Matchday Recap: S02D25
Five upsets on Matchday 25, and none of them were the loudest story in the building. That belongs to Winnipeg and Cairo, who needed a full overtime at The Cold Lodge after Cairo erased a two-goal deficit in the final minutes of the third. Medellín needed the same extra frame, plus a shootout, before Anchorage's Tara Alexie walked off with it at La Ladera. São Paulo hung six on Montréal at The Oldest Rink, Wellington surrendered five straight in a single third period, and Johannesburg pulled off the day's biggest number on paper against Busan. Allons-y.
TOK 4 — NRB 2
The Neon Crossing hosted six fights and twenty-five hits across sixty minutes, and Tokyo, the 1.72 favorites, needed every one of them to hold off a stubborn Nairobi side.
Ren Inoue opened it for Tokyo at 9:58, Aoi Yamamoto assisting, before Kevin Otieno answered for the Narwhals at 14:23 to make it 1-1 after a hard-fought first. The second period turned into a fight card early—Brian Kipchoge and Yuki Sato, Peter Kimani and Mei Fujita, Moses Okello and Hina Takahashi, three fights inside ninety seconds—before Yūma Hayashi restored Tokyo's lead at 7:39. The Puck paused the game for a Sixth visit at 8:08, and on the restart Dennis Wafula tied it for Nairobi before Sōta Watanabe buried a power-play goal to make it 3-2 Tokyo at the second intermission.
Three more fights broke out in the third before Watanabe struck again at 12:49 to seal the 4-2 final. Watanabe finished with the two-goal night, Yamamoto chipped in two assists and a fight of her own, and The Neon Crossing got its money's worth from a game that never once let up.
HAV 5 — STO 3
Havana were the 1.8 favorites at The Rhythm Bureau, and Yoandri Hernández made the number look easy early, scoring twice in the first period to put the Hammers up 2-0 after twenty.
Yarelys González took the second period for herself, scoring twice—including a power-play conversion—before Axel Lindqvist got Stockholm on the board at 6:21. The Puck intervened at 9:45 for a Sixth visit in the middle of a penalty-heavy stretch, and Havana carried a 4-1 cushion to the third. Orlando Machado made it 5-1 early in the final frame before Stockholm mounted a late push—Lindqvist's second at 12:34 and Astrid Engström's finish with under a minute left brought the Sirens within two, but the clock ran out first.
No fights in this one, a rarity on a night this physical elsewhere in the league, though seventeen hits kept both benches honest. González and Hernández each finished with a pair of goals, and Havana banked the two points comfortably, exactly as the odds suggested they would.
HEL 4 — MCM 1
Helsinki were the heaviest favorites of the day at 1.43, and The Dark Sauna delivered, though McMurdo landed the first blow. Natasha Borova opened it on the power play at 3:16, but Jenni Laine tied it at 8:28 and Aleksi Korhonen put the Howlers ahead at 13:54—a first period that also saw Juhani Rantanen and Ingrid Solheim drop the gloves for coincidental majors.
Helsinki's discipline carried the second period. Rantanen scored himself at 7:15 to make it 3-1, and a Sixth visit at 11:15 briefly paused the momentum without disrupting it. The third opened with Lars Henriksen and Noora Koskinen fighting to a matched-penalty draw before Erik Johansson put the finishing touch on the scoreline at 6:22 for the 4-1 final.
Rantanen finished with a goal, a hit, and a fight—about as complete a night as a forward can have. Korhonen and Johansson each added a goal of their own, and McMurdo's Borova provided the only real threat the home side faced all night. As expected at these odds, Helsinki never trailed after the eight-minute mark.
MDE 1 — ANC 2
Quel match. La Ladera hosted the day's signature drama—Medellín were 1.56 favorites, Anchorage 2.46 underdogs, and it took a full extra frame and a shootout to settle it. Upset confirmed, the hard way.
Valentina Ospina opened the scoring for Medellín at 10:05, then fought Heather Braund to a coincidental major late in the period. The second passed scoreless despite a Sixth visit at 8:30 and steady hitting from both benches. Medellín carried the 1-0 lead to the third, where Isaiah Tobin finally beat the home goaltender at 9:46, Braund assisting, to level it. Neither side found the net in overtime, an Anchorage penalty killed off in the closing minutes.
Then the shootout. At 4:31, Tara Alexie calmly picked the corner and won it for Anchorage. She finished the night with a goal, four hits, and the shootout winner—the most complete performance on the ice in a game where nobody else managed more than a single point. Ospina's goal and fight were Medellín's best in a losing effort. La Ladera fell quiet as the visitors, at nearly 2.5-to-1, walked out with both points. C'est du grand hockay.
DKR 1 — RIM 3
The Sandy Parlor turned into the most heavily penalized building of the matchday—eleven penalties, three fights—and Rimini's depth made the difference. Dakar were 1.63 favorites; Rimini's 2.29 underdogs left with the two points.
Alessandro Conti opened the scoring for Rimini at 8:42 in a chippy first period. The second brought a fight between Abdoulaye Touré and Francesca Serra before Serra herself scored to make it 2-0, and a Sixth visit at 10:55 gave both benches a breather. The third saw Giulia Bianchi and Ousmane Diallo fight to a matched major, Fatou Mbaye pull one back for Dakar at 8:27, and Matteo Galli restore Rimini's two-goal cushion at 10:36. Luca Ferretti and Aminata Sow closed the fight card with under two minutes to play.
Three different Rimini scorers—Conti, Serra, Galli—proved too much for Dakar's lone reply from Mbaye. The home crowd watched their favorites get outworked in a game that never found a clean moment, and eleven penalties across sixty minutes tell the story of a match Rimini controlled through persistence as much as skill.
MTL 2 — SAO 6
C'est incroyable. Montréal were 1.61 favorites at The Oldest Rink, and São Paulo made that number look absurd, scoring six times behind a Camila Ferreira hat trick and three Amanda Barbosa assists.
The Serpents scored three times in the first period alone—Ferreira at 4:10, Gustavo Ribeiro at 6:00, Felipe Carvalho at 6:47—after Thiago Pereira and Élodie Gagnon, then Catherine Lavoie and Camila Ferreira, both fought to coincidental majors in the opening minutes. Montréal trailed 0-3 without having found an answer. The second period was worse: Ferreira's second at 0:32 and third at 12:26, sandwiched around a Sixth visit at 7:29, put São Paulo up 0-5 heading to the third.
Montréal finally got on the board through Jean-René Bergeron and Marc-Antoine Dufresne in the third, cutting the deficit to 2-5, before Juliana Santos restored the five-goal margin at 7:44 for the 2-6 final. Ferreira's hat trick and a fight, Barbosa's three helpers—this was as complete an offensive performance as the league has seen this season, delivered on the road against one of the more reliable home sides. The Oldest Rink has seen worse nights, but not many.
WPG 3 — CAI 2
The Cold Lodge produced the matchday's best finish. Winnipeg were 1.44 favorites and looked every bit of it through two periods, but Cairo refused to go quietly, and it took overtime to settle who left with both points.
Jake Fehr opened the scoring for Winnipeg at 10:59 of the first, Anna Flett assisting, and Nicole Flett doubled the lead at 8:44 of the second after Layla Mostafa and Kaya Bearclaw had fought to a matched-major draw. A Sixth visit at 10:27 came with the home side up 2-0 and looking comfortable. Cairo had other ideas. Habiba Sherif converted a power play at 2:57 of the third to make it 2-1, and Layla Mostafa leveled it at 14:20, assisted by Khaled Naguib, forcing extra time few in the building expected.
The overtime lasted forty-eight seconds. Curtis Favel, who'd already put two hits on the board, buried the winner off a Leah Blacksmith feed to send The Cold Lodge home happy. Sixteen hits and ten penalties made for a physical, choppy sixty-plus minutes, and Mostafa's goal, hit, and fight made her the best player on the ice over the final twenty—just not quite enough to beat the favorites at home. Ça, c'est du hockay.
WEL 1 — GND 5
The Howling Harbour hosted one of the matchday's more dramatic collapses. Wellington were 1.69 favorites, led 1-0 after two periods on Charlotte Hemi's goal at 12:42, and then simply stopped existing in the third. Gander scored five times in twenty minutes.
Janice Hapgood tied it at 5:10, Cyril Hynes put Gander ahead at 9:40, Trina Pickett made it 3-1 at 10:01—twenty-one seconds after Hynes—and Bridget Walsh extended it to 4-1 at 12:44 before Hapgood completed her brace at 14:01 for the 1-5 final. Five goals, four different scorers, all in a single period, against a Wellington side that had done everything right through the first forty minutes; a Sixth visit at 7:55 was the only interruption to an otherwise even, hard-hitting two-thirds of the game.
Hapgood finished with two goals, Mary Quinlan with two assists, and the collapse leaves Wellington searching for answers about a third period that erased a perfectly respectable performance. At 2.19 odds, Gander's road upset is one of the largest point swings of the matchday, and it arrived entirely in the final act.
GDL 4 — MUM 2
El Rincón Perdido saw Guadalajara do exactly what their 1.67 odds suggested, and they did it fast—Diego Hernández scored at 1:08 and Camila Flores followed just ten seconds later at 1:18. Santiago Torres made it 3-0 at 7:44 before Rahul Nair pulled one back for Mumbai at 9:46. Guadalajara led 3-1 after a first period that took the away side's legs out from under them before they'd settled in.
Sofía Navarro extended the lead to 4-1 just eight seconds into the second period, and a Sixth visit at 11:22 gave Mumbai a chance to regroup that they largely used well—Kiran Bhatt's goal in the third, assisted by Kavya Iyer, was as close as the visitors got, making it 4-2.
Torres finished with a goal and an assist, Iyer with two helpers for Mumbai in the losing effort, and Diego Hernández added two hits to his opening goal. Four different Guadalajara scorers spread the damage evenly, and the two early goals in the opening ninety seconds proved more than enough cushion. El Rincón Perdido remains a difficult building for visitors, and Mumbai's night confirmed it once again.
JBG 3 — BUS 2
The biggest number on the board. Johannesburg were 2.12 underdogs at Die Goue Myn against a Busan side favored at 1.73, and the Jaguars simply outscored them from the opening period. Mandla Zulu opened it at 4:52, Thabo Mokoena doubled the lead at 6:59, and Hye-jin Choi got one back for Busan at 12:04 to make it 2-1 after twenty.
Nomsa Mahlangu extended Johannesburg's lead to 3-1 early in the second, and the game turned physical from there—a Sixth visit at 11:59 preceded a fight between Bongani Mthembu and Yuna Kang in the period's closing minutes. Ji-eun Shin's goal at 1:40 of the third, assisted by Eun-bi Han, brought Busan within one, but the Jaguars' defense held for the final thirteen minutes to close out the 3-2 upset.
Mahlangu finished with a goal, an assist, and a hit—the most complete performance on the ice—while Eun-bi Han's two assists were the best Busan could muster in a losing cause. Three different Johannesburg scorers built a lead the visitors could chip at but never fully erase. At these odds, this was the upset of the day on paper, and Die Goue Myn's crowd will remember it as such.
PRA 2 — PER 3
The Stone Opera hosted a tight, low-event affair—just seven hits all game—decided by a twenty-five-second sequence in the third period. Perth were 1.73 favorites against Prague's 2.11, and the visitors made the numbers hold up, barely.
Sienna Kapoor opened the scoring for Perth at 6:09 of the first, and Nate Hargrove doubled it early in the second, a Sixth visit at 7:02 interrupting the flow before David Růžička got Prague on the board at 13:28 to make it 1-2 after forty. The third period flipped the game on its head twice inside twenty-five seconds—Pavel Krejčí tied it for Prague at 2:48, and Zara Patel restored Perth's lead at 3:13, a response so quick the building barely had time to process the equalizer. Krejčí and Gemma Fletcher fought late as the clock wound down on a 2-3 Perth win.
Patel's game-winner, assisted by Tahlia Nguyen, was the difference in a game with only five total goals and one fight. Prague's Růžička and Krejčí both scored, but Perth's three different contributors—Kapoor, Hargrove, Patel—proved just enough depth to hold on as favorites.
USH 3 — VLA 2
A near-even matchup at The South Passage—1.88 for Ushuaia, 1.93 for Vladivostok—settled by home discipline in a scoreless third period. Matías Fernández opened the scoring for the Undertow at 0:22, Kirill Morozov equalized for Vladivostok at 3:56, and Santiago Figueroa restored Ushuaia's lead at 10:46 to make it 2-1 after twenty.
Nikita Sorokin's power-play goal at 1:59 of the second tied it again, but Nicolás Sosa's goal at 10:09, assisted by Figueroa, put Ushuaia back in front for good at 3-2. A Sixth visit at 6:04 came in the middle of a penalty-filled second period. The third turned purely physical—Tomás Peralta and Igor Zaytsev fought to a matched major at 5:07—but neither side found the net across the final twenty minutes.
Figueroa finished with a goal and an assist, Zaytsev with two helpers and a fight for Vladivostok in the losing effort. Ushuaia's South Passage held its home advantage exactly as the tight odds suggested it might.
Five upsets, an overtime classic in the prairie cold, a shootout in the Andes, and São Paulo turning The Oldest Rink into a rout that Montréal will want to forget quickly. Matchday 25 had a little of everything, and none of it came easy. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 25 occurred. Winnipeg's overtime winner against Cairo has been logged at forty-eight seconds; the record shows no irregularity in The Cold Lodge's ice. The record has been updated accordingly.