Hockey is a game that's built on anticipation and anxiety. Most nights, goals are hard to come by and even a single shot in the back of a net can win a game.
That wasn’t the case Sunday.
In the first game of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Finals, PWHL Boston scored three goals in the second period alone to help cement a 4-3 victory over PWHL Minnesota. The scoring explosion helped give Boston a 1-0 lead in the league's inaugural championship. And leaves Boston just two wins away from being the first team to claim the Walter Cup.
Things started off pretty normal for both teams, with the two sides exchanging a goal in the first period.
The second period is when the game turned into basketball on ice. Minnesota started things off by hitting a goal about eight minutes in to take a 2-1 lead before Boston’s Taylor Wenczkowski tied things up a few minutes later. Not too long after that, Hannah Brandt hit pay dirt to give Boston its first lead of the night.
That would be short lived, as Taylor Heise’s second goal of the game tied things back up at 3-3 for Minnesota. But not even 30 seconds later, Boston’s Jess Healey got her first goal of the playoffs to put Boston up again 4-3. Minnesota wouldn’t catch up after that.
Heals with the go-ahead 🚨 pic.twitter.com/M9xbmgYhDD
— x - PWHL Boston (@PWHL_Boston) May 19, 2024
Afterwards, Healey admitted there may have been a little luck involved with the long shot.
“It went off someone’s stick there,” she said. “But I guess it doesn’t matter as long as it makes it to the net and sometimes those go in.”
The whiplash of scoring in the second period made for an entertaining evening at the Tsongas Center in Lowell. And it proved difficult for even the players to keep up with.
“We got in the locker room and someone was like, ‘What’s the score even right now?’” Brandt said afterwards. “But they got the tying goal — and then for [Healey] to score right after and put us back on top, that was huge for us.”
The four-goal output from Boston is the most scoring the team has done in the postseason, tying the team’s regular season scoring high.
It’s safe to say that Game 1 of the PWHL Finals lived up to they hype. There were plenty of goals to go around. The crowd, which included PWHL advisory board members Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss, was electric.
Our MVPs are in the HOUSE! 🗣
— PWHL (@thepwhlofficial) May 19, 2024
We are honored to have trailblazers Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss in Boston for Game 1 of the Finals. pic.twitter.com/pGatFrb8T9
Now, the challenge for Boston is to hold serve and pick up another win in Game 2 on Tuesday back at the Tsongas Center. For Healey, just being in this position is something she’s focusing on enjoying. As she put it, the team kind of brought themselves back from the dead.
“We were in a position where we might not even make the playoffs — and yeah, like I said, I think we’ve proved a lot of people wrong,” she said. “Just being here and soaking it all in and the fans have been amazing. Yeah, just gonna keep it going.”