Canadiennes win Clarkson Cup
OTTAWA The Montreal Canadiennes’ Clarkson Cup championship was a year in the making.
Marie-Philip Poulin scored twice, including into an empty net, as Montreal claimed its fourth Clarkson Cup title with a 3-1 win over the Calgary Inferno on Sunday. The win exacted some revenge for the Canadiennes after the Inferno earned an 8-3 win in last year’s Clarkson Cup, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League championship. Last year was Calgary’s first Clarkson Cup appearance.
“It has been (a year) since we’ve been waiting for this game,” said Poulin. “We wanted to come out hard. They have a great team and we wanted to put pressure on them and put pucks on net. We’re really happy with the way we came out and when you play as a team good things happen.”
She also believes that the CWHL season as a whole showed how the women’s game is evolving.
“We’ve showed that it’s really growing,” said Poulin. “The games were all hard fought and it shows what’s going on in women’s hockey. On the world side with Finland, Sweden and the United States it’s really growing for sure.”
Katie Clement-Heydra also scored for the Canadiennes and Julie Chu had two assists on Sunday.
The title was the fourth for Montreal in the nine years the Clarkson Cup has been held and the team’s first championship since 2012. They also won titles in 2009 and 2011, all as the Montreal Stars. In 2013 and 2015 they were also the Stars and lost the championship both of those years.
Montreal’s CWHL team was renamed the Canadiennes before last season.
The Inferno were the regularseason champions going 20-4-0 and finishing four points up on the Canadiennes in the standings. The teams split six games during the regular season with one of Calgary’s wins coming in overtime.
Calgary scored a league-best 100 goals during the regular season but couldn’t get one past Charline Labonte on Sunday until Jillian Saulnier broke the shutout bid at 12:57 of the third period.
Labonte finished with 27 saves while Emerance Maschmeyer made 21 in Calgary’s net.
The Inferno were pressing hard throughout the third period but Poulin iced the game into an empty net with less than two minutes to play.
“I was so happy. There’s no better person to score that goal and it was a relief because they were putting a lot of pressure on us. Calgary is a very strong team and they can turn a game around like that,” Labonte said, adding she got better as she got more work.
“I wanted to get as many shots as possible because that’s how I get to my best. Maschmeyer was very strong but we put so much pressure on them and I feel we controlled most of the game and did exactly what we wanted. I made the saves I had to but my team had a lot of blocked shots as well.”