Matchday Recap: S02D39
Six upsets on Matchday 39, and Mumbai needed the full ninety minutes plus a shootout to claim theirs—Arjun Patil forced overtime and then won it himself from the shootout circle to sink Tokyo's road favorites. Lucas Pelletier scored four times as Montréal erased a third-period deficit at La Ladera, and Petteri Salonen hat-tricked Helsinki past a Dakar side that was, on paper, the fractional favorite. Gander ambushed Perth 6-3 as home underdogs, and Wellington ran Havana off the ice 5-1 on the road. Add an 18-goal shootout of a different kind at The Pyramid Basin, where Nour El-Sayed's four goals still weren't enough, and quel match—there is a great deal to cover.
DKR 1 — HEL 4
Dakar were fractional favorites at The Sandy Parlor, 1.89 to Helsinki's 1.92, and it did not matter one bit. Petteri Salonen opened the scoring at 3:10 to set the tone, and Aminata Sow's goal for Dakar at 7:44, assisted by Moussa Ndiaye, lasted all of thirteen seconds before Saku Järvinen answered right back at 7:57 off Jenni Laine's feed. Dakar's response never really arrived after that.
The third period belonged entirely to Salonen. Saara Virtanen and Awa Diop dropped the gloves at 8:46, five-minute majors offsetting, and on the restart Salonen struck twice more—at 12:48 and 14:47, Juhani Rantanen assisting both times—to complete the hat-trick and make it 1-4. Rantanen finished with two helpers, quietly building the game around Salonen's three goals. Dakar were the barely favored side on paper; Helsinki left with the two points and never trailed.
USH 0 — WPG 2
Ushuaia and Winnipeg were essentially a coin flip on the odds board, 1.92 to 1.89, and The South Passage stayed scoreless through a testy, hit-heavy first period—Nicole Flett and Dylan Fife both landing heavy checks. Brendan Fehr broke it open at 4:45 of the second, Anna Flett assisting, capitalizing off a Marissa Spence penalty to give Winnipeg a lead they never relinquished.
Tara Ridsdale doubled it on the power play at 1:11 of the third, Jonas Brevik assisting, and from there it turned into a chippy finish—Nicolás Sosa and Jake Fehr traded fights at 7:24, coincidental majors offsetting. Winnipeg controlled the game without ever needing to pour it on, a clean, professional two points for the modest road favorites against a Ushuaia side that never found the net.
GDL 5 — PRA 3
Guadalajara were heavy favorites at El Rincón Perdido, 1.59 on the board, but Prague led first—Martin Procházka scoring at 1:09, Eliška Veselá assisting, moments after Sofía Navarro and Tomáš Novák dropped the gloves. The Sixth left its mark on both of them, Navarro returning with Burning clinging to her. Diego Hernández tied it for the Gatos at 3:22, Andrés Rojas assisting, before Emilio Delgado and Camila Flores put Guadalajara up 3-1 by the second intermission.
Valentina Ramírez and Sofía Navarro pushed the lead to 5-2 in the third—Ramírez at 9:44 off Rojas's second assist of the night, Navarro's power-play strike at 14:59 assisted by Ramírez right back. Adam Fiala had pulled Prague within two moments earlier, and then The Sixth had the last word: his goal echoed back at 14:59, handing Prague a phantom second marker and the 5-3 final margin. Rojas quietly finished with two assists behind five different Guadalajara scorers.
MDE 4 — MTL 7
Medellín were fractional home favorites at La Ladera, 1.89 to Montréal's 1.92, and for two periods it looked like a track meet. Lucas Pelletier opened the scoring at 3:56, Jean-René Bergeron assisting, and Élodie Gagnon made it 0-2 at 5:15 off Marc-Antoine Dufresne's feed, before Juan Esteban Ramírez pulled Medellín within one late in the first. Philippe Dubois and Camilo Henao fought at 13:56, majors offsetting, and Pelletier struck again on a Black Hole Net bounce at 7:35 of the second—but Camilo Henao and Nicolás Betancur answered, tying it 3-3 by the second intermission.
Medellín even led briefly in the third—Santiago Restrepo's power-play goal at 5:52 made it 4-3—before Montréal buried them. Sarah-Maude Fortin tied it right back at 6:02, and Pelletier scored twice more, at 6:24 and 14:59, to finish with four goals on the night. Simon Côté added another in between. Pelletier's outburst, fed by two assists apiece from Chloé Moreau and Bergeron, turned a nervy road game into a 4-7 final that will sting Medellín, who had this one in hand twice.
CAI 8 — MCM 10
Eighteen goals at The Pyramid Basin, and McMurdo—the modest 1.67 road favorites—needed every one of them. Diego Fuentes and Layla Mostafa traded early goals before Khaled Naguib and Ji-hoon Baek made it 2-2 after one, Mostafa and Tobias Frey fighting to punctuate the period. The Black Hole Net modifier turned up on goal after goal all night, and the second period alone produced six more—Priya Anand, Habiba Sherif, Yumi Takeda, Nour El-Sayed, Chris Elliot and Ingrid Solheim all finding twine, Mariam Khalil and Elena Varga fighting in between—to leave McMurdo up 6-4 by the second intermission.
Nour El-Sayed refused to let Cairo go quietly, scoring three more times in the third—including two on the power play—to finish with four goals on the night. But McMurdo's depth was the story: Ingrid Solheim and Diego Fuentes each scored twice, Lars Henriksen added a goal and two assists, and Tobias Frey set up three different goals. Kofi Mensah and Ahmed Zaki fought at 4:35 in a game that had long since abandoned defense. McMurdo held on for the 10-8 final, the form favorites surviving El-Sayed's best night of the season.
VLA 4 — SAO 2
Vladivostok were moderate favorites at The Last Terminal, 1.80 on the board, and made it stand up. Isabela Costa opened the scoring for São Paulo on the power play at 1:51, Camila Ferreira assisting, before Tatiana Novikova tied it right back on Vladivostok's own man advantage at 11:10, Olga Smirnova assisting, to end the first at 1-1.
Bruno Nascimento briefly put São Paulo back ahead at 3:43 of the second, but Novikova and Vera Orlova answered in quick succession—at 8:58 and 9:28—to put Vladivostok up 3-2 after two. Darya Kuznetsova sealed it in the third at 11:25, Artyom Volkov assisting, for the 4-2 final. Novikova's two goals were the difference in a game that never strayed far from the expected result.
MUM 4 — TOK 3
Tokyo were the clear road favorites at The Salt Pavilion, 1.64 on the board, and led twice—Yuki Sato opening it at 0:26, Sakura Shimizu assisting, and Aoi Yamamoto restoring the lead at 8:45 after Aditya Rao had tied it. Arjun Patil pulled Mumbai level again at 8:49 of the second, and the third period turned into a track meet: Sakura Shimizu's power-play goal at 5:19 put Tokyo back ahead, only for Divya Mehta to force overtime with a tying goal at 9:58.
Neither side broke through in the extra period, and it went to the shootout—where Arjun Patil stepped up again and beat Tokyo clean at 7:31 to steal it. Quel match. Mumbai's home underdogs, 2.28 on the board, stole two points from a Tokyo side that had led for most of regulation, and Patil's name was on both the goal that saved them and the shootout winner that won it.
RIM 2 — JBG 4
Rimini were the modest home favorites at The Coastal Pavilion, 1.82 to Johannesburg's 2.00, and it unraveled early. Naledi Khumalo opened the scoring at 1:10, Thandiwe Radebe assisting, and Bongani Mthembu made it 0-2 at 2:00 off Lindiwe Sithole's feed. Pieter Botha and Alessandro Conti fought at 5:19, majors offsetting, before Davide Marchetti pulled Rimini within one—but Khumalo struck again late in the period, her second of the night, making it 1-3 after twenty minutes.
The second period passed without a goal but not without contact—eighteen hits total on the night—before Johannesburg salted it away in the third. Thabo Mokoena's power-play goal at 0:38, Radebe picking up her second assist, made it 1-4, and Chiara Ricci's late reply for Rimini was academic. Radebe's two assists quietly orchestrated the win from behind Khumalo's two goals. At 1.82 odds, Rimini were the built-in favorites at home; Johannesburg's three different contributors made sure the line didn't matter.
STO 1 — BUS 2
A tight, hard-hitting night at The Still Strait, with Busan the fractional favorites at 1.87 and building a lead early. Eun-bi Han opened the scoring at 1:54, Soo-yeon Park assisting, and Dong-wook Yoon doubled it late in the first at 14:27, Tae-hyun Lim assisting, sending Stockholm into the locker room down two.
Klara Åström got one back for Stockholm at 14:49 of the second, Hugo Wikström assisting, but the equalizer never came—the third period passed scoreless despite sixteen hits on the night, Wikström and Maja Forsberg among the most frequent hitters. Busan held the line for the 2-1 win, the road favorites doing just enough to survive a physical, low-event finish.
HAV 1 — WEL 5
Havana were the home favorites at The Rhythm Bureau, 1.84 on the board, and led first—Yoandri Hernández scoring at 6:55, Adonis Reyes assisting. It did not last. Wellington scored four times in the second period alone: Hemi Sullivan at 1:56, Tane Wiremu at 3:45, Anahera Reid at 10:26, and Nikau Edwards at 12:11, with Sullivan racking up multiple points and Mereana Brooke chipping in an assist along the way.
Hemi Sullivan added her second of the night in the third at 12:38, Olivia Rangi assisting, to make it 1-5 final. Havana never found another answer after Hernández's opener, and Wellington's road underdogs, 1.97 on the board, made the upset look easy with four different goalscorers doing the damage.
GND 6 — PER 3
Gander were the home underdogs at The Waypoint, 2.07 to Perth's 1.76, and Calvin Roebothan made sure it didn't matter. He opened the scoring at 3:32, Gus Maloney assisting, and struck again at 11:58, Mary Quinlan assisting, before Sienna Kapoor made it 3-1 late in the first—Hazel Strickland's goal for Perth the only blemish.
Wade Bursey's power-play goal at 10:37 of the second made it 4-1 before Zara Patel replied for Perth, and Bursey struck again early in the third, his second of the night, to push it to 5-2. Tahlia Nguyen pulled Perth within two, but Cyril Hynes—assisted by Roebothan—sealed the 6-3 final at 12:12. Roebothan finished with two goals and an assist, Bursey with two goals of his own, and Gander's home underdogs handed Perth's favorites a result nobody at The Waypoint expected.
ANC 1 — NRB 3
Nairobi were modest road favorites at The Watch Station, 1.75 on the board, and controlled the first period completely. Akinyi Ochieng opened the scoring at 5:34, Faith Wanjiru assisting, and Zawadi Mutua doubled it at 6:19, Dennis Wafula assisting, before Kevin Otieno capitalized on the power play at 10:56, Wanjiru picking up her second assist, making it 0-3 after twenty minutes.
The second period passed without a goal, punctuated only by Amara Osei and Molly Kavairlook dropping the gloves at 12:14. Jake Hensley got Anchorage on the board in the third at 10:02, Kavairlook assisting, but it was well too late to matter. Wanjiru's two assists paced a balanced Nairobi effort, and the 3-1 final held up exactly as the odds predicted.
Six upsets, a four-goal night from Lucas Pelletier, a hat-trick from Petteri Salonen, and Arjun Patil deciding it twice in Mumbai—Matchday 39 gave the underdogs the headlines and made the favorites earn every point they kept. C'est Hockay. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 39 occurred. Eighteen goals were recorded in a single game at The Pyramid Basin, a total Le Permanent Council notes without further comment. The record has been updated accordingly.