The Minnesota Frost proved the ability to rally last year when they came back after Game 1 losses in both playoff series on the way to winning the PWHL’s inaugural Walter Cup.
Minnesota is trying to do it again.
The Frost — who had to win the final two games of the regular season on the road just to qualify for the playoffs — lost 3-2 in Game 1 in Toronto on Wednesday. They pulled even in the best-of-five series on Friday in Toronto against the Sceptres with a 5-3 win, scoring twice in the third period.
Last year, the lost the first two games in Toronto in the first round and the first game in Boston in the finals. Being down has not seemed to affect Minnesota.
Sophie Jaques scored the game-winning goal at 13:47 of the third and Mellissa Channell-Watkins added a power-play goal with 71 seconds remaining. Lee Stecklein scored twice for the Frost and Michela Cava had a goal. Taylor Heise and Kelly Pannek each had two assists.
Maddie Rooney stopped 27 of 30 shots in goal for Minnesota.
Perhaps it’s no surprise the Frost even rallied in the game Thursday.
Toronto’s Hayley Scamurra opened the scoring 7:11 into the game for the lone goal in the first.
Minnesota then took control. Stecklein’s first goal came just 4:41 into the second. Cava scored a little over six minutes later and Stecklein made it a 3-1 game on the power play at 12:59 of the middle frame.
But the Sceptres also rallied.
Savannah Harmon scored on a power play at 16:56 of the second with only 14 seconds left in the man advantage with Heise in the penalty box for elbowing, the Frost’s lone penalty in the game.
Allie Munroe tied the game for Toronto 27 seconds later.
Despite being outshot 13-4 in the third, Minnesota managed to put two pucks behind Sceptres goaltender Kristin Campbell, who finished with 20 saves.
Toronto outshot the Frost 30-25. But Minnesota was 2 for 3 on the power play in evening the series, which shifts to the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on Sunday with a 5 p.m. puck drop.
Curl-Salemme suspended
The Frost were also playing short-handed as forward Britta Curl-Salemme was suspended for Game 2 for a hit she delivered in Game 1. The PWHL Player Safety Committee handed down the suspension, the third of Curl-Salemme’s rookie season, on Friday morning.
Curl-Salemme scored the Frost’s first goal in Game 1, but moments later was assessed a 5-minute major and game misconduct for what PWHL Player Safety characterized as “a high and forceful check” on Toronto blue liner Renata Fast.
Curl-Salemme, was skating the puck out of her own end when she raised an elbow and appeared to catch Fast in the jaw. The hit, the league said in a statement Friday, made “the head the main point of contact on a play where such contact to the head was avoidable.”
Fast played in Game 2.
A rookie from Wisconsin, Curl-Salemme had been fined and suspended twice already this season, once for a high sticking incident on Jan. 2 against Boston and again for an illegal check to the head on Mar. 9 against Toronto.
Minnesota coach Ken Klee said Curl-Salemme was not “a malicious person,” and, while acknowledging it cost her a game, that Wednesday’s incident was a competitive hockey play.
“For players that play hard and aggressive, sometimes it’s tough,” Klee said. “It’s happening in a split second. It’s nothing malicious for her. I mean, obviously, we know that decisions are going to be made, but for her, she’s trying to play hard, trying to do her job.”
The PWHL’s Player Safety Committee is chaired by PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations and includes PWHL special advisor Cassie Campbell-Pascall, former NHL referee Bill McCreary, longtime NHL executive Mike Murphy and Matt McMahon, a member of the NHL’s Player Safety department.
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