Jack Todd: Here's hoping the Victoire live up to their new moniker

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There’s nothing like a reputation.

Will probably be considerably simpler to jot down concerning the Montreal entry within the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League this season, if solely as a result of finally, now we have a reputation: the Victoire.

You’ll suppose {that a} veteran scribe who has written a number of thousand columns and thousands and thousands of phrases would have the ability to steer across the absence of a moniker, nevertheless it’s trickier than you suppose.

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Repeating “Montreal” again and again like a mantra will get tedious in a short time, even should you throw in a retro utilization and name them “the Montreals.” Whereas I favoured the Montreal Maroons and a slice of historical past, there is no such thing as a cause this new girls’s group ought to need to render homage to a males’s group that has been defunct since earlier than Second World Warfare.

So Victoire it’s. The moniker didn’t seize me instantly nevertheless it grows on you, particularly together with that beautiful brand. The elegant jersey design and the subtle color scheme matches completely with this fashion-conscious metropolis and Victoire, properly — appears to me there’s a males’s group in Montreal that has received a victory or two previously.

That’s the advertising facet of the job and the Victoire have dealt with it beautifully. The group ranked third in attendance within the league’s inaugural season with a mean of 6,881 (behind Ottawa and Minnesota) however that’s misleading: most video games have been performed on the atmospheric however tiny Verdun Auditorium (capability 4,114) and solely 4 video games at Place Bell in Laval (capability 10,062). This yr, Place Bell is dwelling base and attendance ought to zoom upward.

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The report set by Montreal and Toronto on April 20 is unlikely to be damaged for some time — the rivals drew 21,105 followers to the Bell Centre for the “Duel on the Prime,” breaking the earlier girls’s hockey report of 19,285 set on the Scotiabank Area in Toronto two months earlier.

From the league’s perspective, that’s the intense facet of the story because the PWHL prepares for its second season. Not so vibrant? Attendance in Boston final season (common 3,770) and New York (2,496) two completely essential pillars going ahead.

The 2024-2025 season begins subsequent Saturday, Nov. 30, and ends Might 3, 2025, with every group taking part in 30 video games, six in opposition to every opponent. There may also be 9 neutral-site video games performed in Edmonton, Seattle, Vancouver, Denver, Buffalo, Raleigh, Detroit, St. Louis and Quebec Metropolis. The league is testing the waters for growth and sure, please — we might very very similar to to see a franchise in Quebec Metropolis and a bitter instantaneous rivalry earlier than the groups have even met.

argument for growth in Canada is that the Canadian franchises and Minnesota seem rock-solid because the PWHL appears to increase. The Victoire have been the darlings of this metropolis from Day 1, led by the presence of the legendary Marie-Philip Poulin.

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Mockingly, essentially the most influential participant within the league was not Poulin or scoring chief Natalie Spooner however diminutive Boston goalie Aerin Frankel. Frankel’s success, particularly within the playoffs, highlights an issue of which the league is clearly conscious: At this stage, the goalies are higher than the snipers.

Luckily, the league is younger, comparatively small, agile and versatile. It isn’t an enormous, hidebound entity just like the NHL, burdened by layers of outmoded custom and a “code” extra suited to an period of sabre-tooth tigers and tar pits.

Searching for scoring, the league has introduced within the “no escape” rule, that means that should you’re on the ice when your group is penalized, on the ice you keep. If a defender is shipped off, you’re left with just one and three typically fatigued forwards till you will get a change on the penalty kill.

Preliminary outcomes have been nil, with no targets scored in two pre-season sport performed with the brand new rule, however over a season, the rule will certainly impact scoring. Montreal coach Kori Cheverie stopped in need of saying so, nevertheless it was fairly clear she didn’t just like the rule after the preliminary take a look at run as a result of it’s going to generally depart snipers making an attempt to skate backward and clear attacking forwards from the in entrance of the web.

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If the “no escape” rule doesn’t have the specified impact on scoring, the league can at all times take the draconian step and ban icing on the penalty kill. When you concentrate on it, it’s at all times been a little bit unusual that the penalized group is on condition that get-out-of-jail-free choice.

Past the principles on the penalty kill, the PWHL must look intently on the manner objective evaluations are dealt with. As with the NHL and NFL, it typically appears that your entire function of replay evaluations is to negate nice performs. There have been a number of situations throughout the PWHL playoffs when targets have been waved off after prolonged evaluations of video proof that was clearly inconclusive.

It requires a easy mandate: In a league that wants targets and on shut replay choices which can be lower than clear (i.e., most of them) the decision ought to at all times go in favour of the offence.

And so it begins. Bonne probability, Victoire. Might your victories be many and your accidents few.

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