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Montreal certainly raised eyebrows during the PWHL’s evaluation camp in Utica, N.Y., only winning one of its three preseason games.
The team looked somewhat disorganized in its first game, and clearly hadn’t developed chemistry yet. It’s not necessarily a concern that a team built from scratch hasn’t found their rhythm after less than a month together. Consider that nobody on the top line of Marie-Philip Poulin, Maureen Murphy and Tereza Vanišová had ever played together before. But Montreal’s preseason showing was an early reminder that some teams may need more time than others to figure out the right combinations and chemistry, especially a team like Montreal that drafted and signed a collection of players from Team Canada, the Premier Hockey Federation, college and Europe.
It’s also a reminder that, frankly, we don’t really know how some of these teams will look once they hit the ice at the start of the season.
Still, it’s fair to expect Montreal, with elite talent in Poulin, Ann-Renée Desbiens and Erin Ambrose, as well as solid depth in Laura Stacey, Jillian Dempsey, Ann-Sophie Bettez and Kennedy Marchment, to be a much different team than what they showed in preseason.
GO DEEPER
PWHL season previews: How do the teams stack up heading into the first season?
The roster
The strengths
Montreal’s biggest strength? That’s easy, it’s Marie-Philip Poulin.
Despite a scoring slump with Team Canada — she has zero points through four Rivalry Series games, though she did score the shootout winner in Game 4 — Poulin is still the best player in the world thanks to a wicked skill set and a winning pedigree.
Generally, Poulin’s shot — the volume, efficiency and overall danger of it — highlights her game. But what makes her such a dangerous player is her expansive toolkit (skating ability, physicality, vision and hands) filled with ways to beat her opponents. Not to mention her clutch gene. Poulin won her third Olympic gold medal in 2022 at the Beijing Olympics and scored her seventh and eighth goals in an Olympic final. Three golds have now been won on her stick (2010, 2014, 2022). And she is the only player — male or female — to score in four Olympic gold medal games. We have some concerns over Montreal’s roster, but Poulin will always give Montreal an edge.
The trick will be finding Poulin the right linemates to get her puck in the slot. With so many players from different leagues in Montreal, it might take some time to find the right combinations.
Poulin played with Maureen Murphy and Tereza Vanišová in preseason and someone like Murphy makes sense to play with Poulin. She was an excellent player beside Alina Müller at Northeastern and plays a high-energy game. Alternatively, there’s Ann-Sophie Bettez, who was the perfect complement to Poulin when they played in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League together. Bettez is a puck hound with elite vision and playmaking ability, making her an ideal linemate for someone like Poulin. On her own though, Bettez is a quick and skilled forward who led the Montreal Force in goals (11) in the Premier Hockey Federation last season.
It helps that there are options in Montreal and that there should be enough offensive support in the top six for Poulin.
Laura Stacey, one of the team’s first free-agent signings, is coming off an excellent 2022-23 season; she scored nine goals and 22 points in 20 PWHPA games and was a critical player on Canada’s energy line. She’s a quick north-south player, is hard on the forecheck and creates a lot of chances for herself and her teammates thanks to a relentless motor. Her speed makes her a threat in all three zones. Kristin O’Neill is another Canadian player who should do well in the PWHL. She’s been a valuable 4C with the national team. She can kill penalties and play against top competition, but has also shown in college and the PWHPA that she can play more minutes higher up the lineup — she finished fifth in PWHPA scoring last season. O’Neill is small (5-4), but that doesn’t stop her from going to the corners or the hard areas of the ice. In the PWHPA last season, only Poulin (30) had more inner-slot chances than O’Neill (27).
Erin Ambrose, an Olympic gold medallist, highlights the blue line. She played in Montreal in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and won CWHL defender of the year in 2019. She’s a very smart hockey player with excellent offensive instincts. She moves the puck well up to the forwards and is creative when she walks the offensive blue line, particularly as a power-play quarterback. She did not play in Utica due to an injury, but she should be ready to play in Montreal’s opener on Jan. 2 against Ottawa.
And, of course, there’s Ann-Renée Desbiens. Since becoming Canada’s starter, Desbiens has established herself as the best goalie in the world. Over the last three seasons, Desbiens has a 19-1 record at the world championships and Olympics. She won back-to-back world titles in 2021 and 2022 and an Olympic gold medal in Beijing — her single loss in the last three years was to the U.S. in the gold medal game at this year’s world championship. Desbiens has been named the world championship’s best goalie — when she posted a .80 goals-against average in 2022 — and won a Patty Kazmaier Award.
When Desbiens is on, and she typically is, Montreal will always have a chance to win.
The big question
Will Montreal be too reliant on Poulin?
Poulin has been a game-changer at every level she’s played. The expectation, obviously, is for that to continue with Montreal. The team can rely on her to tilt the ice in her minutes and drive up scoring. They can count on her in every situation, and to be double-shifted when her difference-making impact is needed. The team can surely rely on her to live up to her “Captain Clutch” nickname in the most important moments of a game.
But that can’t be the only strategy.
Who will be the secondary scoring options? If Poulin is on a cold stretch, as she’s on now with Team Canada, who can step up and lead the team offensively?
It’s going to be critical for coach Kori Cheverie to answer those questions and find who is going to be the secondary star in Montreal and the driver of the second line without Poulin. Could Murphy be better on the second line as the goal scorer rather than a complement to Poulin? She scored 105 goals in college but also benefited from playing with an elite talent in Müller. Again, it makes sense to try her out with Poulin, but it will be interesting to see if that changes if Poulin doesn’t get on the board early in the season. It’s going to be a balancing act for Cheverie to maximize her star player, but also her lineup.
If Murphy and Poulin start to jell, perhaps the Bettez, Stacey and O’Neill trio that we saw in preseason can make up a gritty, two-way second line that drives offense with their excellent defensive game. There’s also Kennedy Marchment, the MVP of the PHF in 2021-22, and Jillian Dempsey, the long-time Boston staple and all-time leading scorer in PHF history, to consider. Could they play up the lineup? Or will they slot in as bottom-six forwards, adding another layer of depth to the Montreal lineup? Unlocking, and maximizing, those depth players may be the key to ensuring this lineup isn’t too top-heavy and reliant on the leading line combination.
Star power is pivotal in hockey, and most GMs would tell you they’d take Poulin on their team in a heartbeat, but one elite player generally can’t do it all by themselves. Hockey isn’t basketball — stars aren’t out for the entire game on a nightly basis. It takes numerous high-end contributors and a supporting cast. So that has to be the mentality, even with the best player in the world at the top of the lineup.
The wild card
Will Montreal’s defense be an issue?
Typically teams that prioritize getting elite talent will do so at the expense of depth at another position. Montreal used two of their free-agent selections on the best player and best goalie in the world — as they should have. But despite grabbing Ambrose in the first round, the team’s defense looks a bit thin, at least in comparison to teams like New York, Ottawa or Boston.
It’s easy to see what might have gone wrong in the roster-building process. At the draft, Montreal took Ambrose sixth overall, then O’Neill seventh around the turn. By the time Montreal was back on the clock with the 18th overall pick, the run on elite, mostly right-shot defenders was already done with Ashton Bell, Jaime Bourbonnais, Sophie Jaques and Jincy Roese (née Dunne) all taken.
The team did well to grab solid depth forwards throughout the draft, and defenders like PHF champion Kati Tabin, Ohio State standout Madison Bizal and a very versatile Dominika Lásková, who can play both forward and defense. But Montreal ultimately only selected five defenders in the 15-round draft — two of which (Ambrose and Tabin) did not play in preseason, and another (Maude Poulin-Labelle) who was lost on waivers to Toronto. Montreal will need some of its camp invites, like Catherine Daoust and Mariah Keopple, to step up on the blue line this season because one or two injuries during the season, as we saw in preseason, could seriously test Montreal’s depth on defense.
(Photo: Courtesy of the PWHL)
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