Matchday Recap: S02D44
Quatre bouleversements et deux thrillers en tirs de barrage—Matchday 44 had everything but a dull moment, mes amis. Johannesburg and Cairo traded haymakers all night at Die Goue Myn before Bongani Mthembu buried the shootout winner in a game that finished 6-5 and never once looked settled. Busan stole one from Perth in overtime, Ushuaia held off Dakar as home underdogs, and Winnipeg made Vladivostok pay for the two extra points the market had already awarded them. Nairobi's Faith Wanjiru delivered the night's cleanest overtime dagger, and Wellington let a shootout slip away to Rimini despite carrying the better odds into the third. Allons-y, there is a lot of ice to cover.
TOK 3 — GND 2
Kaito Itō opened the scoring for Tokyo at 2:31, Yūma Hayashi assisting, and the game stayed even through a first period full of hits at The Neon Crossing—Dermot Power tied it for Gander at 11:27, Hazel Strickland feeding him, sending the sides in level at 1-1. Power struck again at 12:23 of the second, Vera Tobin assisting, and Gander carried a 1-2 lead into the third looking every bit the value they were supposed to be at 2.28 odds.
The third period turned into Tokyo's answer. Sōta Watanabe and Janice Hapgood dropped the gloves early, and Kaito Itō and Wade Bursey followed suit a few minutes later—matching majors sending four players to The Sixth inside a busy final frame. Mei Fujita tied it at 11:04, Yuki Sato assisting, and Aoi Yamamoto won it a minute later at 12:08, Ren Inoue feeding the winner, as Tokyo closed out their role as modest 1.64 favorites at home. Dermot Power's two goals were the best individual night on the ice, but Tokyo's response—two goals in sixty-four seconds—settled it.
SAO 0 — MCM 2
Ingrid Solheim did all the damage at The Green Canopy, scoring both McMurdo goals in a tight, hard-hitting affair that opened with Felipe Carvalho and Elena Varga dropping the gloves inside the first two minutes. Solheim's first came at 11:51 of the opening period, Natasha Borova assisting, and São Paulo—stuck killing penalties for long stretches—never found an answer. The middle period was mostly a standoff, twenty minutes of hits and box time without a goal to show for it.
Solheim delivered the exclamation point on the power play at 6:44 of the third, Lars Henriksen collecting the assist, and McMurdo closed out a clean 2-0 shutout that lined up almost exactly with the coin-flip odds on the night (1.93 home, 1.88 away). São Paulo managed thirteen hits and never lacked for physicality—Felipe Carvalho alone finished with two hits and a fight—but couldn't solve the McMurdo goaltender. A quiet, professional road win, decided entirely by one player's two finishes.
MTL 2 — NRB 3
Simon Côté put Montréal ahead on the power play at 8:19 of the first, Jean-René Bergeron assisting, and The Oldest Rink held that 1-0 scoreline through a chippy, fight-filled second period—Dennis Wafula and Sarah-Maude Fortin traded punches late, sending both benches into the third with matching majors still to serve. Nairobi finally answered: Akinyi Ochieng tied it at 5:13, Moses Okello assisting, before Marc-Antoine Dufresne restored Montréal's lead at 8:45, Dmitri Volkov feeding him. Brian Kipchoge leveled it right back at 12:55, Peter Kimani assisting, and twenty minutes wasn't enough to settle it.
It took overtime. Faith Wanjiru buried the winner at 4:52 of the extra frame, Zawadi Mutua getting the assist, and Nairobi left The Oldest Rink with two points as modest road favorites at 1.80. Five different goalscorers, a game that changed hands three times in the final period alone, and a finish that came with the crowd still on its feet. Quel match to be part of on an afternoon that had already given plenty.
PRA 0 — ANC 3
Anchorage's night at The Stone Opera started with fists—Eliška Veselá and Kira Naluktaq fought five minutes in—and ended with a clean shutout that matched their status as the modest road favorites. Prague generated chances and plenty of hits without ever solving the Anchorage goaltender across a scoreless first two periods marked more by fights than finishes; Isaiah Tobin and Adam Fiala, Jake Hensley and Pavel Krejčí, and Tereza Horáková and Sierra Peters all dropped the gloves before the second intermission.
The third period is where Anchorage cashed in. Bryce Denison opened the scoring at 2:04, Heather Braund assisting, and Tara Alexie made it 0-2 on the power play at 13:12, Sierra Peters feeding her, before Levi Simmonds added the exclamation point a minute later at 14:13, Braund collecting her second helper of the night. Braund's two assists quietly ran the show behind three different scorers, and Prague—held to zero across sixty minutes despite five fights on the night—had no response. A workmanlike, physical win for the Auroras.
WPG 3 — VLA 1
Winnipeg wasted no time delivering an upset the odds didn't see coming. Anna Flett opened the scoring on the power play at 8:06 of the first, Jake Fehr assisting, and Fehr returned the favor at 12:26, Flett setting him up, staking the Wendigos to a 2-0 lead after twenty minutes at The Cold Lodge. Vladivostok, favored at 1.77 on the road, pulled one back through Artyom Volkov at 7:49 of the second, Denis Baranov assisting, but couldn't find the equalizer they needed.
Anna Flett settled matters for good at 7:44 of the third, Brody Flett feeding her, finishing the night with two goals and an assist against a Vladivostok side that came in as the better team on paper. Flett's line did the heavy lifting in a game that was tighter in feel than the 3-1 final suggests—twelve hits, six penalties, and not a single fight, just two teams playing it straight and Winnipeg's top duo simply being better. At 2.07 home odds, this was the value bet cashing in.
WEL 2 — RIM 3
The Howling Harbour gave Wellington every reason to believe, then took it away in the cruelest way possible. Rimini controlled the scoreboard early—Lorenzo Fabbri opened it at 1:15 of the second, Alessandro Conti assisting, and Elena Moretti doubled the lead at 6:31, Nico De Luca feeding her—while a parade of fights (Nico De Luca and Aroha Ngata, Lorenzo Fabbri and Rāwiri Patel, Alessandro Conti and Charlotte Hemi) kept the building loud. Wellington clawed back in the third: Hemi Sullivan pulled one back at 1:37, Olivia Rangi assisting, and Tane Wiremu tied it at 12:34, Aroha Ngata feeding the equalizer, forcing extra time.
Neither side broke through in overtime, and it came down to the shootout—Giulia Bianchi buried the winner at 7:31 to steal it for Rimini. Wellington were the barely-better team on paper at 1.88 to Rimini's 1.93, which makes this an upset by the thinnest of margins, but it will sting just the same after a two-goal cushion evaporated. Nineteen hits, three fights, and a shootout dagger—The Howling Harbour delivered a proper hockay night.
JBG 6 — CAI 5
If you saw one game from Matchday 44, make it this one. Die Goue Myn hosted an eleven-goal, four-fight, shootout classic that swung on modifiers as much as skill—Cairo raced out to a 0-2 lead through Ahmed Zaki and Omar Hassan, the latter goal explicitly credited to Black Hole Net, before Johannesburg exploded for four unanswered in the second: Bongani Mthembu on the power play, Zanele Ndaba, Pieter Botha, and Lerato Dlamini all beat the Cairo goaltender inside eight minutes to flip it to 4-3, with two more of those goals also marked by Black Hole Net. Nour El-Sayed answered right back for Cairo to keep it a one-goal game.
The third period stayed just as chaotic—Farida Abdel-Rahman and Nour El-Sayed traded goals for Cairo before Sipho Nkosi's power-play strike tied it 5-5, Black Hole Net surfacing yet again in the scoring summary. Neither team found the sixth goal in a scoreless fourth period, and it took a shootout to settle it—Bongani Mthembu, already with a goal on the night, delivered the winner. Johannesburg's 1.74 favorite tag held up, barely, in a game that had no business being that close.
MDE 3 — MUM 1
Luciana Vélez was the best player on the ice at La Ladera, and Medellín's 1.69 favorite odds held up because of it. The first period passed scoreless through a string of penalties and a fight between Daniela Mejía and Rahul Nair, and it took until the second for the scoring to open—Sanjay Pawar cashed in on the power play for Mumbai at 7:51, Kavya Iyer assisting, but Vélez answered almost immediately at 10:41, Isabella Gómez assisting, and Camilo Henao made it 2-1 at 13:55, Mariana Zapata feeding him, sending Medellín into the third with the lead restored.
Vélez sealed it with her second of the night at 13:37 of the third, Sebastián Cardona collecting the assist, capping an evening that also included a fight with Ananya Kulkarni. Mumbai managed one goal despite plenty of pressure and couldn't solve a Medellín defense that tightened after conceding the equalizer. Fourteen hits and eight penalties made for a scrappy, stop-and-start night, but Vélez's two goals were the difference—Medellín's favorite tag came through comfortably, 3-1 the final.
HEL 3 — STO 0
Helsinki controlled this one from the opening horn at The Dark Sauna, and the scoreline reflected it. Aleksi Korhonen opened the scoring at 9:13 of the first, Erik Johansson assisting, and Elina Heikkinen doubled the lead two minutes later at 11:11, Saku Järvinen feeding her, staking the Howlers to a 2-0 cushion they never came close to relinquishing. Stockholm, the road underdogs at 2.12, generated plenty of physicality across the night but couldn't find the net.
Saara Virtanen put it out of reach forty-one seconds into the third, Liisa Nieminen assisting, and from there it was mostly fights and box time—Anniina Tuominen and Filip Nyström dropped the gloves in the second, and Erik Johansson and Axel Lindqvist followed in the third. Johansson finished with an assist and a fight in a complete two-way effort even without scoring himself. A clean 3-0 shutout for Helsinki, exactly what their 1.73 odds promised, and Stockholm never found the response they needed.
USH 2 — DKR 1
Facundo Álvarez and Matías Fernández needed all of three minutes to turn The South Passage upside down. Álvarez opened the scoring at 1:23, Fernández assisting, and Fernández returned the favor a minute and forty-six seconds later at 3:09, Álvarez feeding him back, staking Ushuaia to a 2-0 lead they'd need every bit of. Álvarez and Khady Bâ fought late in the first, and Dakar—the 1.81 road favorites—spent the rest of the night chasing the game.
Aminata Sow pulled Dakar within one at 10:08 of the second, Moussa Ndiaye assisting, but the deficit held for the final thirty minutes despite a stretch of penalties on both sides. Ushuaia's home underdog tag at 2.02 makes this an upset on paper, but the two-goal burst inside the first three minutes told the real story—Álvarez and Fernández combined for two goals and two assists between them, and Dakar never had an answer for the speed of that opening shift. A tight, physical 2-1 final that Ushuaia controlled from the drop of the puck.
HAV 1 — GDL 3
Guadalajara's road favorite tag—1.78 to Havana's 2.05—held up at The Rhythm Bureau behind a two-goal second period that buried the home side. Valentina Ramírez opened it at 8:38, Diego Hernández assisting, and Camila Flores doubled the lead eighteen seconds later at 8:56, Alejandra Ríos feeding her—two goals inside twenty seconds turning a scoreless, hit-heavy first period into a 0-2 hole for Havana.
Lisandra Álvarez got Havana on the board early in the third at 2:10, Yoandri Hernández assisting, cutting the gap to one and giving the home crowd a reason to believe. It didn't last—Sofía Navarro restored the two-goal cushion at 10:34, Mateo Guzmán assisting, and Guadalajara closed out the 3-1 win comfortably from there. Seventeen hits and zero fights made for a clean, if occasionally chippy, night at The Rhythm Bureau. Guadalajara's balanced scoring—three different goalscorers, six players total touching the scoresheet—did exactly what the odds said it would.
BUS 3 — PER 2
Seven fights. Seven. The Frozen Dock turned into a genuine scrap from the opening minute, when Min-jun Lee and Sienna Kapoor dropped the gloves before the game was even ninety seconds old, and the tone never really let up. Hye-jin Choi opened the scoring for Busan at 5:37, So-hee Hwang assisting, and Gemma Fletcher tied it for Perth early in the second at 0:56, Tahlia Nguyen feeding her. Seung-ho Jung restored Busan's lead at 2:16 of the third, Yuna Kang assisting, before Callum Reeves answered for Perth at 9:53, Oscar Whitfield collecting the helper, forcing overtime.
Dong-wook Yoon delivered the winner at 14:58 of the extra frame, Eun-bi Han assisting, completing the upset—Busan came in as the 1.97 home underdogs against Perth's 1.85. Twenty-four hits and seven fights made this the most physical building on the night, and it took a last-gasp overtime goal to settle a game that neither side deserved to lose. C'est du hockey, plain and simple—Busan's underdogs earned every inch of it.
Four upsets, two shootouts, and a game at Die Goue Myn that needed extra time and a trip to the shootout just to find a winner—Matchday 44 asked a lot of the ice and got paid back in full. C'est Hockay. À la prochaine.
—JM Laflèche, Voice of Hockay
Le Council acknowledges that Matchday 44 occurred. Two games required a shootout to determine a winner, and Black Hole Net was invoked by name four times inside a single second period at Die Goue Myn, a frequency Le Permanent Council notes without further comment. The record has been updated accordingly.