PHF Weekend Review: Toronto Six stay unbeaten with two wins over Connecticut

This weekend marked a new milestone for Canada’s only PHF franchise, as Saturdays’ game was their first ever game on Canadian soil, having played all of last season in the bubble at Lake Placid, New York.

They played two games this weekend, their second and third games of this young season, both against the Connecticut Whale.

Connecticut opened the scoring about halfway through the first on a tip by Kennedy Marchment on a Shannon Turner point shot, threatening to make the Canadian debutant ball a disappointing affair.

As the period went on, it looked like the Six were going to get goalie’d by Abby Ives, who was playing great. But when the Six came back for the second period, there was a fire in their bellies. They took over the shot clock and eventually added three goals in the matter of 4 minutes, taking total control of the game.

First, a tight-angled shot by Michela Cava beats Abby Ives to tie the game up. Then, Brooke Boquist picks up a soft feed in the slot from Cava on the rush for this beautiful, bottle popping shot:

Later they followed up with another goal, Michela Cava’s third point of the night, on her own tip of a Lindsay Eastwood shot.

Just before the end of the period, the Six made their lead even stronger on a breakaway by Mikyla Grant-Mentis, joined on the rush by none other than Michela Cava, though the goal did end up unassisted:

The Six added one more in the third period, a great tip in front by Meagan Beres on a Saroya Tinker slap shot straight past Abby Ives. That was rookie Beres’ first goal of her PHF career. In the PHF’s own words, the Toronto six are scary good:

With that offensive outburst, the Six earned their first win on Canadian soil. The opportunity to play at home in front of a crowd was obviously a catalyst for Toronto and they made the most of it.

In the other two games, the Buffalo Beauts won a thriller in 3-on-3 OT against the Metropolitan Riveters, and the Minnesota Whitecaps beat the Boston pride 2-0,

In the second game of Toronto’s double header weekend against the Whale, the first period went scoreless in a bit of a sloppy start to Sunday.

In the second period, though, captain Shiann Darkangelo got the Six off to a good start with this one-timer on a great feed by Mikyla Grant-Mentis:

Then, another rookie got her first goal of this season, as defender Taylor Davison joined the rush and buried this great cross-ice pass from Darkangelo:

Then, last year’s MVP and the Six’s top scorer this year takes advantage of Connecticut screening their own goalie and fires her own bottle-popping shot:

The Whale did make it a game though, after Catherine Crawley finished a very similar goal to Davison’s to open the scoring for Connecticut. Then a second goal, by Kennedy Marchment who had a great weekend, after she walked out front and found the top corner over Elaine Chuli:

Around the rest of the league, both of the other double headers split their games 1-1, as the Pride won against Minnesota 2-1, and the Riveters won against Buffalo 5-3.

What a fantastic weekend for Toronto it was. Michela Cava and Mikyla Grant-Mentis were dominant, Shiann Darkangelo showed her leadership and skill, and they looked like they could be a machine this season. The Six now sit second in the league, despite being undefeated, because the Pride have played double the games and got 4 wins of those 6 games.

Next weekend, Toronto aims to take first place as they’ll have 2 games against Boston. If they take both, staying undefeated, they’ll sit clearly at the top of the league. Their next game will be Saturday December 4th in Boston at 7pm. You can take a look at the Six’s whole season schedule here.