Flaherty ends – Maggie Flaherty scored the overtime winner as the Montréal Victoire beat the Ottawa Charge 2-1 on Saturday at Place Bell, taking a 2-0 lead in the PWHL Walter Cup Finals. Ottawa’s Sarah Wozniewicz opened the scoring again, Kati Tabin equalized early in the sec
LAVAL, QC (May 16, 2026) — The kind of silence that comes right after a puck is released never lasted long at Place Bell.
Maggie Flaherty waited at the edge of the slot. received captain Marie-Philip Poulin’s pass. and one-timed the puck top shelf to end Saturday’s Walter Cup Finals tilt in overtime.. It was the Montréal Victoire’s 2-1 win. the kind that doesn’t just change a scoreboard—it changes a series.. With the building roaring behind her. Montréal took a 2-0 series lead over the Ottawa Charge in front of 9. 232 fans.
Ottawa had scored first for the second straight game.. Rookie Sarah Wozniewicz found a loose puck in traffic at the side of the crease and buried it for her second goal of the postseason at 8:38 of the opening frame. giving the Charge a 1-0 lead.. Ottawa have now scored the game’s first goal in all six playoff contests this postseason.
Montréal pushed hard through the first period, but Gwyneth Philips was steady. She turned aside every opportunity—among them a short-handed breakaway from Laura Stacey—while Ottawa outshot the Victoire 10-5 in the frame.
When the game finally shifted, it came fast. Kati Tabin tied things 32 seconds into the second period, winning possession off an offensive-zone draw before walking in from the hash marks and roofing a backhand shot past Philips.
Stacey had chances to break it open midway through the second, taking her second breakaway of the afternoon, but her shot rang off the post.
After regulation ended with the teams deadlocked 1-1, the series slid into overtime for a second straight game. Flaherty ended it 3:23 into overtime.
Ann-Renée Desbiens made 20 saves for Montréal, including a key pad stop on Alexa Vasko from the top of the crease just seconds before the Victoire transitioned up ice for the winning goal. Philips finished with 27 saves in the loss, including six in overtime.
Montréal now has a chance to win its first ever Walter Cup on Monday, as Game 3 of the best-of-five series heads to Ottawa. The teams will face off at Canadian Tire Centre at 6 p.m. ET.
“We feel so fortunate to have the support of the fans.. We’ve seen it all week — the initiatives, the people who have come to the arena.. The Roch Voisines, the Mitsous, Patrice Bélanger’s crew.. So many people have come together.. We feel it.. When we talk about the seventh player, it’s there — we can feel it — and we’re truly grateful.”
That was Montréal captain Marie-Philip Poulin, talking about the backing the team has been drawing from across the city—and even beyond the province.
Montréal head coach Kori Cheverie said the team played the full game the way it needed to.
“I did really like our game from start to finish.. There were a couple of ups and downs, but in the second, we didn’t give up much.. In the third. I think you know. they had one kind of dangerous chance. and just really happy we’ve been a team all year that has defended by committee and as a collective. they did the job in both ends of the rink today.”
Ottawa captain Brianne Jenner acknowledged the difficulty of returning home to face a team with momentum.
“It’s exciting. I think it’s going to be great to get back home and get in front of our fans. It was amazing last series and we’re just looking forward to their energy helping us.”
Charge head coach Carla MacLeod, down 2-0 in the series, pointed to the defensive work Ottawa has been doing—and the narrow margins that still separate the teams.
“It was a really great game.. We asked our players to work on some of the defensive components of our game and thought that what we did between game one and game two was impactful.. I think we worked incredibly hard to achieve that.. The chances are there — we’re playing good hockey.. Again, this is what it comes down to.. It’s always so close, but there is a lot in our game that’s going well.. We’ll have to dig ourselves out of the hole, but it’s the best to five.”
The sequence of this series has been defined by overtime.. Since the beginning of 2025. all six Walter Cup Finals games have gone to overtime. with seven of the 11 games in Finals history extending beyond regulation.. The contrast with the Stanley Cup Final is stark: Stanley Cup Final history has featured just one streak of at least five consecutive overtime games—a six-game stretch spanning 1950 and 1951.
Today marked the 12th overtime contest for both Montréal and Ottawa across the regular season and playoffs. The only team in PWHL history to play more overtime games in a single season, including postseason, was Minnesota with 14 in 2024-25.
Montréal’s overtime win keeps the series on a tight leash. and it adds to a wider picture of how evenly these teams are matched.. The winner of Game 2 has gone on to win the series six of eight times in PWHL playoff history. and the fourth consecutive Game 2 at Place Bell has gone beyond regulation—those four games adding up to an additional 185:31 (3h 5m 31s) of hockey.
There’s history here too, with Montreal pushing toward a first. The Victoire are now 4-4 and the Charge are 2-6 all-time in overtime games in the playoffs.
In the middle of all that, the people who shaped Saturday’s game carried their own numbers with them.. Flaherty finished as the game’s star with the overtime winner. earning the fifth game-winning goal of her career and the second of her postseason career.. Her goal gave her the most game-winning goals by a defender in PWHL history across regular-season and playoff play.
Tabin scored her first career playoff goal in her 14th postseason appearance. Wozniewicz scored again for Ottawa and now has at least one point in three straight games—the longest point streak of her PWHL career across regular-season and playoff play.
Poulin recorded her fifth assist of the postseason on Flaherty’s game-winning goal, and Montréal’s captain now leads all playoff scorers with seven points, all recorded at Place Bell.
Desbiens lowered the sting of defeat, dropping her league-leading playoff goals-against average to 1.49 and pulling into a tie with Gwyneth Philips for the postseason lead in save percentage at .939.
This is where Montréal stands now: 1-4-3-1 in home postseason contests, with a streak that stretches to nine straight one-goal home playoff games. Ottawa, meanwhile, fell to 2-0-5-1 in playoff road games in team history.
All eyes shift Monday to Game 3 at Ottawa’s Canadian Tire Centre, with the series still deciding who takes the first step toward the first Walter Cup.
PWHL Walter Cup Finals Montréal Victoire Ottawa Charge Maggie Flaherty Marie-Philip Poulin Kati Tabin Sarah Wozniewicz Ann-Renée Desbiens Gwyneth Philips overtime