Matchday Recap: S02D41
Eight upsets on Matchday 41, and it took overtime to settle two of them. Medellín stole one in Ushuaia on a single well-timed swat 1:53 into the extra frame, and Montréal did the same in Havana after six fights and eleven penalties turned The Rhythm Bureau into a demolition site. Mumbai trailed Helsinki 2-3 after two periods and scored four unanswered in the third to win 6-3, the single biggest swing of the night. Cairo shut out Nairobi 5-0 as 2.32 underdogs, and Wellington did much the same on the road in Dakar. Allons-y, there is a great deal to get through.
ANC 2 — SAO 0
Anchorage were narrow underdogs at The Watch Station, and Jake Hensley made sure the odds meant nothing early, scoring at 1:28 off Carlos Medina's feed before the game had found its rhythm. That lead held through a second period that turned physical and strange in equal measure—Heather Braund and Juliana Santos dropped the gloves at 3:06, and when both returned from The Sixth, Santos came back marked, Sharp now clinging to her. Mariana Lima's penalty and Bryce Denison shedding whatever had been holding Heavy on him rounded out a frame that felt more like a Sixth séance than a hockey game.
The third period brought one more fight—Larissa Souza and Jake Hensley traded blows at 11:49—before Carlos Medina put the game away at 14:59, capping his own primary assist with a goal, Kira Naluktaq collecting the helper. São Paulo managed nothing past the Anchorage goaltender all night, and at 1.86 odds, the Serpents were the announced favorites walking out with nothing. A tidy, shutout upset to open the slate.
RIM 1 — PRA 4
Rimini were the home favorites at The Coastal Pavilion, and Prague spent the first period reminding them why odds are just odds. Francesca Serra opened the scoring for the Rinklers at 6:03, Giulia Bianchi assisting, but Pavel Krejčí answered twice before the period ended—first at 9:03 off Tomáš Novák's feed, then again at 14:34, Novák assisting once more—sandwiched around a Jakub Černý-Lorenzo Fabbri fight and a second scrap between David Růžička and Serra herself. Prague led 1-2 after twenty minutes they controlled almost completely.
The second period was quieter on the scoreboard but loud with modifiers—Tidal and Luminous changing hands through The Sixth without settling anything—before Prague pulled away for good in the third. Tereza Horáková buried a power-play chance at 4:05, Lucie Šťastná assisting, and Martin Procházka added the exclamation point at 13:43, Novák picking up his third assist of the night. At 2.11 odds, Prague's road upset was built on Rimini's inability to find a second goal all night. Krejčí's two goals and Novák's three helpers did the rest.
MUM 6 — HEL 3
Quel match at The Salt Pavilion. Helsinki, favored at 1.71, looked every bit the better side through two periods—Elina Heikkinen opened it at 3:58, Saku Järvinen assisting, Saara Virtanen made it 0-2 at 5:57, and Aleksi Korhonen extended the lead to 1-3 early in the second after Sanjay Pawar had pulled Mumbai within one. Priya Sharma's goal at 14:18 made it 2-3 heading into the third, but nobody in the building was ready for what came next.
Mumbai scored four unanswered goals in the final twenty minutes. Erik Johansson and Arjun Patil fought at 5:20, and in the chaos that followed, Kavya Iyer tied it at 7:18, Vikram Joshi put Mumbai ahead at 7:51, Meera Naik made it 5-3 at 10:48, and Ananya Kulkarni sealed the 6-3 final at 14:14—with Saku Järvinen picking up Translated on his way back from The Sixth for his trouble. Naik finished with a goal and an assist, but this was a full-team collapse in reverse for Mumbai. At 2.15 odds for the home side, this was the biggest single-period turnaround of the matchday.
VLA 0 — TOK 3
The odds at The Last Terminal were essentially a coin flip—1.90 for Vladivostok, 1.91 for Tokyo—and Tokyo made Vladivostok's razor-thin favorite tag meaningless with a fast start. Mio Kobayashi opened it at 1:52, Ren Inoue assisting, and Mei Fujita doubled the lead at 4:19, Riku Mori picking up the helper. Yelena Pavlova and Aoi Yamamoto fought at 10:23, and Vladivostok never found an answer.
Riku Mori made it 0-3 early in the second, Mei Fujita returning the earlier assist, and that was all the offense anyone needed. The rest of the game turned into a Sixth-heavy slog—Artyom Volkov and Haruto Nakamura fought at 6:27, Sōta Watanabe and Volkov fought again in the third at 9:18, and modifiers changed hands constantly on the way in and out of The Sixth, Doubled sticking to Nakamura while Clumsy and Burning traded places between Volkov and Watanabe in the game's final minute. Nineteen hits and three fights made this a physical night. Riku Mori and Mei Fujita each finished with a goal and an assist, the engine behind a clean road shutout that barely qualified as an upset by the numbers alone.
USH 0 — MDE 1
The South Passage needed extra hockey to settle this one, and it took nearly the full sixty minutes plus overtime to produce a single goal. Medellín were the modest road favorites at 1.83, and for three periods neither side could find the net despite Matías Fernández's four hits keeping the game physical and even. Penalties came and went—Juan Esteban Ramírez, Tomás Peralta, Florencia Ramos, and Camilo Henao all serving time in The Sixth—but the scoreboard stayed blank through regulation.
Then, 1:53 into overtime, Mateo Arango batted a puck out of the air past the Ushuaia goaltender, Valentina Ospina collecting the assist, and Medellín stole the extra point on the road. It was the only goal of the night, decided by a single well-timed swat in the extra frame, and the favorites held their form even if the scoreline gave nothing away about how tightly fought it was. C'est le hockay—sixty-one minutes of nothing, then everything.
CAI 5 — NRB 0
Cairo were 2.32 underdogs at The Pyramid Basin, and they buried that number before the first period was two minutes old. Khaled Naguib opened the scoring at 0:28, Nour El-Sayed assisting, and Mostafa Rashad doubled it eleven seconds later, Farida Abdel-Rahman feeding him—the fastest two-goal start of the matchday. Layla Mostafa piled up hits all period long, and Cairo carried a 2-0 lead into the second looking nothing like the team the odds described.
Omar Hassan scored at 3:09, Youssef Mansour assisting, then set up Nour El-Sayed's goal at 6:56 to make it 4-0, and Karim Fahmy added a fifth at 2:29 of the third, Naguib collecting the assist. The rest of the period dissolved into fights—Habiba Sherif drew two separate matching-major scraps while absorbing hits throughout—but Nairobi never seriously threatened. Naguib, El-Sayed, and Hassan each finished with a goal and an assist, three different playmakers doing the damage. At 1.62 odds, Nairobi were supposed to win comfortably. Instead they were shut out on the road in one of the cleanest upsets of the night.
GND 4 — BUS 1
Busan were favored at 1.84 at The Waypoint, but Gander made them work through a scoreless first period before pulling away. Cyril Hynes and Eun-bi Han fought at 1:18 of the second, and Busan struck first through Jae-won Kim at 8:52, Soo-yeon Park assisting. Gander answered immediately—Brian Mercer buried a power-play goal at 10:55, Vera Tobin assisting, and struck again three minutes later at 13:56, Mary Quinlan picking up the helper, to take a 2-1 lead into the third.
The Waypoint got louder from there. Dermot Power made it 3-1 at 5:53, Hazel Strickland assisting, and Calvin Roebothan added the fourth thirty-two seconds later, Liam Coish feeding him, and Busan had no third-period response. Brian Mercer's two goals were the difference-maker on a night when Gander's depth simply outlasted the favorites. At 1.84 odds, Busan were supposed to leave with the two points; instead it was Gander celebrating a comfortable 4-1 win built on a three-goal second period.
DKR 2 — WEL 5
Dakar were the modest home favorites at The Sandy Parlor, and Wellington spoiled the party from the opening minute. Charlotte Hemi scored on the power play just twenty-six seconds after Khady Bâ returned from The Sixth, Awhina Clarke assisting, and Wellington never trailed. Mereana Brooke made it 0-2 at 9:50 of the second, Hemi returning the assist, before Fatou Mbaye pulled Dakar within one at 11:33, Khady Bâ assisting—Bâ and Rāwiri Patel had fought moments earlier, both picking up matching majors.
The third period turned into an offensive sprint. Awhina Clarke scored again at 3:38, Liam Tomoana assisting, before Rokhaya Faye answered for Dakar at 4:17, Modou Diouf assisting. But Wellington closed it out with two more—Hemi Sullivan unassisted at 10:14 and Tane Wiremu at 11:16, Manaia Walker assisting—sealing a 2-5 final that had Dakar's building silent by the horn. Charlotte Hemi and Awhina Clarke each finished with a goal and an assist, the engine behind a Wellington road win nobody at 1.84 odds saw coming for Dakar's home side. Seven goals and eight penalties made for a wild night at The Sandy Parlor.
GDL 3 — WPG 1
Guadalajara were the clear favorites at El Rincón Perdido and made it look straightforward, if occasionally chippy. Valentina Ramírez opened the scoring at 3:54, Andrés Rojas assisting, and after Rodrigo Vargas and Anna Flett dropped the gloves at 7:51, Sofía Navarro doubled the lead at 10:46, Rojas picking up his second assist of the period. Guadalajara led 2-0 after twenty minutes that went almost entirely their way.
Santiago Torres made it 3-0 early in the second, Navarro returning the assist, and that was as much offense as either side would need. Curtis Favel got Winnipeg on the board at 1:25 of the third, Jonas Brevik assisting, but the visitors never threatened to make it a game from there. Andrés Rojas finished with two assists and a hit, quietly setting up both of Guadalajara's first-period goals, while Sofía Navarro's goal and assist rounded out a comfortable night at home. At 1.67 odds, this was the form chalk holding up exactly as expected—no surprises, no late drama, just a well-drilled Guadalajara side doing what it was supposed to do.
MCM 5 — PER 1
McMurdo were the home favorites at The Remote Range, and Amira Hassan made sure of it early, scoring twice in the first period—once at 8:17, Tobias Frey assisting, and again on the power play at 11:18, Kofi Mensah feeding her. Priya Anand added a third at 11:49, Ingrid Solheim assisting, and McMurdo carried a 3-0 lead into the second that Perth never threatened to overturn.
Zara Patel and Natasha Borova fought early in the second, and Priya Anand struck again at 3:20, Diego Fuentes assisting, before Nate Hargrove pulled Perth within three at 4:06, Sienna Kapoor assisting—the visitors' lone goal of the night. Elena Varga closed the scoring in the third at 6:43, Tobias Frey collecting his second assist, for the 5-1 final. Anand and Hassan each finished with a pair of goals, and Frey's two assists tied it together in a comfortable, expected result. At 1.83 odds, McMurdo were supposed to win this one, and they did so without much resistance from a Perth side that never found its footing.
STO 0 — JBG 3
A tight, physical night at The Still Strait that Johannesburg's slim favorite tag—1.87 to Stockholm's 1.94—just barely justified. Pieter Botha opened the scoring at 10:09, Sipho Nkosi assisting, and the first period closed with back-to-back fights: Naledi Khumalo and Lucas Bredberg at 12:50, then Hugo Wikström and Bongani Mthembu at 13:58. Stockholm couldn't find an answer through twenty minutes that belonged to Johannesburg physically as much as on the scoreboard.
Khumalo herself got on the board at 11:49 of the second, Lindiwe Sithole assisting, before Sithole and Oscar Söderström fought moments later. Zanele Ndaba closed it out at 0:49 of the third, Thandiwe Radebe assisting, and Johannesburg cruised home with the shutout from there. Nineteen hits and three fights made this a hard-nosed evening, but Stockholm never found the net against a Jaguars side that controlled the physical game as thoroughly as the scoreline suggests. At odds this close, this result reads less like an upset and more like the away side simply playing the better hockey.
HAV 1 — MTL 2
Quel match at The Rhythm Bureau—six fights and eleven penalties before anyone found overtime, and Montréal stole it there as the modest road underdogs at 1.95. The first period produced no goals but plenty of theater: Chloé Moreau and Yarelys González fought at 3:15, Alexandre Paquette and Lázaro Valdés dropped the gloves 22 seconds later, and Paquette fought again with Adonis Reyes before the period was out. Havana finally broke through in the second when Reyes buried one at 10:14, Osmany Leyva assisting, after two more fights had already broken out.
Montréal tied it in the third through Marc-Antoine Dufresne at 4:10, Jean-François Tremblay assisting, and Claudia Pérez and Sarah-Maude Fortin closed the period with the game's sixth fight. Regulation ended 1-1, and it took until 7:27 of overtime for Lucas Pelletier to win it, Fortin picking up the assist after also dropping the gloves earlier. Adonis Reyes's goal and fight made him Havana's best player on a night his team still lost. At 1.86 odds, Havana were the marginal home favorites, and this was the second overtime upset of the matchday—one wrapped in the night's ugliest, most entertaining scrap total.
Eight upsets, two overtime winners, and a third period in Mumbai that will be replayed for weeks—Matchday 41 belonged to the underdogs almost everywhere you looked. C'est Hockay. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 41 occurred. Eight results deviated from the pre-game odds, a rate Le Permanent Council notes without further comment. The record has been updated accordingly.