchorage Auroras, the Montréal Maples, and the Tokyo Titans. On commence.
MTL 7 — NRB 6
The Nairobi Narwhals were 1.68 favorites at The Oldest Rink. The Montréal Maples, at 2.19, responded by winning a thirteen-goal game that flipped the lead six times across three periods. Four consecutive wins for Montréal. Incroyable.
The first period told you everything. Akinyi Ochieng put Nairobi ahead at 4:11—Nyambura Kamau with the setup. Amélie Bouchard converted a Montréal power play at 6:53, Philippe Dubois feeding her. Kamau struck again at 8:42, Ochieng returning the assist—1-2. Catherine Lavoie batted it home at 9:53, Bouchard with the helper. Then Dubois buried a power play chance of his own at 12:22—Bouchard picking up her second assist of the period. Three-two after one, and this game had already told you what kind of evening it planned to be.
The second was the same. Odhiambo tied it at 7:45—Kevin Otieno assisting. Kipchoge put Nairobi back ahead at 8:27, Ochieng feeding him. Élodie Gagnon tied it at 10:47, Volkov with the pass. Kamau's second at 11:31—Faith Wanjiru assisting. Five-four Nairobi. Then Gagnon leveled it in the final second—Paquette threading the feed. Five-five.
The third: Lucas Pelletier took a minor at 2:52 and Wanjiru cashed in at 3:06—Odhiambo assisting. Five-six, Nairobi in front again. Bouchard tied it at 7:40, Chloé Moreau with the helper. Simon Côté sealed it at 10:54—Moreau with her second assist—and Montréal had their fourth. Bouchard: two goals, two assists. Kamau: two goals, one assist. The Maples find a way every time.
USH 4 — DKR 1
The South Passage delivered a controlled Ushuaia Undertow performance bookended by chaos. Agustín Medina opened at 11:50 in the first—Matías Fernández with the setup—and Ushuaia held that lead into the second before Ousmane Diallo leveled it within 51 seconds off a Rokhaya Faye feed. The Djinns had something. They couldn't hold it.
The second period brought five hits from Dakar and no second goal. Ushuaia defended comfortably, absorbed the physical pressure, and waited.
The third period had two fights and three quick goals in the final two-and-a-half minutes. Cheikh Fall and Julieta Ríos fought at 8:58—coincidental majors—and Mamadou Guèye and Matías Fernández followed at 12:26, also matching majors. Faye took a penalty at 13:15, and Santiago Figueroa converted the power play at 13:50—Florencia Ramos with the assist. Then Ignacio Herrera at 14:17, Martina Vega feeding him. Then Camila Aguirre at 14:59, Valentina Giménez with the pass. Three goals in seventy seconds. Dakar, with two of their own in The Sixth, had no answer. Ushuaia win it going away.
BUS 2 — PER 4
The Frozen Dock produced three fights in the opening five minutes and still managed a four-goal Perth performance through the chaos. The Busan Blizzards sat at 1.89, Perth at 1.91—a near coin flip—and the Pyres took that equivalence and turned it into a straight-forward road win.
Soo-yeon Park and Jack Mitchell went at it at 1:32, barely ninety seconds in—coincidental majors. Zara Patel and Dong-wook Yoon at 4:13 added another. Nate Hargrove converted on the power play at 12:07 through the chaos—Callum Reeves with the assist—and Oscar Whitfield added a second at 14:35, Tahlia Nguyen feeding him. Zero-two Perth through a period that tried hard to be about everything except hockey.
Yuna Kang and Sienna Kapoor added a third fight at 4:38 of the second—coincidental majors—and Perth stretched it at 8:13 through Eliza Cartwright, Whitfield setting it up. Hye-jin Choi pulled one back for Busan at 12:49—So-hee Hwang with the helper—but the margin held.
Liam O'Brien made it 1-4 at 3:59 of the third—Mitchell with the assist—and though Jae-won Kim got Busan to two at 9:34, it was never close. Hargrove: a goal and three hits. Perth methodical through everything The Frozen Dock threw at them.
HAV 3 — GDL 1
The Havana Hammers came into The Rhythm Bureau as 1.98 underdogs against a Guadalajara Gatos side favored at 1.84. They spent forty minutes defending a one-goal lead. Then they spent the final fifty-three seconds making everyone forget how long they'd spent doing it.
Lázaro Valdés opened at 1:14—Orlando Machado with the setup—and the Hammers held that lead through a physical first period. Jimena Castillo and Adonis Reyes dropped the gloves at 4:19—coincidental majors—and Guadalajara's eleven hits across the opening twenty minutes couldn't find the net.
The second period was goalless. Yordanis Sánchez took a penalty at 14:48 and Havana killed it. One-nothing after forty minutes of defensive work.
The third looked like a Gatos equalizer when Yanelis Peña went to The Sixth at 5:04 and Alejandra Ríos converted the power play at 6:01—Rodrigo Vargas with the feed. One-all, Guadalajara level and with momentum. Then Lisandra Álvarez scored at 14:06—Dayana Rodríguez assisting. Then Adonis Reyes, who'd been fighting in the first period, put it away at 14:56—Osmany Leyva with the pass. Two goals in fifty seconds. Three-one, and The Rhythm Bureau erupted. C'est la vie, Guadalajara.
SAO 1 — MCM 3
Twenty-two hits. Three fights. And McMurdo Monoliths end The Green Canopy's evening as 1.95 underdogs against a 1.86 São Paulo side. The Monoliths were the better-organized team through the physical mess, and that was enough.
Period 1 produced ten hits and no goals. Ji-hoon Baek took a penalty and the Serpents kept the play physical—but nothing reached the net.
The second opened with Tobias Frey and Gabriel Rodrigues dropping the gloves at 1:04, then hockey. Priya Anand converted a McMurdo power play at 5:47—Ingrid Solheim assisting. São Paulo answered on their own power play at 10:02, Mariana Lima scoring with Isabela Costa setting it up. One apiece.
The third brought two more fights woven through it—Elena Varga and Felipe Carvalho at 2:32, Lars Henriksen and Gabriel Rodrigues at 13:36—and two McMurdo goals between the chaos. Yumi Takeda at 12:23, Amira Hassan with the setup. Kofi Mensah at 13:00, Varga assisting. Three-one. The Green Canopy was more hits than goals all night. McMurdo found both.
WPG 6 — MUM 5
Mon dieu. The Cold Lodge hosted eleven goals and required a Brody Flett strike with one second on the clock to decide them. The Winnipeg Wendigos were the 1.51 favorites—big number—and they needed every last second to put away a Mumbai Monsoons side that refused to be put away.
Six goals in the first period. Divya Mehta put Mumbai ahead at 1:13—Priya Sharma assisting. Meera Naik took a penalty ten seconds later, and Leah Blacksmith converted on the power play at 1:33—Jonas Brevik with the feed. Jake Fehr made it 2-1 thirteen seconds after that, Flett assisting. Mumbai tied it at 8:16 through Pooja Verma—Arjun Patil with the setup. Flett himself scored at 12:45—Fehr returning the helper. Patil answered at 13:27, Mehta assisting. Three-three after one period. C'est incroyable.
The second was nearly as breathless. Ananya Kulkarni put Mumbai ahead at 5:40. Blacksmith answered on the power play at 7:41. Dylan Fife gave Winnipeg a 5-4 lead at 14:39—Fehr with his second assist of the game.
Then Mumbai tied it again at 9:33 of the third—Verma for her second of the night, Vikram Joshi assisting. The lead had changed six times. And with one second left in regulation, Flett buried it off an Anna Flett pass. Six-five. Brody Flett: two goals, one assist. Blacksmith: two goals. The Cold Lodge got the finish it deserved.
JBG 1 — ANC 4
We need to talk about the Anchorage Auroras. Four consecutive matchdays. Four consecutive upsets. The Johannesburg Jaguars were 1.86 on home ice tonight—Anchorage at 1.95—and the Auroras walked out of Die Goue Myn with a four-one win and a reputation that is becoming impossible to ignore.
Heather Braund opened it at 2:29—Tara Alexie with the setup—and briefly Anchorage led in Johannesburg. Zanele Ndaba tied it at 14:07 for the home side, Lindiwe Sithole assisting, and the teams went into the second even.
The second brought a Naledi Khumalo–Bryce Denison fight at 2:49—coincidental majors—and a Braund penalty at 8:51 that Johannesburg couldn't convert. No goals.
Then Alexie took over in the third. She scored at 4:37—Braund assisting—and again at 8:48, Sierra Peters feeding her. Denison sealed it at 12:41—Alexie picking up the assist, her fourth point of the evening. Two goals, two assists from a player the books are still undervaluing. Braund: one goal, one assist, two hits. The Auroras are 4-0 as underdogs across their last four matchdays. Whatever line you write next to their name, you may want to reconsider it.
HEL 1 — RIM 2 (SO)
Luca Ferretti had a hat trick last matchday. Tonight, in The Dark Sauna, he won it from the shootout spot. The Rimini Rinklers were the 1.80 favorites—Helsinki at 2.02—but it cost them five periods to earn it.
The first period was scoreless and bruising. Seven hits, a Johansson penalty that the Howlers killed. Neither goaltender gave anything away.
The second was where this game lived. Ferretti put Rimini ahead at 1:38—Marco Rossetti with the assist. Then three fights in the space of seven minutes: Anniina Tuominen and Francesca Serra at 4:35, Alessandro Conti and Saku Järvinen at 9:18, Mikko Hämäläinen and Lorenzo Fabbri at 10:59. Through all of it, Aleksi Korhonen leveled it for Helsinki at 7:14—Järvinen assisting, between his own two altercations. A second period The Dark Sauna won't forget.
Period 3 and overtime produced twelve more hits and no goals. Both sides tested each other without finding the net.
The shootout. Ferretti, composed as ever, buried it at 6:31. One matchday after his hat trick, he's got the game-winner from the dot. Rimini take two points the hard way. Helsinki played well enough to deserve more.
TOK 5 — STO 1
Four consecutive matchday wins. Write that down. The Tokyo Titans are on a run that demands a word stronger than "streak," and tonight's five-one victory over the Stockholm Sirens at The Neon Crossing felt like a team that knows exactly what it is right now. Stockholm was 1.96. Tokyo was 1.85. The expected result—and yet it felt like more than that.
Freja Sandström took a penalty within forty-nine seconds and Mei Fujita converted on the power play at 2:22—Sōta Watanabe with the assist. One-nothing, and Stockholm were behind before they'd settled in.
The Sirens found their moment in the second when Albin Nordlund batted one out of the air at 7:20—Lucas Bredberg assisting. But Sakura Shimizu answered at 12:32, Mio Kobayashi feeding her, and Yuki Sato made it 3-1 at 14:07—Shūta Tanaka with the assist.
The third was a statement. Kobayashi at 0:20—Riku Mori assisting. Sato again at 3:12—Mori with his second helper. Five-one. Sato: two goals. Mori: two assists. Kobayashi: a goal and an assist. Four straight wins. C'est une série.
PRA 4 — VLA 3 (SO)
The Stone Opera needed a shootout to settle a game that felt resolved twice and wasn't either time. Martin Procházka was the story—fighting in the first period, scoring in the first period, and then deciding the whole thing from the dot. Quel match.
The opening minute saw Procházka and Denis Baranov drop the gloves at 0:49—barely anything had happened. Then Igor Zaytsev put Vladivostok ahead at 7:07—Anastasia Ivanova assisting. Procházka equalized at 7:17—Růžička with the feed. Barbora Králová gave Prague the lead at 10:15—Ondřej Marek with the helper. Two-one, a fight already on the ledger, and the Phantoms in front.
The second period was goalless and increasingly hostile. Denis Baranov and Pavel Krejčí fought at 14:59—the final second of the period. Prague took their one-goal lead into the third.
They didn't keep it. Kateřina Dvořáková made it 3-1 at 6:36—Markéta Polák assisting—and then Vladivostok answered twice in sixty-three seconds. Nikita Sorokin at 7:25, Vera Orlova feeding him. Maxim Petrov at 10:08, Ruslan Kozlov with the helper. Three-three, and an unlikely comeback.
Overtime resolved nothing. And then Procházka—who'd been fighting before the game was a minute old—stepped up and buried it at 4:31 of the shootout. Prague hold on. On ferme la boutique.
Five upsets, two shootouts, and a matchday that had something for everyone willing to pay attention. Montréal are winning consistently. Anchorage are winning impossibly. Tokyo are winning inevitably. And Luca Ferretti is finding ways to win regardless of what period it is. I'll see you for Matchday 35—at which point I fully expect the universe to remind me that I know nothing about anything.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 34 occurred. Five results were inconsistent with pre-game expectations. Two games required additional time to resolve. Le Council notes that the Anchorage Auroras have now won four consecutive matchdays as the statistical underdog, a pattern Le Council is actively choosing not to draw conclusions from. The record has been updated accordingly.