3-2 OT: Final (MTL). 31-28: Shots (MTL-BOS). 2.60-1.91: xG (MTL-BOS). 0.72: xG on the 5 goals Montreal held a 2.60-1.91 xG edge and took zero penalties to Boston's three. Both halves of that matter. The xG gap says the Victoire were the marginally better team on run of play. The penalty imbalance meant Boston spent six minutes killing and never drew a power play of their own, which is the cleanest structural advantage available to a team outside of pure shot-quality. The five goals in the game priced at 0.72 xG combined , an average of about 0.14 xG per marker. That is inside the PWHL distribution of goals: a normal-quality game that happened to land in a 3-2 OT result. The first six minutes Montreal took a 2-0 lead inside the opening six minutes on the two highest-xG shots of the game. Jade Downie-Landry tipped home at 2:59 of the first (0.15 xG, 5-on-5), assisted by Alexandra Labelle . Kaitlin Willoughby made it 2-0 at 6:03 on a wrist shot priced at 0.27 xG (5-on-5), assisted by Lina Ljungblom . Those two shots combined for 0.42 xG, more than double the total xG of the three goals that followed. Montreal's first period also carried a 12-5 shot edge. For the opening twenty minutes, the underlying numbers and the scoreboard agreed. Boston's response Boston's two goals came on mid-quality looks. Jessie Eldridge scored with 1:09 left in the second to cut the deficit to 2-1, a 0.14 xG look assisted by Megan Keller and Haley Winn . Then Daniela Pejšová tied it at 9:41 of the third ( 0.08 xG , 5-on-5), assisted by Liz Schepers and Shay Maloney . Boston's combined 0.22 xG on those two goals is close to the long-run conversion rate for two shots of that quality. The Fleet did not need to crack a high-danger chance to equalize; they needed two mid-probability shots to land and both did. That pattern tilted the third period. Boston outshot Montreal 12-6 over the final twenty minutes of regulation. The Fleet's territorial push was real. What they did not produce was any shot the model graded higher than a low double-digit xG. The equalizer and the third-period pressure were built on volume at average quality, not on cracking open a grade-A chance. The game stayed 2-2 because Desbiens did not have to face one. The penalty that decided it Boston took all three penalties in this game. Montreal had 3 power-play opportunities ; Boston had 0 . That discipline imbalance became load-bearing at 20:00 of the third , when Shay Maloney was assessed an illegal body checking minor as regulation expired. The penalty carried into overtime. PWHL overtime is 3-on-3, so the infraction put Montreal on a 4-on-3 power play to start the extra frame. Nicole Gosling scored 38 seconds in on a wrist shot from the high slot ( 0.10 xG , 5v4), assisted by Abby Roque and Laura Stacey . The shot priced mid-range. The structural value of the chance was the power play itself: PWHL overtime is 3-on-3, and the Maloney minor made it a 4-on-3 man advantage in an open-ice format where nearly any reasonable look becomes a credible scoring chance. Goaltending, decomposed Ann-Renée Desbiens faced 28 shots worth 1.91 xG and conceded two. That is -0.09 GSAx , effectively even with expectation. She was not the reason Montreal won, but she was also not the reason Boston tied it; her line sits within a rounding error of the model's prediction given the workload. Abbey Levy faced 31 shots worth 2.60 xG and allowed three. Her GSAx for the night was -0.40 . On a heavier workload, she was slightly under expectation. The bigger issue for Boston was the shape of the xG ledger, not the save percentage. Levy saw more xG than her counterpart, and the one goal she gave up over that expected amount was the one-goal margin. Corsi versus xG, again Boston held 54.1% of Corsi in this game, Montreal 45.9% . The Fleet took more shot attempts. But Montreal's attempts were worth 2.60 xG and Boston's 1.91 , a gap of 0.67 expected goals in Montreal's favour. Per-shot, Montreal generated 0.084 xG and Boston 0.068. Similar quality per attempt, but the Victoire got to a higher count because they were never on a penalty kill. Boston's six minutes of penalty time removed most of the conditions under which their attempt-share edge could have accumulated xG. The game in cumulative xG The scoring timeline P1 2:59 · Jade Downie-Landry · xG 0.15 · MTL 1, BOS 0. P1 6:03 · Kaitlin Willoughby · xG 0.25 · MTL 2, BOS 0. P2 18:51 · Jessie Eldridge · xG 0.14 · MTL 2, BOS 1. P3 9:41 · Daniela Pejšová · xG 0.08 · MTL 2, BOS 2. P4 0:38 · Nicole Gosling (PP) · xG 0.10 · MTL 3, BOS 2 Boston's best non-goals The chances the model graded as Boston's best looks at Ann-Renée Desbiens . Every entry here is a shot the average PWHL shooter converts at least 7% of the time. The list is short because Boston's attempt volume in the third period was spread across lower-quality looks. P2 3:20 · Shay Maloney · xG 0.28. P3 16:38 · Liz Schepers · xG 0.17. P3 4:36 · Liz Schepers · xG 0.12. P2 18:19 · Haley Winn · xG 0.09. P3 17:00 · Jessie Eldridge · xG 0.09. P1 16:35 · Ella Huber · xG 0.08 Montreal's power play The Victoire went 1-for-3 on the power play, generating 0.64 xG across five shots. The decisive conversion was the overtime 4-on-3. Across the three opportunities, the unit produced about 0.21 xG per try, which is a reasonable rate on a small sample. Boston's special teams went 0-for-0 . The Fleet did not draw a single minor all night, and that asymmetry was the single largest structural advantage either team enjoyed. The penalty timeline P1 7:40 · Daniela Pejšová · Tripping (2 min). P3 4:42 · Jill Saulnier · Inter. on Goaltender (2 min). P3 20:00 · Shay Maloney · Illegal Body Checking (2 min) What this read isn't Not a claim Boston was unlucky to lose. They trailed in xG by 0.67, were never on a power play, and handed Montreal a 4-on-3 to start overtime. The process and the scoreboard agree that Montreal was the marginally better team across sixty-five minutes.. Not a goaltending story. Combined GSAx across both netminders is within a few hundredths of zero once you include the overtime goal. Neither Desbiens nor Levy meaningfully swung this game with their save lines.. Not a refereeing narrative. Three minors on one side in one game is unusual but not vanishing. All three Boston penalties were for distinct infractions across all three periods. The post notes the discipline imbalance as a structural input to the xG gap, not as a judgment of the calls.. Not a high-variance night. Five goals on 0.72 combined xG is roughly one expected goal less than the league-average relationship between xG and finishing would predict for a game with 4.51 total xG. That's within the ordinary single-game spread; it's not a story about anyone getting unlucky. Methodology xG model : PWHL-calibrated logistic regression on 16,709 non-EN shots. Features: distance, angle, rebound (3 s or less), penalty shot, power play, overtime, scorer-tagged quality chance, seven shot-type dummies. Empty-net shots are priced outside the main model (MoneyPuck / NST convention).. GSAx : summed xG on shots faced minus goals allowed, computed per-goalie from the PBP feed. Empty-net shots and goals are excluded.. Numbers regenerate on every build. A PBP re-sync or xG recalibration reshapes every figure in this post on the next static export. Full play-by-play, shift overlays, and the per-player game log for this game are at /games/109 .