Under difficult circumstances, the Ottawa Charge found a way to collect three crucial points on Tuesday night.
Ottawa’s Alexa Vasko scored a late short-handed goal to lift the Charge to a 3-2 Professional Women’s Hockey League victory over the Minnesota Frost.
Ottawa (8-1-4-9) had controlled momentum for much of the game, but then things changed in the third period in an instant.
Holding a 2-1 lead, the Charge struggled as they watched their star goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer leave the game being held up by team trainers.
Maschmeyer has been the Charge’s best player since the team launched operations last season and seeing her leave under duress was difficult. There was no update on her status following the game.
Just moments earlier Maschmeyer had been given a standing ovation for making her 1,000th regular-season career save.
Just as the applause ended Taylor Heise got a shot through traffic to cut Ottawa’s lead in half and make it 2-1.
At first glance it looked like Maschmeyer made a rather innocuous save, but silence fell as the 30-year-old was unable to get up on her own and needed to be helped off the ice.
Gwyneth Philips came in with 9:55 remaining and gave up a goal on the first shot she faced. It was initially called off, but a lengthy review proved otherwise and suddenly the game was tied 2-2.
“We said we’ve got to do this together,” said Ottawa coach Carla MacLeod. “There’s all kinds of variables constantly being tossed at us, and that was another one… it’s certainly a moment that you just try and rally the girls and say `hey, let’s go get this one for Masch’, and that’s exactly what the team did.”
Things were made more difficult when Shiann Darkangelo was assessed a tripping penalty with 5:48 remaining, but the Charge came through with a huge short-handed goal.
Ronja Savolainen won a battle along the boards and made a diving pass to get the puck to Vasko for her second goal of the night.
Emerance Maschmeyer needed the help of teammates to get off the ice after she appeared to tweak something in the third period against Minnesota.
“It’s unfortunate seeing Masch go out, but we have huge confidence in Gwen going in there,” said Vasko. “And I think we rallied as a group and it showed on the ice today.”
Minnesota (7-5-4-7) coach Ken Klee admitted his team could have probably done a better job of taking advantage of the change of momentum.
Philips only faced two shots in relief.
“It was just a tight checking game,” said Klee.
“Obviously we were super happy to get ourselves back into it after being down two and finding a hard way to score, but it was just one of those games.”
With just eight games remaining the Charge desperately needed Tuesday’s win. Ottawa trails the Frost, who hold the fourth and final playoff spot, by five points but have two games in hand.
MacLeod said she’s not really keeping an eye on the standings.
“I’m watching our group,” she said. “It’s about every day getting us better and it’s about making sure that we enter into these games and we give ourselves the best opportunity to get three points.”
Brianne Jenner opened the scoring for Ottawa with a power-play goal beating Maddie Rooney, who made 16 saves. Vasko made it 2-0 in the second taking a pass from Natalie Snodgrass, who took advantage of a Claire Thompson turnover.
Heise’s goal made it 2-1 and Claire Thompson, with her fourth of the season, made it 2-2.