OTTAWA, May 22, 2025 – The sellout crowd at TD Place Thursday night, were silenced as Britta Curl-Salemme scored late in the third period and again in overtime to propel the Minnesota Frost to a 2-1 series-tying win over the Ottawa Charge.
The game was scoreless for most of regulation time until Ottawa’s Jocelyne Larocque broke the deadlock at 17:25 of the third period, giving the Charge the lead.
But with just 15 seconds left, and the Frost pressing on a six on four power play, Curl-Salemme silenced the capacity crowd scoring the equalizer to send the game to overtime.
While both teams traded chances in the extra time frame, it was Curl-Salemme who struck yet again––scoring with less than four minutes left to lift Minnesota to the win.
The Frost’s Maddie Rooney turned away 37 of 38 shots in her third win of the playoffs, while Ottawa’s Gwyneth Philips saved 22 of 24 shots in her sixth playoff start for the Charge.
“I was seeing the puck well, but I thought the team did a great job trying up sticks in front of us and clearing out bodies in front of us making it easier to see,” said Rooney. “It just says a lot about our team being down and being able to tie it with 15 seconds left and getting the win in overtime,” added the Frost netminder.
The loss was Ottawa’s first in four games on home ice this postseason. Emily Clark was the overtime hero at TD Place in Ottawa in game 1 on Tuesday, lifting the host Charge in a 2-1 OT thriller.
Ottawa captain Brianne Jenner on the feeling of seeing a victory slip away: “It’s frustrating, but this was a much better game for us than our first game and we can take a lot of confidence from the way that we played. We got back to our style tonight. We know it’s going to be a hard-fought series. We knew that coming into it. Yeah, we would have liked to close this one out for sure. But we’ll learn from it and we’re right in the battle and we’re having fun.”
All six of Ottawa’s playoff games this season have been decided by exactly one goal. It is the longest streak of one-goal games within a single playoffs by a PWHL team all-time. In this year’s regular season, no team had a streak longer than four.
Ottawa outshot Minnesota for the first time this season through eight overall meetings. Ottawa’s 38 shots on net in tonight’s game are the team’s highest tally against Minnesota this season.
Game Three of the best-of-five PWHL Finals, presented by Scotiabank, is set to take place on Saturday at 5 p.m. ET at Xcel Energy Center.
by Terry Lankstead
With Notes and photo from PWHL staff
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