TORONTO - Fifty-seven minutes into a goalie battle last weekend, Michela Cava glided to center ice to try to spoil the Montreal Force's afternoon. Montreal led 1-0 when a Toronto Six teammate of Cava's was tackled on a breakaway and limped to the bench in pain.
Cava stepped up to take the ensuing penalty shot and fired a wrister at chest height. Force netminder Tricia Deguire punched it with her blocker to the corner. Montreal players dapped up Deguire at her crease before potting two late insurance goals to swell the margin of victory.
The Force trail Toronto by 20 points in the Premier Hockey Federation standings. The expansion pro team is below the playoff cutline as the regular season wanes. But the dynamic that explains countless Canadiens-Maple Leafs results - eager to drub a rival, the underdog often wins - is taking hold in the women's game.
"Naturally, there's that fight between the two Canadian teams. They're a good team. Maybe not on paper," Toronto forward Emma Woods said about the Force. "But they fight, and they battle, and they play their systems perfectly."
The Toronto-Montreal hockey feud germinated in the NHL. The Canadiens and Leafs have split 37 Stanley Cup titles, though Montreal's responsible for the last 10. Female superstars also plied their trade in both cities until the Canadian Women's Hockey League folded in 2019.
Known at the time as the National Women's Hockey League, the PHF was the CWHL's competition. The PHF expanded to Canada to fill the void as it aimed to establish itself as the stable pro league of the future.
The Canadian women's hockey scene is resilient. A year ago Friday, Canada edged the U.S. in the dramatic Beijing Games final, triumphing 3-2 when Marie-Philip Poulin netted her third Olympic golden goal. Fellow CWHL alumna Sarah Nurse paced that tournament in scoring and landed on the NHL 23 cover next to Trevor Zegras.
As of this season, the pro game is back in Canada's marquee markets. Toronto ices an emergent championship contender against a pesky Montreal side whose speed and cohesiveness make every game a toss-up.
Six team president Sami Jo Small described what's on the line when they meet: "Canadian supremacy."
"We see the games. We see the stickwork and pushing after the whistle. The players want to be Canada's team," Force president Kevin Raphael told theScore. "The feistiness that's on the ice - hey, Toronto and Montreal have been like that forever. That's not going to change because it's women's hockey. We carry a legacy of hatred."
The Six entered the PHF in 2020 ahead of the league's sixth season, a six-game campaign waged in a Lake Placid bubble environment at the height of the pandemic. Now a third-year franchise, Toronto's pushing the Boston Pride for the top playoff seed. Small, Canada's three-time Olympic goalie, helms the front office alongside Six general manager Angela James, the sport's first superstar player and a Hockey Hall of Fame inductee.
Active legends of the game - the cores of the Canadian and American national teams - don't play in the PHF. They broke off to create the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association after the CWHL shuttered, training in regional hubs while barnstorming to NHL cities on the weekend to put on showcase tournaments.
The PWHPA doubts the PHF is economically sustainable. Seeking a living wage and amenities around the arena that befit their elite skill, PWHPA players plan to launch their own league as soon as next fall, The Athletic's Hailey Salvian reported.
Separately, the PHF has enhanced its product. All seven franchises are privately owned. Games air online on ESPN+ and TSN Direct; ESPN2 televised last year's Isobel Cup final live. The balanced 24-game schedule pits opponents against each other four times, familiarizing each market with the entire talent pool.
"It's Montreal, Toronto, Boston. Whatever (rivalries) we have in the NHL, we have here," Force captain Ann-Sophie Bettez said. "It's good hockey. That's what we want: to put the best product on the ice, and may the best win."
The pay's improving, too. The PHF salary cap rose from US$150,000 in 2021 to $750,000 this season and is set to climb to $1.5 million in 2023-24. Most players work second jobs, meaning higher salaries would enable them to concentrate on their craft and make "a true pro lifestyle" newly attainable, women's hockey journalist Mike Murphy wrote at The Ice Garden recently.
Capitalizing on the cap's tenfold increase, the Six in January signed University of Wisconsin superstar forward Daryl Watts to a record contract that'll pay her $150,000 next season.
"If I was still playing, I'd be jumping over here to play to make a salary like that," said Six head coach Geraldine Heaney, the Hall of Fame defender who represented Canada at the 1998 and 2002 Olympics.
Watts grew up in Toronto's west end idolizing Mats Sundin and despising the Canadiens, unaware that women's pro teams existed. The NCAA's No. 2 career scorer, Watts planned to retire when her eligibility lapsed in 2022 to study and make a living in commercial real estate. She recommitted to hockey when the PHF cap spiked, publicizing the salary she and her father negotiated with James for transparency and to inspire players.
Awareness of the league is rising. More than 800 fans filled most of the seats last Saturday when the Force blanked the Six on York University's Olympic-sized ice sheet. Pints flowed upstairs in the Wild Wing restaurant as diners eyed the PHF game through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Six goalie Elaine Chuli splayed out to make 31 saves. Deguire, a rookie out of McGill University, recorded 39 stops to preserve the Force's first shutout. Half an hour after the horn blew, Watts and her teammates sat at folding tables in the arena concourse to sign autographs for a procession of girls in minor hockey sweaters.
"The younger, talented generation is starting to shift to this league," Watts said. She pointed out that three recent winners of the Patty Kazmaier Award as U.S. college MVP debuted in the PHF this season: herself and Boston forwards Loren Gabel and Elizabeth Giguere.
"That represents that this is the league of the future."
Both Canadian teams boast a foundational star who left the PWHPA this season. Six forward Brittany Howard ranks second in PHF scoring, behind Gabel, with 15 goals and 24 points in 16 appearances.
One weekend in January, Howard tallied a shootout winner, then teed up Woods for a power-play snipe as the Six beat the Force twice in their inaugural encounters.
"She's got so much skill out there one-on-one. Teams always double up on her because she's that good," Heaney said. "If she gets a scoring chance, it's usually in the net."
Montreal leans on Bettez, the rare 35-year-old who still lights the lamp professionally. An offensive dynamo at McGill and with Montreal's CWHL franchise (Poulin was her linemate), Bettez suited up for Canada at the 2019 world championship but never stuck with the national program long term.
Financial planning is her day job. She ranks fifth in goals (10) and eighth in points (17) this season as the PHF's oldest player.
"She's the most underrated player to ever play this game," said Raphael, a TV personality who interviewed Bettez on his French-language talk show when she starred in the CWHL. "She's always been viewed as the second fiddle. Now she gets the chance to be the one. Now she gets the chance to be the top dog. She carries the team on her back every shift."
Bettez hugged Raphael and handed him the goal puck when she scored in a shootout in her hometown of Sept-Iles, situated 900 kilometers north of Montreal in remote Quebec.
Bettez shining there is a quirk of the expansion season. The Force played their first home game in Montreal's Verdun borough, a short drive from the Bell Centre, and then set out to contest the remainder in barns spread around the province as a brand-building exercise.
The Force hosted the Six in Rimouski - Sidney Crosby's QMJHL home - and split a weekend series with the Pride in Riviere-du-Loup, whose crowd noise gave Raphael goosebumps. Following road contests in Boston this weekend, the Force face the Buffalo Beauts in Quebec City next Saturday and Sunday afternoons. They wrap up the regular season in New Jersey, home of the Metropolitan Riveters, on March 4-5.
"It's difficult on the body. We're traveling basically every week. But it's like going to a different party with people who are so happy to see you," Raphael said. "They're welcoming us like we're gods in their town. It's riveting to see and to feel that."
Toronto fans got to take in a bonus set of games this winter. The PHF held its recent All-Star tournament at the former Maple Leaf Gardens, where the Leafs and Habs of yore clashed in five NHL championship series. Portraits of the city's Stanley Cup heroes - think Bill Barilko and Punch Imlach - grace a wall of the grocery store that adjoins the rink.
Droves of players have expressed their interest to James and Small about signing with the Six next season.
"There will be a lot of jostling for positions. It's a whole new world for us in women's hockey," Small said. "With the doubling of the salary cap, I think we can see - I hope we see - some of the best players in the world wanting to play here in Toronto."
Unless the Force surge into the playoffs, the Canadian rivalry is done for the season. Toronto won three one-goal games against Montreal, prevailing 2-1 last Sunday - Cava assisted on Six captain Shiann Darkangelo's ice-breaker - to avenge the previous day's shutout defeat. Four players took body-checking penalties, including Watts and Force defender Taylor Baker, a Toronto native who competes for the Hungary national team.
Their cities have met in spirited games before. Initially known as the Stars and then as Les Canadiennes, Montreal's powerhouse CWHL squad won four Clarkson Cup titles and appeared in eight of the league's 11 championship matchups. Montreal beat Toronto 5-0 in the 2011 final, coasting to victory even though Small, a CWHL co-founder and Toronto's goalie at the time, stopped 46 shots.
Small was reluctant to work in the PHF after the CWHL folded. The pang of that loss prompted her to retreat from the industry. However, she kept watching games on either side of the PHF-PWHPA divide. Dipping her toe back in, she was a guest coach at last year's PHF All-Star showcase.
Ultimately, she agreed to run the Six to help elevate the sport. The same aim drives Montreal's first group of players. Force head coach Peter Smith said, "They want to establish something that's going to live on in perpetuity."
"They want to be recognized as the peak of hockey," Raphael said, adding another source of motivation. "If you're the peak of hockey in Canada, you're the peak of hockey in the world."
Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.
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