Matchday Recap: S02D37
Two upsets, two extra-innings finishes, and a Havana team that spotted Helsinki three goals before deciding they'd seen enough—Matchday 37 gave us a bit of everything. Dakar shocked Tokyo at The Sandy Parlor behind a pair of echo goals, and Vladivostok survived the closest odds of the night against Nairobi. Ushuaia needed overtime to see off Prague, and Mumbai and São Paulo needed a shootout to settle theirs. Guadalajara, for their part, simply scored six unanswered goals in a third period and called it a night. Allons-y, there is plenty to get through.
USH 3 — PRA 2
A scoreless, penalty-choked first period at The South Passage gave little hint of what was coming. Kateřina Dvořáková put Prague ahead at 8:46 of the second, Martin Procházka assisting, and that lead held into the third as Tereza Horáková and company kept the Ushuaia forwards off balance. Eliška Veselá doubled it thirteen seconds into the final frame, Pavel Krejčí assisting, and the home fans at The South Passage had every reason to be nervous.
Then Ushuaia found their legs. Santiago Figueroa pulled one back at 9:50, Luciana Romero assisting, and Camila Aguirre tied it at 10:45 with the extra attacker on, Valentina Giménez feeding her. Quel match. Regulation ended 2-2, and it was Giménez who settled it in overtime, burying the winner at 6:09 with Florencia Ramos picking up the assist. Ushuaia were the modest home favorites at 1.82, and they needed every minute of sixty-five to prove it.
RIM 6 — BUS 4
Rimini controlled the opening frame at The Coastal Pavilion, Sofia Barbieri and Lorenzo Fabbri scoring three minutes apart to make it 2-0 after one. The second period turned into an offensive carnival—six goals in all. Elena Moretti and Davide Marchetti extended the home lead, Hyun-woo Kwon and Jae-won Kim answered for Busan, and Valentina Colombo's power-play strike sandwiched around Fabbri's second made it 6-2 by the intermission.
Busan refused to fold. Min-jun Lee and Moretti dropped the gloves early in the third, and Sang-hoon Bae took over from there, scoring twice—once at 6:45 and again on the power play at 11:47, So-hee Hwang assisting the second—to pull Busan within two. It wasn't enough. Rimini, the modest favorites at 1.82, held on for the 6-4 final. Moretti finished with a goal, two assists, and a fight; Fabbri added two goals of his own. Ten goals and sixteen hits made for a busy night on the Adriatic.
GDL 7 — JBG 3
Johannesburg looked like the team playing with house money for two periods at El Rincón Perdido. Santiago Torres opened the scoring for Guadalajara at 0:18, but Pieter Botha answered before the first intermission, and Jaco van der Merwe and Bongani Mthembu put the Jaguars ahead 3-1 through two, the visitors well worth their 2.23 underdog price to that point. Sofía Navarro and Mandla Zulu had already dropped the gloves in the first, a sign of the physicality to come.
The third period belonged entirely to the home side. Carlos Morales started it, Valentina Ramírez scored twice, Mateo Guzmán and Jimena Castillo each chipped in, and an echo goal at 12:41 capped six unanswered Guadalajara goals in twenty minutes. Daniela Salazar quietly picked up two assists in the barrage. C'est incroyable—a team down two goals with one period to play finishing 7-3 winners, exactly as their 1.67 odds suggested they should.
WEL 2 — MTL 1
Wellington and Montréal traded goals ninety-five seconds apart at The Howling Harbour—Charlotte Hemi first for the Whales at 1:50, Mereana Brooke assisting, then Philippe Dubois tying it for Montréal at 3:25, Amélie Bouchard feeding him. The hitting started early and never let up; Nikau Edwards alone put two Maples on the ice before the first intermission.
Olivia Rangi put Wellington back ahead for good at 5:12 of the second, Tane Wiremu assisting, and the Whales spent the third period defending a one-goal lead through a physical, foul-heavy final frame. Alexandre Paquette and Brooke fought at 3:53, one of six penalties called in the game. Nineteen total hits made this the most hard-fought one-goal game of the matchday, and Wellington's even-money favorites' tag—1.90 to Montréal's 1.91—held up by the barest of margins.
ANC 3 — MCM 5
McMurdo came out fast at The Watch Station, Chris Elliot and Lars Henriksen scoring under three minutes apart to make it 0-2 after one, the modest road favorites doing exactly what their 1.81 odds promised. Ingrid Solheim made it 0-3 early in the second before Anchorage found an answer in Isaiah Tobin, who scored twice in four minutes—the second on the power play, Heather Braund assisting—to pull the Auroras within one. Sven Lindberg restored McMurdo's two-goal cushion before the intermission.
Cody Tulik got Anchorage back within one again in the third, but Lindberg capped his own two-goal, one-assist night at 12:32, Chris Elliot returning the favor, to seal it 5-3. Ingrid Solheim finished with a goal and two assists as McMurdo's balanced attack—five different players with points—proved too deep for the home side to match.
MUM 2 — SAO 3
The Salt Pavilion needed extra time to settle this one, and it very nearly needed a coin flip before that. Gustavo Ribeiro opened the scoring for São Paulo at 8:40 of the first, after Meera Naik and Camila Ferreira had already fought once. Mumbai answered in the second—Rohan Deshmukh tied it, Aditya Rao put the home side ahead—before Juliana Santos leveled it on the power play early in the third, Thiago Pereira assisting. Bruno Nascimento and Rahul Nair fought late to punctuate a tense period.
Overtime settled nothing, four scoreless minutes of end-to-end hockay, and the game went to a shootout for the first time this matchday. Juliana Santos, who'd already tied it in regulation, calmly picked the corner at 3:31 to win it for São Paulo. The Serpents were the away favorites at 1.72, and Santos made sure the chalk held—barely.
STO 3 — PER 4
Stockholm led twice at The Still Strait and couldn't make either hold. Freja Sandström and Maja Forsberg had the Sirens up 2-1 after one, but Perth's Riley Dawson and Oscar Whitfield kept pace, and Axel Lindqvist's early second-period goal only briefly restored the home cushion before Tahlia Nguyen and Liam O'Brien tied it again by the second intermission. Riley Dawson and Hugo Wikström fought in between, one of three fights on the night.
Nguyen struck again at 2:20 of the third, Dawson returning the assist, and this time Stockholm had no answer. Perth, the modest road favorites at 1.79, closed it out 4-3 despite a physical response from the home side—Astrid Engström and Zara Patel fought late, part of eighteen hits on the evening. Nguyen's two goals were the difference in a game that changed hands four times.
HAV 5 — HEL 4
Helsinki looked ready to run away with this one at The Rhythm Bureau, scoring three times in the first six minutes through Aleksi Korhonen, Mikko Hämäläinen, and Liisa Nieminen. Claudia Pérez got Havana on the board before the intermission, and that single goal turned out to be the first of four straight for the home side. Quel retournement.
Yordanis Sánchez, Osmany Leyva, and Yanelis Peña all scored in the second period—Pérez picking up assists on two of them—and Havana had stormed all the way back to a 4-3 lead they didn't have at the start of the frame. Orlando Machado made it 5-3 late in the third before Niko Mäkelä's power-play goal with under a minute left made the final score respectable for Helsinki. Havana were the marginal home favorites at 1.90, but nothing about erasing a three-goal deficit felt like chalk. Pérez finished with a goal and two assists in the middle of it all.
GND 6 — CAI 2
Janice Hapgood had the night of her season at The Waypoint, and Gander made the most of it. Gus Maloney opened and closed the first-period scoring around an Omar Hassan equalizer, both Maloney goals assisted by Hapgood, and a Trina Pickett–Salma Ibrahim fight punctuated an otherwise even opening frame. The second period passed quietly, Gander nursing a 2-1 lead through twenty minutes of hitting without a goal.
The third belonged to the Geese. Hapgood scored twice more and set up Calvin Roebothan's goal, Wade Bursey added another off a Trina Pickett feed, and Hapgood found time to fight Habiba Sherif in between. Ahmed Zaki's power-play goal was the lone bright spot for Cairo. Two goals, three assists, two hits, and a fight—Hapgood was directly involved in five of Gander's six goals, and the home favorites' 1.81 odds looked conservative by the final horn.
DKR 4 — TOK 1
C'est Hockay at its strangest. Tokyo's Yūma Hayashi opened the scoring unassisted just thirteen seconds in, and the modest road favorites at 1.83 looked set to control the game from there. Mamadou Guèye tied it for Dakar at 12:18, Moussa Ndiaye assisting—and then the net remembered. An echo goal at 13:40 put Dakar ahead 2-1 heading into the second, the building at The Sandy Parlor still processing what it had just seen.
Ibrahima Sarr made it 3-1 in the second period, Fatou Mbaye assisting, and the net struck again a hundred seconds later—a second echo goal, crediting Sarr once more, making it 4-1. Dakar shut the door from there; Cheikh Fall and Mei Fujita fought late, but Tokyo never found the third goal they needed. Two echo goals in one game is a rare thing, and it was enough to turn a road favorite into a home upset. Dakar were 1.99 underdogs at home. The Sandy Parlor will remember this one.
VLA 3 — NRB 2
The tightest line of the matchday—1.91 to 1.90—settled in favor of the home side at The Last Terminal, but not without a fight, literally. Vera Orlova opened the scoring for Vladivostok at 3:23, and James Odhiambo answered for Nairobi less than two minutes later, Amara Osei assisting. Dennis Wafula and Tatiana Novikova dropped the gloves shortly after, setting the physical tone for a night that finished with twenty total hits.
Artyom Volkov restored Vladivostok's lead late in the second, Orlova picking up an assist of her own, and both special-teams units cashed in during the third—Denis Baranov on the power play for Vladivostok, Akinyi Ochieng on the power play for Nairobi. The Vodkas held on for the 3-2 win, a technical upset given Nairobi's razor-thin edge in the odds, but one that felt earned on a night this physical.
MDE 5 — WPG 3
Medellín jumped out to a 3-0 lead at La Ladera before Winnipeg had found their footing—Mateo Arango, Daniela Mejía, and Juan Esteban Ramírez all scoring in the first eleven minutes, Mejía picking up a goal and an assist in the stretch. Kaya Bearclaw got the Wendigos on the board before the intermission, and Tara Ridsdale's power-play goal early in the second trimmed the deficit further before Sofía Estrada restored a two-goal cushion for the home side.
The third period turned chippy—Leah Blacksmith and Sofía Estrada fought, then Mateo Arango and Marissa Spence went at it moments later—before Jake Fehr pulled Winnipeg within one at 9:26. Nicolás Betancur, who finished with a goal and two assists on the night, put the game out of reach at 13:34, Sebastián Cardona assisting. Medellín were the home favorites at 1.82, and their fast start proved decisive even as Winnipeg made them sweat the finish.
Two upsets, two extra-time finishes, and a Havana comeback that erased a three-goal deficit before Helsinki knew what hit them—Matchday 37 had a little of everything for everyone. C'est Hockay. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 37 occurred. Two echo goals were recorded at The Sandy Parlor in the same game, a frequency Le Permanent Council notes without further comment. The record has been updated accordingly.