2-1: Final (BOS). 3.05-1.17: xG (BOS-OTT). 9-2: HD (BOS-OTT). +1.05: Philips GSAx Boston opened the 2026 semifinal with a chance-quality blowout the scoreboard barely reflected. The Fleet outshot the Charge 28 to 18 , outchanced them 3.05 xG to 1.17 , and won the high-danger battle 9 to 2 . The reason this is a one-goal game and not a four-goal one is Gwyneth Philips , who finished +1.05 GSAx on a 28-shot night. Ottawa scored first on a power-play tip with 1:54 left in the opening period; Boston needed two goals 91 seconds apart at the end of the second to flip the game and win it. With Game 1 in hand, Boston leads the best-of-5 1-0. The Larocque tip, Ottawa's only real PP look, cashed Brianne Jenner drew a high-stick on Jessie Eldridge at P1 10:15 and another on Boston late in the period. The bigger swing was a double minor on Boston's Rylind MacKinnon at 15:32, giving Ottawa a 4-minute power play that crossed into 5-on-3 territory briefly. Ottawa generated one high-quality look from it: a Jocelyne Larocque tip from the slot at P1 18:06 graded at 0.25 xG . It went, and that was Ottawa's offence for the night. The Charge mustered just 18 shots and 0.46 xG on 5 power plays the rest of the way, with a single look above 0.10 xG at even strength after the goal. 91 seconds, two goals, the game flipped Boston spent 40 minutes pinned to a goalie having a top-decile playoff night. The dam broke at P2 17:56 : Alina Müller from the top of the circle to tie. P2 19:27 : Jamie Lee Rattray 's rebound conversion to win it. Two goals at 5-on-5, 91 seconds apart, with the Charge unable to clear after Boston had spent the full second period stacking pressure. The flip came on the Fleet's 21st and 22nd shots of the night. Goaltending, decomposed Gwyneth Philips faced 28 shots worth 3.05 xG , allowed two for +1.05 GSAx . That's a save-process line near the 90th percentile of any single PWHL playoff start to date. The two goals she allowed graded Alina Müller (mid-quality) and Jamie Lee Rattray (rebound). She stopped nine high-danger Boston chances. On a different night the workload alone produces a Boston blowout; Philips kept her team in a one-goal game until the second-period dam broke. Aerin Frankel stopped 17 of 18 shots worth 1.17 xG, finishing at +0.17 GSAx . A standard playoff-game line on a light workload. The one she allowed was the Larocque tip, the kind of in-tight chance the model already prices well above an average shot. Frankel didn't have to steal anything; she just had to not give up a second one. She didn't. The game in cumulative xG The scoring timeline P1 18:06 · Jocelyne Larocque (PP) · xG 0.25 · BOS 0, OTT 1. P2 17:56 · Alina Müller · xG 0.08 · BOS 1, OTT 1. P2 19:27 · Jamie Lee Rattray · xG 0.06 · BOS 2, OTT 1 Top scoring chances BOS P2 1:13 · Abby Newhook wrist · xG 0.29. BOS P2 1:13 · Alina Müller backhand · xG 0.28. BOS P1 8:58 · Jessie Eldridge wrist · xG 0.27. BOS P1 1:04 · Alina Müller wrist · xG 0.20. BOS P2 15:17 · Shay Maloney tip · xG 0.16. BOS P2 8:08 · Jessie Eldridge slap · xG 0.13. OTT P1 18:06 · Jocelyne Larocque tip · xG 0.25 (goal). OTT P1 16:05 · Brianne Jenner wrist · xG 0.13. OTT P3 11:27 · Emily Clark wrist · xG 0.10. OTT P2 19:51 · Gabbie Hughes wrist · xG 0.09. OTT P1 16:25 · Emily Clark wrist · xG 0.08. OTT P2 4:27 · Kathryn Reilly snap · xG 0.08 What this read isn't Not a knock on Ottawa. A 1.18 xG playoff road game is below where the Charge want to live, but Brianne Jenner 's line generated three of the four Ottawa even-strength looks worth taking. The team that finishes 2-1 on a 1.18 xG night still has every right to feel competitive heading into Game 2.. Not a model failure. A 3.07 xG game producing two goals fits the model's distribution comfortably. Boston shooting roughly 7 percent on a 28-shot night against an above-replacement goalie is on the lower edge of expected; not anomalous.. Not a power-play story for Boston. 0-for-5 on 1.58 xG is volume without conversion. The Fleet generated 11 shots and 1.59 xG of power-play offence, they didn't need to score on the man-advantage to win, but with Philips facing a heavy workload, an early PP goal would have moved them closer to the right side of variance much sooner.. Not a series referendum. Best-of-5 winners of Game 1 take the series ~70% of the time historically; in PWHL playoffs that prior is even noisier with a small sample. One game, one piece of information, one meaningful update to series WP. Methodology xG model : PWHL-calibrated logistic regression on 16,709 non-EN shots. Same fit as the methodology post . Features: distance, angle, rebound (≤3 s), 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 from both sides of the ledger.. 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/308 . The series projection, including how this Game 1 result moves Boston's series-WP, lives at /playoffs/bracket .