This is an excerpt from the book Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game by Carissa Donkin, published by Goose Lane Editions. It's now available wherever you buy books.
April 20, 2024
Montreal, Quebec
The excitement pulsing through the arena could be felt even before Montreal's players stepped onto the ice.
With a capacity of over twenty-one thousand people, the Bell Center is the largest ice hockey arena in North America and is usually home to the NHL's Montreal Canadiens. But the day was all about PWHL Montreal, the team that has been the most popular in the city since the launch of the Professional Women's Hockey League in January.
It was Montreal vs. Toronto on Saturday afternoon, and although the two teams had only been around for four and a half months, the rivalry was already deep. Montreal had yet to beat Toronto in four games, and this was the last regular-season meeting between the two.
That day, their audience was the largest crowd to ever watch a women's hockey game in person, breaking the record set just two months earlier when the two teams met at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. In addition to attendance records, playoff positions in the six-team league were at stake.
The league was so new that no team had a logo or even a name yet, but those things were put aside in a rush to get players on the ice as quickly as possible in January. But none of these fans seemed to care. Tickets for this game sold out in twenty minutes. The crowd was full of maroon and cream T-shirts that read “Montreal” – an ode to their team and the city. These jerseys have been sold out online for months, and the lines at the skating rink for them could be long.
The arena glowed maroon mixed with tiny purple lights thanks to the glow wristbands given to each fan. The DJ played a remix of Celine Dion's “The Power of Love,” the team's skating song throughout the first season. When a shot of the players in the tunnel appeared on the jumbotron, some of them vibing Celine, the crowd roared.
The first to emerge from the tunnel was Anne-Rene Debien, a goalkeeper from Clermont, a small Quebec city through which the Malbaie River flows. She grew up dreaming of playing in the big games. And to be clear, big games were nothing new to her. She excelled at many of them as the starting goalkeeper for Team Canada, a team she had now helped win three World Championships and an Olympic gold medal. But this was a different stage. This was home. Desbienne was one of Montreal's first three players when general manager Danielle Sauvageau began building this team brick by brick, and she was and remains the foundation of PWHL Montreal.
Further back, forward Catherine Dubois was grinning from ear to ear as she skated onto the Bell Center ice. A few months ago, she spent her days hauling heavy cement bricks at a construction site two-and-a-half hours outside Quebec City, where she worked in the family masonry business. At the time, Dubois was convinced her hockey career was over, a feeling that wasn't the first time she'd had that feeling. Who would have thought that she would end up here?
Last to emerge was defender Erin Ambrose, whose eyes roamed the stands as she moved forward, stunned by the sight of twenty-one thousand fluttering white towels. It seemed surreal to her. Unlike Debian and Dubois, Ambrose grew up rooting for the Toronto Maple Leafs. But Montreal became her refuge in 2018 after she was cut from the Canadian Olympic team. Ambrose came to this city to escape her disappointment and shame, but it became a place where she found joy again playing hockey. It was like a full-circle moment when Sauvageau selected her in the first round of the draft last September.
The players skated a few laps around their half of the ice and then huddled around Debian in the net, a routine they did before every game. Opposite Debian, in the crowd, in the midst of it all, was number 29: Captain Marie-Philippe Poulain. If Debien is the backbone of this team, then Poulin is its heartbeat. When Montreal was announced as one of the first six teams in the PWHL, there was no question who would be the captain. It must have been Poulin.
Nicknamed Captain Clutch for her ability to score big goals for Canada in the biggest moments on the international stage, she's even more so here in Montreal. She is the face of women's hockey. Her name is on half the signs in the stands, a player who always takes an extra second to talk to the wide-eyed kid who always remembers the girl who attended her annual summer hockey camp. She is a captain who is always looking to take the spotlight away from her teammates. That will never change, no matter how many big goals she scores.
The players arrived at the blue line as the announcer began introducing Toronto's lineup. The crowd cheered so loudly that the players on the ice could barely hear their names. Standing on the blue line, Poulin couldn't imagine how loud the crowd would have been cheering for them if they were cheering so loudly for Toronto.
The volume began to increase as Montreal players began to hear their names. Number 9, defender Katya Tabin. Number 23, defender Erin Ambrose. Number 43, forward Christine O'Neill. Number 7, forward Laura Stacey. The applause reached its climax when the announcer reached the captain.
“Number twenty-nine,” he said. The crowd nearly drowned him out before he could even say her name. “Marie-Philippe Puuuuuulin!”
Poulin took a deep breath with a smile on her face and looked out at the crowd. She smiled and seemed to let her emotions completely overwhelm her. It was an outpouring of love for the captain, for all the gold medals, for every autograph she has ever given, and for everything she means to Quebec. When the applause continued for a full twenty seconds, Poulin greeted the crowd with her stick and applauded them. This is true? – Poulin asked herself, standing on the blue line. Never a fan of the limelight, she felt like the moment had lingered on her for too long.
One could say that Poulin had dreamed of this day all her life, but that would not be entirely true. The young girl who grew up playing with boys in Beauceville, a small town between Quebec and Maine, never dreamed that a women's hockey game could sell out the Bell Centre. She didn't think it was possible when she walked into this arena at age sixteen to watch her first Montreal Canadiens game, around the same time she moved to the city to pursue her hockey dreams.
She still didn't think it was possible ten years later, in 2017, when she played in a Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) game here against Les Canadiennes. Less than six thousand people came. She looked at the empty spaces and allowed herself to wish that they could someday be full. That league folded in 2019, and for a while, a scene like this seemed a long way off.
Further down the blue line, Ambrose managed to hold on as Poulin received a standing ovation. Poulin is her captain, but she is also one of her best friends. If you ask Ambrose, the hardest part about being out of the league for four seasons wasn't just that she missed out on four years of the prime of her career, finding herself without a place to play right after being crowned CWHL Defender of the Year with the Canadiennes. The fact is, the world missed four years of watching Poulin play in the league, four years that we will never get back.
There will never be another player like Poulin, who combines his talent on the ice with a tenacious work ethic and an unmatched ability to connect with his teammates. The creation of this league meant that people could see Poulin play every Tuesday night, not just when she wore a Team Canada jersey. According to Ambrose, if the world saw more of Poulin, it could take the game to a whole new level.
On the Montreal bench, head coach Corey Chevery held back tears, knowing the television cameras would likely capture her tears. When she was growing up in Nova Scotia, Chevery asked her mother to wake her up at 5 a.m. to watch replays of games in the old National Women's Hockey League, which ran from the 1998-99 season to 2007. She knew then that she wanted to play professionally. She continued to play in the CWHL, winning a championship with the Toronto Furies in 2014. But playing at the Bell Center was something completely different than what she had experienced in her playing career.
On the opposing bench, Toronto defender Lauriene Rougeau was also holding back tears. Poulin lived with the Rougeau family when she moved to Montreal as a teenager. Rougeau has seen Poulin succeed at every level and has seen her become the person she is today. They played together at the Canadiennes, won an Olympic gold medal together a decade ago, and shared that moment together on opposite sides of the rink on this day in what would be Rougeau's final season in hockey.
Hosts Carissa Donkin and The Athletic's Hayley Salvian give their predictions for what Canada's women's hockey roster could look like at the upcoming Winter Olympics.
High up in the press box was Isabelle Leclerc, an analyst for the French sports network RDS. Leclerc coached shy 15-year-old Poulin on the Quebec team at the 2007 Canada Games. Even as a teenager, Poulin could do things with the puck that no one else could. She was simply special. Finally, Leclerc now thought, there was a league that would give the world's best players the attention they deserved, and, thank God, it happened during Poulin's career.
Poulin is a wizard with the puck, the type of player who can knock you out of a game. No one was more consistent when it mattered most on the ice than Poulin. She is one of the best to ever play the game. People tuned in to see her every four years at the Olympics and maybe once a year at the World Championships. But she had just as many magical moments wearing a Montreal sweater in the CWHL.
Poulin's big goals for the Olympics and World Championships are, of course, easy to find online. But what about all the magic from Montreal's past teams? Some of these games were broadcast on low quality broadcasts. Some were not broadcast at all and are lost forever. Poulin scored thirteen goals in two matches at the Women's Under-18 World Cup. Try to find a video of at least one of these heads on the Internet. You may have to call the FBI. It's sad to think about what was lost, about what we will never get back.
Women's hockey has been underserved for many years, but that is finally starting to change.
A lot of time has passed.
Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game Carissa Donkin, Goose Lane Editions, paperback, $26.00.
