Montreal Victoire coach focuses on second-season PWHL playoffs, not on the past
Montreal Victoire
Montreal Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie isn't feeling nostalgic about last year's playoffs. In fact, she doesn't really want to talk about them, and who can blame her?
With the Professional Women's Hockey League second-season playoffs starting this week, Cheverie is naturally focused on the present — as in the first game of the Victoire series versus the Ottawa Charge, which takes place Thursday evening at Place Bell in Laval (7 p.m., airing on TSN and RDS). The Victoire are entering the best-of-five series and the entire playoffs as heavy favourites, given that they finished first overall in the league this season.
But though the coach doesn't want to hear about it, others can't help looking back to last spring and how the Montreal hockey team fared in its first venture into the post-season. The short version? Not so good. They lost three straight games to the Boston Fleet, all in overtime. Let's just say that's a tough way to go out.
So when Cheverie was asked Wednesday what lessons the team learned from that playoff loss, she wasn't eager to look back in the rear-view mirror.
'To be honest, we haven't talked about last year at all this year,' said Cheverie, talking to reporters after practice Wednesday at the CEPSUM arena at the Université de Montréal. 'It's not a topic that we discuss. We made that kind of a thing at the beginning of the year, that we wouldn't even use the words 'last year.' To me, that's a very foreign term. We have a completely different team, so even if we were to talk about it, it would not land. So for us, all we need to focus on is what it is we need to do moving forward.
'And would we have done things differently last year? Not sure. Because we took what we had and we did what we did and we had the three best games we could have had in a row, and it just turned out that they scored one more than us in OT.'
Because the Victoire finished first this season, the team was allowed to pick its opponent from the third- and fourth-place teams (which had the same amount of points), and they chose the Ottawa Charge. No one has said publicly why they picked Ottawa, though it would be a reasonable guess that they'd prefer a team that's just a two-hour bus ride away. The other choice would have been the Minnesota Frost, who started their series against the Toronto Sceptres at the Coca-Cola Coliseum in T.O. on Wednesday.
The other reason the Victoire coach doesn't want to dwell on last year is because her team had a blockbuster second season. Montreal's record was 19-8-3, putting them at the top of the league. Marie-Philip Poulin, the team's captain, led the league in goals, with 19, and the team's first line — made up of Poulin, Laura Stacey and Jennifer Gardiner — is considered by many to be the best line in the league.
Poulin is nicknamed Captain Clutch because she has scored three gold-medal-winning goals in women's Olympic hockey for Team Canada.
'She's a huge part of our team,' said Cheverie. 'She leads the way in so many different ways, and mainly in all the little things she does in the right way. She works extremely hard on the ice. She leads by example. She's going to be checked tightly this series and so it's really important for her, regardless of what happens in terms of how tight they're checking her, I know she's going to find a way. She's going to find those open-ice areas. She's going to find a way to get her shot away. For her, she's been so integral to this team and I know she's going to continue to bring those big moments for this group.'
This is Gardiner's first PWHL playoff series, and the forward from Surrey, B.C., who played five years at Ohio State (garnering 171 points in 176 games), admitted she's going through a whole host of emotions this week.
'Obviously in playoffs, no matter where you are, you know a lot's on the line and every single game has so much weight on it,' said Gardiner. 'But obviously I've never had a playoff game in front of 10,000 of the best fans in all of North America, so to get to be able to do that is pretty special.
'There's a lot to look forward to. We know the building's going to be super loud. We know Montreal fans are going to show up for us.'
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 5:28 PM.
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