When Laura Stacey, Marie-Philip Poulin, Daniele Sauvageau, Kori Cheverie and Ann-Renee Desbiens met with the media for the PWHL Montreal’s season post-mortem, they made it clear they had bigger aspirations when the season started but, when a dream as long-awaited as the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) finally becomes a reality, it’s impossible to be disappointed. Sauvageau saw the building of this new league brick by brick and she looked profoundly proud of what had been accomplished on and off the ice.
Cheverie started her allocution in French, since as she had promised, she learned the language over the course of the season.
Merci aux partisans pour toute la saison, c’est incroyable ces matchs très très bruyants et sur le « bench », je suis très « émotionnelle » beaucoup de temps cette saison alors, merci beaucoup.
I put the speech marks not to point out the mistakes, but to show that a woman who lived in Montreal for about nine months can learn enough French to be perfectly understood in a press conference. There’s room for improvement, but it’s already better than any of the Montreal Canadiens’ staff who promised to do their best to learn (looking at you Jeff Gorton). Now, let’s look at what the team’s members had to say before clocking out for the summer.
The Semifinal Sweep by PWHL Boston
Montreal’s coach and general manager believe the players’ performance in the three games against Boston could all have led to wins. Cheverie explained:
Honestly, I mean, in the first game we generated 12 grade-A scoring chances which was the most for the entire season. I was really happy, we made some adjustments offensively to put our players in those positions, to get those quality opportunities […]. As I said, we ran into a hot goalie, we hit some posts, missed some empty nets, and at the end of the day, we didn’t capitalize on our opportunities, and they did. […] It’s been a while now, since the New York game, and right before the Toronto game at Mattamy, our team had been trending upwards in terms of analytics. We pretty much peaked right when we needed to, and in that first series […]. They got the bounces required, that happens in playoff hockey, and we didn’t.
As for Sauvageau, she didn’t shy away from the questions about ice time in the playoffs and would not throw the proverbial first stone at her head coach:
[Translated from the original French] There are factors you don’t control, a rebound that’s not flat on the ice or not on the right side or ends up on the side where there’s only one player you know… that rebound could have gone to the other side. I think we have to look at this both objectively and subjectively, there’s a context to the stats. The same goes for time on ice, there are contexts too, information and elements that might not be known within our team and visibly by the fans and the media. This is why we’re before you today and truly believe the same performance could have made us win the three games.
Later, when pressed about the extraordinarily high ice time of some of her players, she mentioned:
[Translated from the original French] If you look at the ice time of both teams, we have about the same number of players who have played above 30 minutes. Once again there’s context to this, some of our players played a lot more than others, maybe about 10 minutes, but there were power plays, penalty kills. The players who played less, once again there might be parts of the answer that will stay between us.
While she is correct about the number of players who played over 30 minutes on both teams, she conveniently forgot to add that Montreal’s players’ total ice time, which was above the 30-minute mark, was much higher than normal. I get what Sauvageau is doing, she’s happy with the work done by Cheverie throughout the season and won’t come out and say the strategy could have been better publicly.
When asked if the playoff results would change her evaluation of the personnel involved, she replied:
[Translated from the original French] […] As we’ve mentioned, we played three good games and when we talk about personnel evaluation of players; five players were not part of those games. They were important for us this season, and four couldn’t finish the year with us because of injuries, so when looking at the big picture, I am very satisfied with what the players managed to do with Kori and her team’s leadership.
What does she think behind closed doors though? That, we will never know, and it will stay between Sauvageau and Cheverie. At least until the next playoffs…Mind you, with the changes that should be coming this offseason, Cheverie may feel more comfortable using her whole bench.
Related: PWHL Boston Sweeps Montreal: 3 Takeaways from the Series
As for the players, they understandably still had a tough time swallowing the elimination, as Desbiens said:
[Translated from the French] I’ve been better. You know we are all really competitive, we like to win. It’s going to take a few days, a few weeks to think about what went right, what went wrong for me this year, and how to approach the next season. It was new for most of us, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, we can always improve and we’re going to keep working on that. It’s not the way we wanted the season to end, we wanted to win this first trophy and we couldn’t do it. We didn’t succeed, so we’ll look at what didn’t work and what we could change.
Captain Poulin added:
[Translated from the French] It still hurts, I mean we’re all competitive we wanted to fight until the end, we had said we wanted to win a championship, but I guess it’s part of the process. Big things take time and I believe we have what it takes eventually… I don’t think it will take a year’s effort; I think it will be a process. We’ll take some time off, be it mentally or physically, and then we’ll get back to work and be ready for another season next year.
Any Changes Required to the League?
All five women found it hard to say anything needed to change in the grand scheme of things. Stacey probably worded it best when she explained:
I don’t know if I have an answer to that right now. When you put things into perspective and compare it to all the years we’ve had in the past, since graduating from college, there’s absolutely nothing that compares to this year. So even a small bump in the road of one meal maybe that wasn’t your favorite…at the end of the day we’re having meals now. When you look at it and you zoom out, from that perspective, everything far exceeded our expectations. It’s hard to see those little blemishes when everything seems so well done and new.
Obviously, in terms of play, I think we can all hold ourselves accountable and be better next year. But from my perspective, I’m honestly very honored to be a part of this league, a part of this team. It was a dream come true and there’s not too many things I would change. Obviously, I would improve tons of little things along the way to make it bigger and better and to keep it growing, but for it being the first year, I wouldn’t be able to put my hand on anything that seriously needs to change.
When Stacey handed the microphone over to Poulin, she could only nod in agreement at what the alternate captain had said. Desbiens was essentially of the same opinion:
[Translated from the French] It’s exceptional what the league has done, the organization, the staff in Montreal what they managed to do with so little time. If we go back a few months, we didn’t even know where there would be teams or arenas, so much has improved logistically speaking. There will be things to improve, but in our day-to-day lives here, there’s not much that made me feel like I wasn’t a professional. Our coaching staff, our medical staff, our business team who spent way too many hours here for them, in such a cold place, I don’t think they are used to it. […] we’ve filled some questionnaires to know what could be improved like food when traveling but it’s only small things. In the grand scheme of things, there’s very little change needed this year.
As for the GM, Sauvageau took it a bit further when she said:
[Translated from the French] We’ll look to stabilize what’s been put in place already, we’re not talking about transformation, we’re not talking about building, we’re talking about stability. Our foundation is really strong, you’ve heard it from the real actors, now, we’ll have to refine things. Maybe that means painting the walls a different color, better coordinated. To find time as well, because everything went so quickly this year, time will enable us to take our time when making decisions. We’ll be able to raise the quality of what we do. That’s the plan, to keep building with our business team; Marie-Christine and her team, as Ann has said. But as I said, it’s just about stabilizing because the base is already strong.
If you’ve been watching the PWHL Playoffs religiously, you might have noticed that for a couple of games, crowds were less than satisfactory in Boston and Minnesota. Of course, there’s always someone to pinpoint the exception and ask what will happen if it becomes the rule. Poulin took and dismissed that question quite quickly:
If you look at what happened this year, I don’t think you can focus on those two league games where there weren’t as many people as usual. Obviously, there are probably things happening in Boston, the Bruins might be playing, and the arena is outside of Boston. I don’t think you can put a stamp on this thing that it’s not working. […] This whole year’s been amazing, we got from zero to a hundred very quickly. I think it’s been pretty amazing to see across every market. […] I don’t have to tell you; you see it on TV, it wasn’t as packed, but it was loud in Boston. We’ve played in Minnesota when there were 13,000 in the stands, you can’t start having meetings and wondering what should be changed because of two nights in a whole season.
Furthermore, about attendance, Stacey mentioned they knew they had a good product and that people wanted to see it, but they didn’t realize to what extent…Filling the Bell Centre in Montreal and Scotiabank in Toronto went beyond their wildest dreams and expectations.
What’s Next Now for PWHL Montreal?
With its first season in the books, the team will now turn to the next season. While the players will be thinking about what worked and what didn’t for them throughout this inaugural season, GM Daniele Sauvageau has her work cut out for her as there’s a new draft coming and a number of her players were only signed for one year and they might want to come back. With that comes the small matter of knowing if there will be enough roster spots to accommodate all these players.
Related: PWHL Montreal’s Ann-Sophie Bettez Discusses Injury and the League
The GM stayed schtum when a question was asked about a particular player, Ann-Sophie Bettez, who missed the last part of the season because of an injury and was telling journalists in the locker room that she didn’t feel it was time for her to retire at 36. Sauvageau took a wide berth and answered:
[Translated from the French] It’s too early to have individual comments, Ann-Sophie [Bettez] was injured and is now on the mend. The bulk of our players want to come back but that’s where the evaluation of everything will have to be done. There are players right now who are working hard to come back, others will have a rest period and then some time to get ready and come back. Of course, the portrait will change, but today it wouldn’t be adequate, and it would be irresponsible on my part to make comments on individual players.
She was a bit more loquacious about the upcoming draft and the impact it could have on the face of the franchise:
[Translated from the French] Yes, the draft will be in the coming weeks. We’ve already started working on lists, who’s available, and who’s potentially going to become available following the draft. That’s how we see the coming weeks, and months, it’s seeing what opportunities we will have. You mentioned the salary cap, in fact it’s not a cap, there’s an amount that remains the same for next year so from a purely mathematical standpoint, it will be impossible for this year’s first pick to earn as much as last year’s or the players who signed in the first year. This is crystal clear in the Collective Bargaining Argument the league has signed with the players.
It’s a reality. However, I want to remind you that those players are coming to a league that’s now in its second year, which is all set, something that didn’t exist a year ago. One of the challenges will be to remind players how young the league is, where we were a year ago and to appreciate where we are now. I think this will be the biggest challenge for the new players who join the league.
This brings more questions than answers if you ask me. Yes, the CBA provides that the money allocated to each team for the roster shall remain the same in year two, but what if it’s not quite sustainable? I think everyone saw how there weren’t enough reserve players this year to meet the needs of the six teams. Wouldn’t adding a few players to the roster make more sense to ensure more depth and a better chance that teams won’t be short on players?
Of course, when a team is out of reserves, they can pick someone from another team’s reserves, but how logical is that? The player brought in doesn’t know their teammates and has no clue about the team’s system, which seems counterproductive to say the least.
As for Poulin, when asked how she felt about the fact the team would likely be quite different for next season, she mentioned:
Well, I think it’s what we created, it’s a professional league and things can change, we’ve seen it all year, there were trades, some girls left, and other ones arrived, but I think that for a first year the group we had in the locker room was something special. It was created quite quickly in November, as Daniele said we had girls from here and there a bit all over the place. We needed to stimulate team chemistry and we’re more than satisfied with the way it went, but the reality is, things can change and it’s now part of our sport.
I believe that’s increasingly part of professional sports, it’s a professional league, so yes there are times when a girl can leave and a new one comes in, there was a trade this year, but at the end of the day, like Daniele mentioned, it’s been a real solid year as a group. It takes a little time, but we can hold our heads high and be proud.
Players won’t be the only ones who will have to cope with new faces on the team, it will also be the case for the fans. While teams only played 24 games in this shortened inaugural season, that was ample time for fans to get taken with some players. The Montreal crowd loved cheering the girls’ dancing celebration to “Le bal masqué” by La Compagnie Créole, but Bettez, Gabrielle David, Mariah Keopple and Sarah Bujold, who started the tradition, were all on one-year contracts and the reality is, none of them may be back.
While fans may be sad to bid farewell to some players, they should enjoy seeing a fresh injection of highly talented players. At the last draft, Sauvageau thought ahead and used the very last pick to select Sweden’s Lina Ljungblom. The 23-year-old forward said during the World Championship that she wanted to come play for Montreal in the league’s second season.
There will be a lot of players available for the draft. We’ve not seen the list of all those who declared for it yet but we should hear about that sometime after the Walter Cup Final is over. However, we know that Team Canada’s standout Sarah Fillier will be available and Team USA’s Hanna Bilka and Cayla Barnes will also be ripe for the picking so to speak. Claire Thompson, who would probably still be part of Team Canada if she hadn’t taken a year off to finish her medical studies, might also have declared for the draft and in the last few days, we heard that Amanda Kessel had declared.
There should be a lot of talent available there and while Montreal will only be picking fifth, there should still be interesting names on the board for quite a few rounds. Obviously, I do not know what Sauvageau feels is her team’s most pressing need, but if Thompson did declare and she’s still available at five, I’d take her in a heartbeat. No disrespect to Kessel, but I hope Sauvageau stays away. While Kessel has lots of talent, she’s already 32 years old and will be 33 by the time the season starts, just like Poulin. I would like to see the GM plan for the future and go for youth first. Team Canada center Danielle Serdachny could also be an interesting option for Montreal.
Of all the players who will become free agents on Montreal’s roster, the one I believe Sauvageau should sign as a matter of urgency is without a shred of a doubt Elaine Chuli. Had she not been the backup goaltender in Montreal this season she might have had a chance for the Goaltender of the Year award, her numbers were amazing.
Speaking of awards, after Poulin was nominated as Forward of the Year and Cheverie as Coach of the Year, the PWHL revealed the finalists for the Defender of the Year award and, unsurprisingly, Montreal’s quarterback Erin Ambrose is one of the nominees.
As the first chapter of the PWHL Montreal team story comes to a close, there are many reasons for the league, its players, and its fans to be optimistic. Their vision, their dream has now become a reality and it has taken off quickly, proving to be an unmitigated success in Montreal, and in most of the original six cities. Here’s to our grandkids having the opportunity to celebrate this new Montreal team’s centennial in 2124 and to some of them being part of the lineup, the coaching staff, or the management team. There are now so many doors opened, the sky is the limit!
