OTTAWA \u2014 Sandra Abstreiter made 39 saves to pick up her first shutout in the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League and led the Montreal Victoire to a 3-0 win over the Ottawa Charge Friday night.<\/p>\n
Kaitlin Willoughby, with two goals, and Abby Roque scored for the Victoire (14-4-2-5), who moved into first place in the eight-team PWHL.<\/p>\n
Gwyneth Philips stopped 23 shots for the Charge.<\/p>\n
The Charge (6-7-1-11) returned to Ottawa after playing a record six straight games on the road and even Friday\u2019s game wasn\u2019t officially on home ice.<\/p>\n
The Charge took over the Canadian Tire Centre and welcomed its largest crowd of the season (17,114), but even that wasn\u2019t enough to help them out.<\/p>\n
The Victoire have already clinched a playoff spot while the Charge (6-7-1-10) are fighting to get into the final playoff position.<\/p>\n
Ottawa sits one point back of the Toronto Sceptres. Both teams have five games remaining and will square off twice before the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Trailing 2-0, Ottawa had a great chance early in the third when Emily Clark put a shot on goal and the rebound lay in the crease but no Charge player was close enough to get to it in time.<\/p>\n
Willoughby scored her second into an empty net with 42.2 seconds remaining to ice the game.<\/p>\n
The Charge had a flurry of chances early in the second but couldn\u2019t find a way to capitalize.<\/p>\n
Peyton Hemp had back-to-back chances and came up short. And less than a minute later Montreal broke in on a two-on-one that ended with Willoughby beating Philips high blocker side for her first of the season. Abstreiter picked up an assist on the play.<\/p>\n
Montreal made it 2-0 scoring on the power play. Laura Stacey found Abby Roque breaking in alone after getting behind Ottawa\u2019s defence to tip a shot past Philips.<\/p>\n
There were chances at both ends of the ice, but the game remained scoreless after the opening 20 minutes. Ottawa\u2019s Sarah Wozniewicz believed she had scored at the 16-minute mark but upon review it was determined the puck never fully crossed the line. Wozniewicz also hit the post earlier in the period.<\/p>\n
TAKEAWAYS<\/p>\n
Charge: Ottawa generated lots of shots but too many of them were easy for Abstreiter to see. <\/p>\n
Victoire: Montreal was able to get in close on Philips and it was the difference in the action-packed game.<\/p>\n
KEY STAT<\/p>\n
Montreal\u2019s victory Friday was its 50th in regular-season history.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
Victoire: Host the Seattle Torrent on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Charge: Host the Seattle Torrent on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Lisa Wallace, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Sandra Abstreiter made 39 saves to pick up her first shutout in the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,82],"class_list":["post-580960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}