Minnesota Frost
The Minnesota Frost have always been one of the more fascinating teams when it came to the goaltending position for a few reasons. One is that they leaned heavily into using Maddie Rooney and Nicole Hensley as a tandem. Up until the 2026 PWHL playoffs, Frost head coach Ken Klee was unafraid of continually swapping them. In the two seasons the Frost won the Walter Cup (2024/2025), Rooney and Hensley split notable time in net. Hensley was the goalie in net for the Cup clinching game in 2024 versus Boston. Rooney was in net for the Cup clinching game in 2025 versus Ottawa.
One of the other reasons that this tandem has been so intriguing is the complete 180 that their stats take when looking at the regular season and the playoffs. It’s been three seasons in a row — all three seasons that the PWHL has existed — that the Frost have finished sixth in team SV%. In a league where only four teams have made the playoffs, to make the playoffs while not having top four statistical goaltending is a notable feat. Then, in the playoffs you have Hensley/Rooney each posting a +0.940 SV% in 2024. Rooney followed that up with a 0.932 SV% in 2025. She then finished with a 0.930 SV% in these past playoffs. With such a difference in results, it’s been a bit difficult to figure out just how good Hensley/Rooney are.
Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. The Frost were able to hold onto their tandem through the Seattle/Vancouver expansion. This time around, though, Frost general manager Melissa Caruso did the math. The math said expansion teams are going to take at least one of Hensley and Rooney — maybe both, if they were available. That’s why, in phase one of the 2026 expansion process, the Frost protected Rooney with one of their three protection slots.
If you’re going to protect a goalie between Hensley and Rooney, it’s hard to argue that the Frost didn’t make the right call. For the first two seasons of the league, neither goalie held an obvious advantage over the other. You could say Hensley was the better goalie in 2024 while Rooney was the better goalie in 24/25. The difference statistically, though, wasn’t significant. That is, until we came to this season. Rooney was the better goalie nearly every way statistically. Klee using Rooney as the number one goalie all through the 2026 playoffs shows he felt the same.
Now Minnesota is in brand new territory with Maddie Rooney being the clear number one goalie. I don’t think there’s much question about Rooney handling number one goalie duties. She started 18 games in 24/25 and 16 games in 25/26, plus all five playoff games. Her quality start% remained above 0.600 the past two seasons. Though she’s not a surefire top goalie in the league, she can handle the number one spot.
There are three goalies in this league who you can confidently start 25 games and remain consistently good. Rooney isn’t one of those goalies. That’s Ann-Renée Desbiens, Aerin Frankel, and Gwyneth Philips at the moment. The task of giving Rooney some rest is going to be on the shoulders of Marlène Boissonnault and Daria Gredzen. It’s tough to say who has the inside track of the number two spot right now.
If it comes down to experience, then the 29-year-old from New Brunswick, Boissonnault, will start as the number two goalie in Minnesota. Now, experience in this case means just being a part of a lot of PWHL practices. Boissonnault has one PWHL game in her resume while going into her fourth PWHL season. She’s spent the last three seasons being the number three goalie: one season in Montréal and two in Minnesota.
Then there’s the biggest question mark in 2026 PWHL fifth round draft pick Daria Gredzen. The 22-year-old Russian was last seen playing PWHL level competition at the 2022 Olympics. She’s been kept in the Russian national team system playing in friendly competitions against different men’s teams. Based on all that we can safely say Gredzen is still seen highly in Russia. We have no idea how she’s going to transition to the PWHL, though.
We saw Anna Shokhina and Fanuza Kadirova be the first Russians to join the PWHL last season. Kadirova had a great season while Shokhina struggled to find consistent minutes. They’re both forwards, though. At best we have proof of concept that Russian players can handle the transition to North America. The sample size is so small Gredzen is a bigger mystery box than Kadirova/Shokhina were.
The Frost goaltending room is filled with decent talent. Unless all three goalies decide to just have the worst years of their career, they should be able to be average or close enough to average that they aren’t deciding games one way or another. The team up front is going to the biggest decider of how the Frost goaltending looks, which has been the reason as for why the regular season and playoff stats have been so stark in contrast.
The second biggest factor for goaltending success is managing Rooney’s workload. If Gredzen or Boissonnault can’t find their footing as the number two, warning sirens are going to go off. It’s definitely possible Rooney can start +20 games and maintain her consistency. It’s not easy for goalies to do so, though. It’ll be a major help to the Frost if Rooney is able to take games off. Especially since Rooney hasn’t faced more than 419 shots in a season yet. If Minnesota’s defence isn’t able to be one of the best shot suppression teams they’ve been the past three years combined with more starts for Rooney, suddenly she’s looking at a sharp increase in workload. This is going to be one of the most fascinating stories to watch this season in net.
Montréal Victoire
This might go down as the shortest section in this entire 12-team piece. Just like with the Boston Fleet and Aerin Frankel, the Montreal Victoire have a top two goalie in the league. Ann-Renée Desbiens just had the season of all seasons, to the point where if someone is able to beat her accomplishments, we all just die of shock. I wrote an article last year about how Desbiens had a fantastic, eye popping statistical season in the 2024/25 season. If Desbiens just continued being that goalie coming into this season, she’d still have been a top two goalie. In 24/25, she posted a 0.945 even-strength SV%, 0.500 Goals Saved Above Average/30 shots against, and 0.800 Quality Starts%. She won the 2025 PWHL Goalie of the Year award in what was hopefully a landslide vote.
This season, Desbiens decided to go from elite to generational in her performance. A 0.960 EVSV%, 0.955 GSAA/30, and 0.960 QS%. The cherry on top is she posted seven shutouts. Desbiens only finished second to Frankel in two categories, shutouts and GSAA, in which Frankel held slight advantages in both. In the 25/26 PWHL regular season, Desbiens only posted one game below a quality start. Statistically, that means that in 24 of 25 starts Desbiens gave her team the best chance at winning. Frankel was 22 of 26 in comparison, which is still elite and shows Desbiens really found that extra edge.
That extra edge was even more obvious in the playoffs. Desbiens finished the playoffs with a 0.944 SV% and two shutouts. No one was really close. Rooney was next in SV% with a 0.930 SV% and Desbiens was the only goalie with any shutouts in the 2026 PWHL playoffs. For her efforts, Desbiens won the Walter Cup with Montréal. Funnily enough, despite posting one of the most dominant goalie seasons we’re bound to see for a long time, Desbiens leaves the season with no individual accolades. This doesn’t matter, though, because the Cup is the goal and Montréal cashed in on a generational season. Now comes the tough part: can Desbiens do it again?
On the plus side, there’s no Olympics, which should mean Desbiens sees a decrease in starts away from the Victoire. If Kori Cheverie wants to run Desbiens out there again for another 25 games in a season, Desbiens can handle it. She might have to, especially if Sandra Abstreiter isn’t coming back to Montréal. It wouldn’t be surprising if either party made the decision to move on, as Cheverie only gave Abstreiter five starts this season.
To compound the narrative that Abstreiter or Montréal has decided to go in separate directions, the Victoire drafted goaltender Hailey MacLeod in the 2026 PWHL Entry Draft. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if Montréal didn’t still have Megan Warrener under contract for this season. There could be a goalie camp invite, but I think the odds are heavily in favour of Montréal having a goalie room consisting of Desbiens, MacLeod, and Warrener. Who of Warrener and MacLeod get the five or so starts Cheverie throws out there is unknown at the moment.
Will it matter? Not unless Desbiens gets injured enough to miss significant parts of the season or suddenly runs into the aging regression curve. Desbiens’ goaltending relies heavily on her hockey IQ and that typically is the very last thing to go. Everything is pointing towards Desbiens being a top three goalie at worst next season. Missing Marie-Philip Poulin is a whole other issue. Despite that, Montréal is set to be very competitive again thanks to Desbiens.
Should the worst happen and MacLeod or Warrener need more than five starts, how in trouble is Montréal? They have zero PWHL games between the two of them, so that’s already a tough sell on high potential right there. Warrener spent all of last season being the number three goalie for Montréal and in the season previous was the number two to Tia Chan at the University of Connecticut. She posted very good numbers for the Huskies, though never in a number one role.
Hailey MacLeod has had a bumpy ride to her NCAA career. Her first season was spent as the number two behind Emma Söderberg, then a tandem with Ève Gascon in her second season, transferred to Ohio State in her third season to then be the number two to Amanda Thiele, and finally in her fourth season MacLeod is given the number one role. Everything points to MacLeod having a very good season, with a 0.932 SV% and WCHA Championship. As I’ve mentioned previously though, being a rookie goalie in the PWHL is not an easy time, especially coming from the NCAA.
There’s another factor to consider as well should MacLeod or Warrener need to take more time in net. It’s the team in front of them. Desbiens has found tremendous success behind Montréal and so did Elaine Chuli in the 2024 season. It’s a good team, always been a good team, and they won a Walter Cup! What’s to be concerned about? The results of Abstreiter and Chuli in the past two seasons are what to be concerned about. In the Boston section of these articles I mentioned how Amanda Thiele and Abbey Levy had given Boston league average goaltending. Why haven’t Chuli and Abstreiter in the past two seasons?
In 24/25, Chuli had a 0.500 QS%, 0.916 EVS%, and -0.137 GSAA/30. Scroll back up to see Desbiens’ numbers in comparison. Chuli repeating her 2024 season of a 0.875 QS% and 0.828 GSAA/30 was going to be next to impossible but it was shocking to see her drop below average on Montréal. I’d chalk it up to more of a fluke if Abstreiter didn’t just have a 0.892 EVSV%, 0.400 QS%, and -0.537 GSAA/30 this season.
For whatever reason, when Desbiens isn’t in the net, the goaltending drops more than you’d expect on a Cup-winning team. Montréal doesn’t just need Desbiens because she is a future Hockey Hall of Famer, she’s the only goalie in the last two seasons to find success behind Montréal’s skaters. After losing Nicole Gosling and Erin Ambrose, it’s hard to imagine the situation being easier for non-Desbiens goalies.
