Last week, the Montréal Victoire won their first Walter Cup in their third season of play.
It’s a testament to three years of building, growing, and maturing to get to this moment. But it’s also proof of one thing: the Victoire were never really cursed.
The concept of the curse has become one of the most overused crutches in sports. Given the extreme superstitions of fans and often illogical nature of hockey, it’s no surprise that it’s easy to buy into. And with how Montréal looked through their first two playoff appearances, it’s not hard to see how this label quickly found the Victoire.
Despite top-two finishes through the first two seasons, Montréal suffered two straight first-round exits. Across those two series, the Victoire managed just one playoff win––and it took quadruple overtime. Entering this season, it became a favourite topic of discussion around the Victoire. Despite offseason changes, improved depth, and even better regular season results, what did it matter if the Victoire were destined to go quiet come playoff time?
Now that they’ve clinched their first Walter Cup, it’s a good time to look back and see the curse for what it really was: the difficulty of playoff hockey in a league with a high level of parity.
Pressure of First Place
The curse was a favourite topic of conversation when the Victoire once again finished first this season and once again earned the opportunity to pick their semi-final opponent. Before this season, no PWHL team had defeated their chosen opponent in the first round.
On the surface, the obvious choice was to face the lower-seeded Ottawa Charge. But the Victoire opted to face the two-time defending Cup champion Minnesota Frost instead. Despite allegations they were cursed, the team made a confident decision to take on the team that was seen as the tougher opponent.
And it paid off. Montréal defeated Minnesota in five games to advance to the Final, defeating a number of so-called curses in the process. They were the first higher-seeded team to win a playoff series, the first team to beat their chosen opponent, and also earned their first regulation playoff win(s) as a franchise.
Speaking after Montréal’s Walter Cup win, head coach Kori Cheverie was honest about the challenges that come with picking your opponent.
“Picking your opponent is, it’s great for the fans and everybody, it’s hard for the team that has to pick,” Cheverie said. “You’re splitting hairs at the end of it. You don’t know if you’re going to be right or wrong, and it’s only gonna be at the end when you feel like you were right or wrong in that moment. So I love that our league takes on initiatives like that and wants to be different. It does put a lot of stress on the team that finishes first, but I couldn’t be happier with our path.”
Being able to pick your first-round opponent is not a cursed position, so much as just a challenging one, especially in a league where the margins between teams are still razor-thin.
Clinching the Cup
In the Final, Montréal wound up facing the Charge anyways, taking them down in four games to clinch the Walter Cup. After the final game, team captain Marie-Philip Poulin acknowledged the noise the team dealt with this season, and shared how they were able to tune it out to get the job done.
“Yeah, we know people have been talking,” Poulin said. “We see it, we hear it, but at the end of the day, it’s the people in that dressing room that are gonna show up, day in and day out. And that’s what we did, we focused on ourselves.”
As soon as the supposed curse was broken, it became clear there never really was one. Playoff hockey is hard, and this year’s run showed it is quite literally a game of inches. And above all, two years of disappointment do not a curse make.
Through Montréal’s first two seasons, the team lacked the depth needed to rise to the challenge, but each season they learned and improved. Heading into this season, they knew what they needed to get over the hump.
“I think we learned a lot in first and second year with how hard it was going to be to put everything together, to win,” Cheverie said. “I think once we realized what it was going to take, the pursuit of that became the obsession. Of how we could have achieve that. We gotta look at every moment along the way, free agency, our draft, our trades. The team we’ve been able to put together all season long.”
This Saturday, the Victoire will take to the streets for their championship parade. Not only will it be a celebration of their championship season, but also of breaking the notion that this team is cursed, allowing them to enter next season with a new narrative: defending champions.
