Jonna Albers scored a hat-trick including a third period pair to lead the Minnesota Whitecaps to a 5-2 victory over the Boston Pride on Thursday night at The Bentley Arena to open the 2023 Isobel Cup Playoffs.
The victory gives the Whitecaps a 1-0 advantage in the best-of-three semifinal series and snaps an eight-game losing-streak since their last win on Feb. 6 against Montreal. It was also Minnesota’s first-time beating Boston this season after suffering four head-to-head losses.
“It’s been tough coming off a losing streak, but playoffs is like starting fresh and we were all really excited this week and we had some good energy and that helped,” said Albers. “It was great to beat Boston on a hat-trick. Everyone was working so hard. I was able to have so much support from my linemates and the energy on the bench and throughout all the shifts just helped lead to those shots on net and the goals. Our goal was to put pucks on net and that’s just what we were doing.”
Ronja Mogren put Minnesota on the board with her first goal of the entire season at 2:56. Albers followed with the first goal of her five-year playoff career on a shorthanded rush at 14:04 to make it 2-0. Her power play marker at 11:21 of the third period held as the game-winner as the Whitecaps added two empty-net goals including one by captain Sydney Brodt at 18:41 and Albers’ third at 19:23.
“Jonna is one of our most tenacious players,” said Whitecaps head coach Ronda Engelhardt. “She doesn’t quit, and I think we got to see that today. I think the biggest thing was just trying to get them to believe and have that confidence. It’s hard when you go eight in a row losing to come and play confidently, but we (coaches) believed in them so we needed the players to believe that as well.”
Boston responded to Albers’ shorthanded goal with a Becca Gilmore power play tally just 22 seconds later to cut the deficit to 2-1. Top scorer Loren Gabel sniped at 16:51 to send the game tied going into the first period intermission.
“I liked the resilience that we had to fight back and make it 2-2 pretty quickly and stay in the game,” said Pride captain Jillian Dempsey. “Obviously we wanted to be able to get the next one after that, but it was one of those back-and-forth periods. We knew it was going to be an offensive game and it definitely was. Our mentality here is it’s do or die and I think when we have our backs against the wall, that’s when the best of everybody’s ability is going to come out. That’s the situation we put ourselves in and I feel confident in this team that we can rise to the occasion.”
This is the first playoff loss for the back-to-back champions since the 2019 semifinals against Buffalo. Minnesota joined the PHF that same season and have now won at least one playoff game in five-straight years which is a new league record.
“With a three-game series it’s definitely easier to deal with a loss like this,” said Pride head coach Paul Mara. “We have the confidence in our team that we’ll be just fine on Saturday. I don’t think we were as sharp as we normally are. Minnesota came out extremely hard. We beat them four times in a row and defeating a team for a fifth time in a row is extremely difficult no matter what league you’re playing in. A couple mental breakdowns in the first 10 minutes put ourselves behind the eight ball, so we’ll be a different team on Saturday.”
Minnesota outshot Boston 36-32 with Amanda Leveille earning the win between-the-pipes with a 30-save performance. Corinne Schroeder also made 30 saves despite the loss.
Game two of the series will be played Saturday night at 6:00 p.m. ET and can be seen live on ESPN+, TSN+ and NESN+.
Cover photo by Michelle Jay
