{"id":744084,"date":"2026-06-18T03:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744084\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T03:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:10:12","slug":"montreal-victoire-re-signs-abby-roque-but-loses-six-players-to-pwhl-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744084\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Victoire re-signs Abby Roque, but loses six players to PWHL expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Montreal Victoire announced Wednesday it has re-signed forward Abby Roque for two years, ending speculation on where the team\u2019s top point scorer will end up.<\/p>\n

Roque, 28, had 22 points for Montreal last season, tied for 10th in the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League, and was also the Victoire\u2019s highest-paid player at $116,699<\/a>. She becomes the ninth Victoire player signed for next season. <\/p>\n

\"AbbyMontreal Victoire forward Abby Roque speaks to media on May 27. Evan Buhler \/ Montreal Gazette<\/p>\n

The nine signed players include the three players on the \u201cwife line\u201d of Roque, Marie-Philip Poulin and Poulin\u2019s wife Laura Stacey.<\/p>\n

Six other players at least won\u2019t be coming back next season, as they were signed by expansion teams:<\/p>\n

Defender Erin Ambrose (Las Vegas)<\/p>\n

Forward Hayley Scamurra (Las Vegas)<\/p>\n

Defender Nicole Gosling (Hamilton)<\/p>\n

Forward Maureen Murphy (Las Vegas)<\/p>\n

Forward Shiann Darkangelo (Detroit)<\/p>\n

Forward Natalie Mlynkova (San Jose)<\/p>\n

The Victoire protected six players in the expansion process: Poulin, Stacey, Ann-Ren\u00e9e Desbiens, Maggie Flaherty (who re-signed for two years), Lina Ljungblom and Kati Tabin. And two other players, Catherine Dubois and Jessica DiGirolamo, are also under contract for next season.<\/p>\n

That leaves several key players whose future is still up in the air, including forward Jade Downie-Landry, defender Amanda Boulier and both backup goaltenders, Sandra Abstreiter and Megan Warrener.<\/p>\n

Thursday will be the final day existing teams can re-sign players on their rosters before free agency begins Friday at noon. It\u2019s also the last day qualifying offers can be given to players on expiring contracts whose 2026-27 rights are still held by the team. Montreal has three of those players: Maya Labad, Tamara Giaquinto and Skylar Irving. Should they not receive qualifying offers, they too will become free agents.<\/p>\n

No more awards for Montreal<\/p>\n

Though Victoire players were finalists for four awards on Tuesday evening, the Boston Fleet and Minnesota Frost ended up winners when the results were announced<\/a>, taking the MVP award (Aerin Frankel), goaltender of the year (Frankel), forward of the year (Kelly Pannek), defender of the year (Megan Keller), rookie of the year (Haley Winn) and coach of the year (Kris Sparre).<\/p>\n

Desbiens was a finalist for MVP and goaltender of the year, Gosling a finalist for rookie of the year, and Kori Cheverie a finalist for coach of the year.<\/p>\n

Besides the Walter Cup championship, the Victoire is left with Poulin\u2019s playoff MVP award as the only major individual honour.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n

Montreal was also shut out of the PWHL\u2019s first all-star team, which also featured Minnesota\u2019s Taylor Heise, Ottawa\u2019s Brianne Jenner and Vancouver\u2019s Sophie Jaques. Victoire players Stacey, Gosling and Desbiens were named to the second all-star team, while Gosling was named to the all-rookie team.<\/p>\n

There were also awards given out for off-ice contributions. Ottawa\u2019s Rebecca Leslie was named the winner of the Hockey For All award recognizing impact in the community, and the Victoire\u2019s Shiann Darkangelo was one of four recipients of the Intact Impact Award, recognizing \u201cplayers who made a meaningful impact through their leadership, support of others, and overall positive influence on team culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montreal picks 12th in draft<\/p>\n

As the Walter Cup winners, Montreal is last in the PWHL draft order, with picks 12, 24, 36, 48, 60 and 72.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Victoire used its first-round pick<\/a> on Finnish forward Petra Nieminen, who plays for Lulea of the Swedish Women\u2019s Hockey League and was part of Finland\u2019s bronze-medal-winning teams at the 2018 and 2022 Olympics and five world championships. She had 25 goals and 20 assists in 36 games with Lulea last season, and 29 goals and 25 assists in 66 games with the Finnish national team.<\/p>\n

Its second-round pick was Avi Adam of Wolfvile, N.S., a forward with Cornell University. She had 12 goals and 17 assists in 33 games with the Big Red last season.<\/p>\n

The third-round pick was Zoe Uens of Belleville, Ont., a defender with Quinnipiac University who had 10 goals and nine assists in 41 games with the Bobcats last season. She will be reunited with former teammate Maya Labad, who was a senior there in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

The fourth-round pick was Hailey MacLeod of Abbotsford, B.C., a goaltender for the Ohio State Buckeyes. She had 26 wins in 31 games with a save percentage of .932 last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Victoire announced Wednesday it has re-signed forward Abby Roque for two years, ending speculation on where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-744084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744084","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=744084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}