Special Night For Keopple As Victoire Ice Out Frost On The Road

The Montreal Victoire picked up their third consecutive win, and handed the Minnesota Frost their first regulation loss of the season at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on Saturday afternoon.

Montreal's 3-2 win moved them within two points of first place, closing the gap between the Victoire and the Frost.

Britta Curl-Salemme opened the scoring in the first period for the Frost. Claire Thompson assisted on the play picking up her league leading eighth point. Several minutes later, Mariah Keopple evened the scored beating Maddie Rooney on a blast from the point for her first career PWHL goal. Montreal took a 2-1 lead before the period was out with Alexandra Labelle scoring an unassisted marker.

For Keopple, her first period goal was special as she grew up playing high school hockey in Minnesota at Hill-Murray, and had a large contingent of Minnesota friends and Wisconsin family in the rink.

"It was incredible. I had 60 family members here," said Keopple. "They were scattered all around the rink. It was incredible to do it in front of them, and fellow Wisconsin people on my team. It's nice to be playing with them again. It was really special."

To making the evening more special, after Brooke McQuigge scored her first career goal for Minnesota, Montreal's Marie-Philip Poulin put the game on ice scoring to give the Victoire a 3-2 lead which they would hold. Ann-Renee Desbiens shut the door for Montreal in the third stopping 10 of her 22 saves in the frame.

Minnesota recognized the strong effort their visiting opponent put up in the win.

“It was tough––it was a close hockey game," said Frost head coach Ken Klee. "They did a good job. They played hard, they played simple, got pucks out, flipped pucks out, and we had a hard time getting to the front. I think that’s partially us being a little off and them doing a good job. It’s about us figuring out ways to put more pucks to the net and, when we do that, we have a lot of success.”

Montreal will play Boston on December 30, while the Frost are now off until January 2.