Matchday Recap: S02D34
Four upsets on Matchday 34, and none of them came easy. Medellín stunned Tokyo at The Neon Crossing, Mumbai rallied past Perth, Winnipeg shut out a favored Helsinki side at The Dark Sauna, and Stockholm needed overtime to steal one at The Waypoint. Anchorage and Montréal needed extra hockey too—eight fights, a full overtime, and a shootout winner from Philippe Dubois to settle it. Lucas Almeida scored a hat-trick as São Paulo outlasted Ushuaia 7-4 in the highest-scoring game of the night, and Havana scored four unanswered in the third to flip a deficit in Johannesburg. Allons-y, plenty to get through.
TOK 2 — MDE 4
Medellín were 2.07 underdogs at The Neon Crossing and led before Tokyo's fans had settled into their seats. Valentina Ospina opened it at 1:06, Camilo Henao assisting, before Luciana Vélez and Aoi Yamamoto dropped the gloves minutes later. Shūta Tanaka answered for Tokyo at 5:34, Haruto Nakamura assisting, but Ospina struck again at 9:48 off Nicolás Betancur's feed, and Medellín took a 1-2 edge into the second.
Sebastián Cardona pulled Tokyo even briefly at 5:12 of the second, Isabella Gómez assisting, before Sōta Watanabe restored the visitors' cushion at 7:51, Riku Mori assisting, making it 2-3. The third turned into a fight card—Camilo Henao and Yuki Sato at 2:56, then Mateo Arango and Sōta Watanabe at 5:21—before Andrés Quintero sealed it for Medellín at 8:20, Sofía Estrada assisting. Ospina's two goals were the difference, and at 2.07 odds, this one counts as an upset for the Mapaches.
ANC 1 — MTL 2
Quel match at The Watch Station—eight fights and fifteen penalties before anyone found the net. Levi Simmonds and Catherine Lavoie fought in the first, then Jean-François Tremblay and Mason Kluane, then Lavoie again with Heather Braund. Twenty minutes of chaos, no goals. Kira Naluktaq finally broke through for Anchorage at 9:42 of the second, Carlos Medina assisting, moments after Catherine Lavoie's third fight of the night.
Chloé Moreau tied it for Montréal on the power play at 6:11 of the third, Lavoie assisting—her third fight and first point of the night—and neither side could find another goal through a scoreless overtime that included yet another fight, Alexandre Paquette and Levi Simmonds. It went to the shootout, and Philippe Dubois decided it at 4:31. What a moment, indeed. Catherine Lavoie's three fights anchored a game that was less about hockey and more about survival for long stretches, and Montréal walked out with the extra point.
PER 2 — MUM 4
Perth built the lead the odds expected—Liam O'Brien scored just fourteen seconds in, Jack Mitchell assisting—but Mumbai, 2.2 underdogs at The Red Furnace, never stopped answering. Vikram Joshi replied at 5:36, Meera Naik assisting, before Mitchell restored Perth's edge at 12:25, O'Brien returning the favor, and the home side led 2-1 after one.
Arjun Patil tied it for Mumbai forty seconds into the second, Rohan Deshmukh assisting, and the game stayed level until Meera Naik put the visitors ahead for good at 5:45 of the third, Ananya Kulkarni assisting. Aditya Rao added insurance at 12:26, Kavya Iyer assisting, before O'Brien and Priya Sharma fought late. Four different scorers carried Mumbai past a Perth side that had the better start but not the better finish—at 2.2 odds, this one belongs on the upset list.
MCM 7 — RIM 2
McMurdo were the modest favorites at The Remote Range and made it look easy. Kofi Mensah opened the scoring at 4:13, Elena Varga assisting, and Varga doubled it herself at 10:36, Ji-hoon Baek assisting, for a 2-0 lead after one. The second period buried Rimini entirely—Natasha Borova scored on the power play at 3:12, Diego Fuentes added one at 9:21, Borova struck again at 11:39, and Priya Anand made it 6-0 at 12:12, four different goals inside twelve minutes.
Elena Moretti got Rimini on the board in the third at 5:58, Nico De Luca assisting, before Tobias Frey restored McMurdo's six-goal cushion at 10:42, Natasha Borova assisting—to go with her two goals on the night. Chiara Ricci closed the scoring at 14:15, Lorenzo Fabbri assisting, for the 7-2 final. Ingrid Solheim and Ji-hoon Baek each finished with two assists, quietly running McMurdo's attack from behind a night that had four different goalscorers doing the damage.
GND 4 — STO 5
A coin-flip on the odds board, and it played out that way for sixty-five minutes at The Waypoint. Bridget Walsh opened it for Gander at 0:43, Cyril Hynes assisting, before Liam Coish and Lucas Bredberg traded goals to make it 2-1 after one—Black Hole Net making the difference on both. The second period was a track meet: Hugo Wikström tied it, Janice Hapgood put Gander back up, Axel Lindqvist tied it again, Elin Sjöberg put Stockholm ahead, and Gus Maloney tied it once more at 14:42. Five goals, one period, 4-4 after two.
The third stayed level despite a Mary Quinlan-Hugo Wikström fight, setting up overtime. Elin Sjöberg settled it at 5:04, Oscar Söderström assisting—her second of the night. Hugo Wikström finished with a goal and two assists, and Elin Sjöberg's two goals, including the winner, made the difference in a game that never let either side breathe. At 1.91 odds, Stockholm's road win in extra time counts as the day's tightest upset.
HEL 0 — WPG 2
Helsinki were favored at home, and The Dark Sauna delivered a physical, low-scoring night that belonged to Winnipeg instead. Leah Blacksmith opened the scoring just 1:16 in, Brody Flett assisting, before Saku Järvinen and Jake Fehr fought, followed quickly by Brendan Fehr and Noora Koskinen. Winnipeg took the 1-0 lead into the second and simply defended it, twenty-three hits accumulating across the night without another puck crossing the line until Curtis Favel and Jenni Laine dropped the gloves late in the frame.
Nicole Flett made it 0-2 in the third at 6:31, Dylan Fife assisting, and that was all Winnipeg needed. Erik Johansson led all skaters with three hits in a losing effort, but Helsinki's forwards never solved Winnipeg's structure. At 1.79 odds, a home shutout loss stings—Blacksmith and Flett were the only players who found the net, and it was enough.
NRB 1 — GDL 3
A tight, mostly defensive night at The Ochre Reserve that Guadalajara controlled from the opening goal. Carlos Morales converted on the power play at 8:19, Rodrigo Vargas assisting, after Kevin Otieno and Sofía Navarro fought earlier in the frame. Navarro doubled the lead herself at 3:12 of the second, Morales returning the assist, before Moses Okello pulled Nairobi within one on the power play at 9:44, Akinyi Ochieng assisting—Nairobi's lone highlight of the night.
Alejandra Ríos closed it out in the third at 14:05, Andrés Rojas assisting, sealing the 3-1 final. Carlos Morales finished with a goal and an assist, the engine behind Guadalajara's three different scorers. At near-even odds, this was a professional, unspectacular road win—exactly the kind the numbers called for.
BUS 2 — DKR 4
Dakar's road favorites' tag held up at The Frozen Dock behind balanced scoring across all three periods. Aminata Sow opened it at 6:09, Rokhaya Faye assisting, and that lead held until Min-jun Lee tied it for Busan at 9:14 of the second, Hyun-woo Kwon assisting. Ibrahima Sarr restored Dakar's edge late in the frame, Fatou Mbaye assisting, making it 1-2 after two, with Moussa Ndiaye and Soo-yeon Park fighting in between.
Mamadou Guèye extended the lead in the third at 6:30, Sarr assisting, before Seung-ho Jung pulled Busan within one at 12:23, Hyun-woo Kwon collecting his second assist. Modou Diouf sealed it on the power play at 14:14, Rokhaya Faye assisting—her second helper of the night. Four different Dakar goalscorers, and Ibrahima Sarr's goal and assist, did enough to hold off a Busan side that kept answering but never quite caught up.
CAI 1 — VLA 3
Vladivostok were heavy favorites at 1.64 and needed a scoreless first period before Vera Orlova took over at The Pyramid Basin. Tatiana Novikova and Omar Hassan fought early, but the only goals came in the second: Orlova opened at 8:19, Nikita Sorokin assisting, and Denis Baranov doubled it at 9:32, Kirill Morozov assisting, before Orlova struck again at 14:49, Olga Smirnova assisting, for a 0-3 lead after forty minutes.
Youssef Mansour got Cairo on the board in the third at 8:27, Habiba Sherif assisting, but it was academic by then. Orlova's two goals were the story—Vladivostok's favorites' tag held exactly as the odds promised, a clean professional win built on one player's night.
PRA 0 — WEL 1
A defensive standoff at The Stone Opera that needed overtime to break. Eliška Veselá and Manaia Walker dropped the gloves just over a minute in, setting the tone for a game that stayed goalless through three full periods despite six combined penalties and three fights—Adam Fiala and Anahera Reid, then Jakub Černý and Awhina Clarke, both in the second.
Neither side blinked in regulation, and it was Manaia Walker—one half of the opening fight—who settled it in overtime at 3:34, Olivia Rangi assisting. Eliška Veselá finished with three hits and a fight but no goal to show for her night's work. At 1.79 odds, Wellington's road favorites' tag held up in the extra period, a quiet, grinding win in a building that gave up nothing easily.
SAO 7 — USH 4
The Green Canopy hosted the highest-scoring game of the matchday, and Lucas Almeida made sure São Paulo came out on top. Thiago Pereira and Almeida staked the hosts to a 2-0 lead inside the first three minutes, both off Felipe Carvalho assists, before Ushuaia answered twice—Florencia Ramos and Valentina Giménez—to make it 2-2. Juliana Santos restored the São Paulo edge at 10:45, and the first ended 3-2.
Ushuaia briefly grabbed the lead in the second—Nicolás Sosa and Santiago Figueroa each scored, with a Mariana Lima fight following—but Thiago Pereira and Almeida answered right back to make it 5-4 after two. Rafael Oliveira and Almeida—completing his hat-trick—closed it out in the third for the 7-4 final. Almeida finished with three goals, Carvalho with three assists, and eleven total goals made this the shootout that never needed a shootout. São Paulo were the modest favorites, and their depth simply outscored Ushuaia's resistance.
JBG 2 — HAV 5
A scoreless, chippy first period at Die Goue Myn—Yarelys González and Nomsa Mahlangu fought at 11:24—gave way to a tight second. Jaco van der Merwe opened it for Johannesburg at 2:33, Kagiso Molefe assisting, before González tied it for Havana at 7:35, Lisandra Álvarez assisting, and the teams went to the third level at 1-1.
Pieter Botha put the Jaguars back ahead early in the third, Zanele Ndaba assisting, and Johannesburg looked in control—until Havana scored four unanswered. Yoandri Hernández tied it at 6:57, Lázaro Valdés put Havana ahead at 8:13, Mailén Domínguez extended it at 10:50, and Claudia Pérez closed the scoring at 14:56, finishing with a goal and an assist on the night. Along the way, van der Merwe and Hernández dropped the gloves too. At 1.84 odds, Havana were the modest favorites, and their third-period surge—four goals in under eight minutes—turned a one-goal deficit into a comfortable 5-2 win.
Four upsets, a shootout winner in Anchorage, and Havana's four-goal third period gave Matchday 34 its shape, but it was Lucas Almeida's hat-trick in that eleven-goal shootout of a game at The Green Canopy that will be the highlight reel. C'est Hockay. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 34 occurred. Eight fights were recorded in a single game at The Watch Station, a frequency Le Permanent Council notes without further comment. The record has been updated accordingly.