Matchday Recap: S02D21
Seven upsets on Matchday 21, and not one of them was quiet. Prague scored ten goals at The Dark Sauna—fifteen in the game—while Helsinki was supposed to be the 1.64 favorite. Havana came back from 1-4 down to 4-4 before losing a shootout. Wellington beat a Johannesburg side that was 1.54 road favorites in a game that featured seven fights. Giulia Bianchi scored eighteen seconds into the game at The Coastal Pavilion. Je ne sais plus quoi dire. Allons-y.
MTL 4 — STO 2
Stockholm came into The Oldest Rink as slight away favorites—1.87 against Montréal's 1.94—and the Maples had something to say about that. A two-goal first period, a frantic second, and a defended third added up to an upset that Montréal built methodically from the opening puck drop.
Jean-René Bergeron scored at 7:43—Sarah-Maude Fortin assisting—then Élodie Gagnon added one at 8:01 off Chloé Moreau's feed, and Montréal took a 2-0 lead into the intermission. The second period was something else. Axel Lindqvist pulled one back for Stockholm at 0:16—Filip Nyström assisting—and Marc-Antoine Dufresne answered for Montréal twenty-four seconds later at 0:40, Moreau feeding him. Twenty-four seconds. Two goals at the start of the second period, and the game lurched from 2-0 to 2-1 to 3-1 in less than a minute. Klara Åström scored for Stockholm at 11:06—Hugo Wikström assisting—and Amélie Bouchard cashed a power play at 14:59, Fortin's second assist of the night completing the 4-2 final.
The third period was all hits and held leads, thirteen across twenty minutes with neither side finding the net. Moreau's two-assist night drove the Maples' performance. Fortin added a goal and two assists across the full game.
WEL 3 — JBG 2
Seven fights. Johannesburg were 1.54 away favorites. Tane Wiremu won the shootout. Put this one in The Howling Harbour's permanent record.
Two fights in the first period—van der Merwe and Rāwiri Patel going at it at 3:48, Lindiwe Sithole and Olivia Rangi following at 10:00—and zero goals across twenty minutes. The second period brought a third fight—Naledi Khumalo and Patel at 3:18—before Kauri Thompson broke the deadlock for Wellington at 9:22, Hemi Sullivan assisting, and van der Merwe tied it at 14:59 off Sithole's feed. Two goals, one fight, and both sides level at intermission.
The third period was the game's heart. Patel and Pieter Botha fought at 0:45—Patel's third fight of the night. Sithole scored for Johannesburg at 5:40—van der Merwe assisting—then Khumalo and Sullivan went at 5:57, Charlotte Hemi and Bongani Mthembu at 9:23. Aroha Ngata tied it for Wellington at 13:39—Nikau Edwards assisting—before Botha and Rangi fought at 14:57, the final seconds burning away into coincidental majors. Overtime. Two penalties, no goals. And in the shootout, at 3:31, Wiremu put it away. Seven fights, 2.49 odds, one goal from The Howling Harbour's depths that ended it. Incroyable.
MDE 1 — SAO 3
São Paulo were 1.80 favorites at La Ladera and won 3-1, which is the kind of result that occasionally needs to happen to confirm that odds mean something. Medellín couldn't build on their recent run of upsets at home, and the Serpents took the two points efficiently.
A scoreless first period—seventeen hits, two fights—before Camila Ferreira broke it for São Paulo in the second at 10:18, Gustavo Ribeiro assisting despite his earlier penalty. Sebastián Cardona tied it for Medellín thirty seconds into the third, Mariana Zapata assisting, and La Ladera came alive. It didn't last. Larissa Souza and Sofía Estrada fought at 3:22, and then the Serpents detonated: Felipe Carvalho at 10:20—Souza assisting after returning from The Sixth—and Mariana Lima at 10:31—Thiago Pereira setting it up. Two goals in eleven seconds. La Ladera went quiet. SAO's depth told when the game was most contested.
HEL 5 — PRA 10
Fifteen goals. Fifteen. Helsinki were 1.64 favorites at The Dark Sauna. The Prague Phantoms won 10-5. Markéta Polák scored three of them. I have been calling Hockay games since Season 1, and I am still processing this.
The first period was already something: Helsinki's first two penalties both went to the man—Adam Fiala scored a power play goal at 2:19, Martin Procházka added another at 2:37, Kateřina Dvořáková assisting both. The Dark Sauna was down 0-2 inside three minutes. Jakub Černý and Saara Virtanen fought; Erik Johansson and Ondřej Marek threw gloves immediately after. In between the chaos, Juhani Rantanen scored for Helsinki at 5:28—Petteri Salonen assisting—before Polák converted a power play at 8:28, Procházka setting it up. Liisa Nieminen and Polák fought at 14:09. After one period: Helsinki 1, Prague 3. With two fights still ringing through the building.
The second period produced seven goals. Krejčí at 3:06 for Prague, then Elina Heikkinen at 4:15 for Helsinki, Saku Järvinen at 5:40—Rantanen assisting—before Tuominen's penalty opened it for Králová's power play at 9:25. Then Polák again at 11:47, Dvořáková assisting. Eliška Veselá at 12:20. Petteri Salonen at 14:57—Noora Koskinen assisting. The second ended 4-7 for Prague. Salonen: four points after two periods.
The third period added four more Prague goals. Černý at 0:47. Růžička at 3:53. Hämäläinen's goal at 12:14 for Helsinki was the only bright spot in the third, before Polák completed her hat-trick on the power play at 13:27, Králová assisting. Ten Prague goals, five Helsinki, fifteen in the game. At 2.26 odds, the Phantoms produced the most extraordinary offensive performance of the season. Polák: three goals, a fight, an indelible night at The Dark Sauna.
DKR 4 — PER 6
Perth were 1.76 favorites at The Sandy Parlor, and they had no business being 1-3 down after a first period that should have been completely routine. It wasn't. And then the Pyres remembered what they were and scored five goals in two periods to win 6-4. Ten total goals, no fights, and Gemma Fletcher finishing with two goals and two assists.
Ibrahima Sarr opened for Dakar at 3:10—Rokhaya Faye assisting—then Awa Diop made it 2-0 at 5:59, Faye providing her second assist. Perth replied through Liam O'Brien at 10:12 but Faye herself scored at 14:59—Cheikh Fall assisting—to make it 3-1 heading into the second intermission. Dakar leading Perth at The Sandy Parlor in a game Perth was supposed to win. Then Riley Dawson scored twice in the second—at 0:37 and 6:06, both times with Fletcher assisting—before Cheikh Fall extended Dakar's lead to 4-3 at 9:55 and Oscar Whitfield tied it at 11:49. Level after forty.
The third period was entirely Perth's. Fletcher at 7:51—Tahlia Nguyen assisting—and Fletcher again at 10:47, Nate Hargrove feeding her. Six goals to four, final. Sienna Kapoor's two penalties made for three Perth power plays against a Dakar side that never recovered from blowing the lead it had earned. Fletcher was exceptional. Faye's first-period brace in a losing effort deserves mention too.
WPG 1 — TOK 3
The Cold Lodge was Winnipeg's at 1.85 odds against a Tokyo side at 1.96, and the Titans took the two points with a professional road win that featured four fights and a second-period burst that ended the home side's chances. Upset confirmed.
Brendan Fehr scored for Winnipeg in the first at 4:57—Tara Ridsdale assisting—and The Cold Lodge felt comfortable. The second period unraveled that comfort completely. Sōta Watanabe at 4:53 for Tokyo—Riku Mori assisting—then a Winnipeg penalty led to Yūma Hayashi's power play goal at 6:41, Hina Takahashi assisting. Curtis Favel and Aoi Yamamoto fought at 7:55; Brody Flett and Haruto Nakamura went at 10:13. Sakura Shimizu closed the second at 14:00—Hayashi's second point, assisting this time—and Tokyo led 3-1 at the second intermission. The third period brought two more fights—Yamamoto and Brendan Fehr, then Kaito Itō and Brody Flett—twenty-three hits across the full game, and no goals. Hayashi: a goal and an assist, the engine. Shimizu's closing goal the punctuation.
USH 2 — NRB 0
A quiet upset. Nairobi were 1.69 favorites at The South Passage. Ushuaia won 2-0 on two second-period goals and held the shutout for sixty minutes. No fights in the third. Just clean, disciplined defending from a team that knew what they needed to do.
The first period was all penalties and hits, nobody finding the net. Nicolás Sosa opened the scoring in the second at 4:20—Martina Vega assisting—and Santiago Figueroa added a second at 7:03, Valentina Giménez feeding him. Nairobi's James Odhiambo and Tomás Peralta fought at 13:49, one of the few moments of physicality in a game The South Passage otherwise kept orderly. The third period brought Matías Fernández and Brian Kipchoge fighting at 2:05, but no further scoring. Ushuaia held.
Sosa: a goal and two hits—the physicality complementing the offensive contribution. Figueroa's goal. At 2.19 odds, the Undertow produced a shutout win over a team expected to be clearly better. The South Passage doesn't lose often.
RIM 4 — GND 2
Giulia Bianchi scored at 0:18. Eighteen seconds. Marco Rossetti's hit on Janice Hapgood at 0:11, the crowd just finding their seats, and then Bianchi with the goal before anyone had exhaled. Rimini were 2.25 underdogs against Gander at 1.65. And The Coastal Pavilion opened the door to chaos eighteen seconds in.
It didn't slow down in the first. Valentina Colombo scored a power play goal at 10:52—Sofia Barbieri assisting—and Luca Ferretti added a third at 12:59, Nico De Luca feeding him. Gander were 0-3 after twenty minutes, as heavy away favorites, trying to understand how this happened. The second period gave the Geese something: Janice Hapgood at 1:29, Calvin Roebothan assisting, and Bridget Walsh at 2:39—Liam Coish's feed. Suddenly 3-2, still a game. But Francesca Serra scored at 8:25—Alessandro Conti assisting—to make it 4-2, and the third period was all defense from Rimini, sixteen hits between the sides but no further scoring.
Bianchi's opening-second goal is the image of the matchday. Ferretti and Colombo added their contributions. Gander scored twice as underdogs in the second and still couldn't catch up to a Rimini side that had simply taken the game by force from the first eighteen seconds.
MUM 4 — CAI 3
Two fights in The Salt Pavilion—Rohan Deshmukh and Youssef Mansour going at 0:10, then Vikram Joshi and Layla Mostafa at 13:09—and a Cairo side that mounted a genuine third-period challenge before running out of time. Mumbai were 1.56 favorites and held on.
Kiran Bhatt opened the scoring at 11:47 of the first—Deshmukh assisting after returning from his fight. The second period ran away from Cairo: Rahul Nair at 1:40, then a Divya Mehta power play at 3:10, then Habiba Sherif on the wrong end at 10:48 before Arjun Patil added the fourth at 13:45—all in the same period that saw two Cairo penalties. The Salt Pavilion crowd was fully settled after forty minutes.
The third period was Cairo's. Ibrahim's power play goal at 2:49—Sherif assisting—and Layla Mostafa at 6:42, Nour El-Sayed feeding her. Down 4-3, Cairo pressed for the equalizer, Mostafa herself going to The Sixth at 12:33 for her efforts. Mumbai held the final minutes. Bhatt and Patil each contributed a goal and an assist from the Mumbai bench; Sherif and Habiba each with a goal and an assist for Cairo in a losing effort. The visitors made it interesting. They didn't make it a win.
GDL 4 — MCM 1
El Rincón Perdido at 1.56 odds over McMurdo's 2.44. A first period goal, a contested second with two fights, and a dominant third. Guadalajara did what was expected and did it with Andrés Rojas contributing two assists in the third period alone.
Alejandra Ríos scored at 3:33 in the first—Camila Flores assisting. The second period brought Chris Elliot's equalizer for McMurdo at 4:17—Yumi Takeda setting it up—before Ingrid Solheim and Emilio Delgado fought at 6:37, then Mateo Guzmán scored at 8:58, Ríos assisting, to restore the lead. Tobias Frey and Flores fought at 11:36. The third period turned decisively: Carlos Morales at 5:23—Rojas feeding him—and Diego Hernández at 10:38, Rojas again with the assist. Four Gatos scorers, Rojas orchestrating from behind them. McMurdo's effort in the second is the only period where they looked like they could change the result. They couldn't.
VLA 2 — ANC 5
Anchorage were 1.72 favorites at The Last Terminal, and Bryce Denison had the performance of the night: two goals and an assist, with Sierra Peters distributing two assists behind him. A 5-2 road win from the Auroras, four fights adding to a game that never found a clean moment.
Denison scored first at 6:11—Peters assisting, after Denis Baranov and Kira Naluktaq had already fought at 3:56. The second period looked like Vladivostok's comeback: Carlos Medina's power play at 9:46—Denison assisting—then Nikita Sorokin at 11:06, Baranov feeding him, and Kirill Morozov at 12:55, Yelena Pavlova setting it up. Igor Zaytsev and Heather Braund fought at 13:18. VLA led 2-2 going into the third.
Vera Orlova and Cody Tulik fought at 4:11 of the third before Denison scored again at 5:41—Peters with her second assist—and Igor Zaytsev's penalty at 7:02 created the space. Levi Simmonds at 11:40—Mason Kluane assisting—and Braund at 14:06—Isaiah Tobin feeding her—after one more fight between Jake Hensley and Maxim Petrov. Anchorage poured three into The Last Terminal in the third period to complete a comprehensive away win. Denison's brace and Peters's orchestration are the names to remember.
HAV 4 — BUS 5
Havana were 1.83 favorites at The Rhythm Bureau. The Busan Blizzards were 1.98 away. By the third period, Havana had overcome a 1-4 deficit to level at 4-4. And then they lost in a shootout. Hye-jin Choi made the decisive attempt at 4:31 of the skills competition. The Rhythm Bureau went silent, and Busan took the two points from the most dramatic game of the matchday.
Lázaro Valdés' penalty sixty seconds in let Sang-hoon Bae score a power play goal at 0:59—Yuna Kang assisting. Then Valdés and Soo-yeon Park fought at 3:38. Claudia Pérez scored for Havana at 5:32—Mailén Domínguez assisting—but Kang added a second for Busan at 12:23. By the end of the second, So-hee Hwang and Jae-won Kim had added Busan's third and fourth goals, and The Rhythm Bureau faced a 1-4 deficit with twenty minutes to play.
Yoandri Hernández changed everything. He scored at 7:22—Lisandra Álvarez assisting—then Yanelis Peña at 11:38—Orlando Machado setting it up—before Park and Adonis Reyes fought at 12:59. Hernández completed his brace at 13:50—Peña assisting. Three Havana goals in six minutes. 4-4. Overtime came and went without a goal. And Hye-jin Choi stepped up and ended it. Hernández's comeback performance: two goals, a hit, and a night The Rhythm Bureau won't forget in the right ways. But Busan win. Choi wins.
Seven upsets. A fifteen-goal hockay game that Prague won at 2.26 odds. Seven fights in Wellington. Giulia Bianchi in eighteen seconds. And Yoandri Hernández staging one of the best individual comebacks of the season—for two points that still went to Busan. C'est Hockay. The season rolls on. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 21 occurred. Fifteen goals were scored in Helsinki. The Dark Sauna has been inspected and found structurally intact. Giulia Bianchi's eighteen-second goal has been recorded. The record has been updated accordingly.