5-4: Final OT (MIN). 2.38-2.01: xG (MIN-MTL). 7-5: HD (MIN-MTL). -1.99 / -2.62: Rooney / Desbiens GSAx Game 1 of the Montréal-Minnesota semifinal turned into a high-variance, low-process scoreline both teams will want to take a shower from. Nine goals on a combined 4.39 xG ; both starting goaltenders below -2 GSAx; three lead changes and a fourth flip in overtime when Jincy Roese 's 0.03 xG point shot beat Ann-Renée Desbiens at 4:30 . Special teams drove most of the meaningful chance-creation: Montréal scored two of their four on the power play, Minnesota scored one on the man-advantage and one shorthanded inside a 45-second sequence. The Frost lead the best-of-5 1-0. Stacey's hat trick, around the Morin shorty Laura Stacey owned the second half of this game. Her first goal, P2 17:49, 0.13 xG wrister , closed a Minnesota lead to 2-2. Then a 1:48 stretch in the third decided whose pen drives the storyline: P3 2:58 , Stacey on a 5-on-4 PP for 3-3 (the model graded that one at 0.03 xG, a clean feed and a corner the goaltender couldn't reach); P3 3:46 , Sidney Morin shorthanded on a 0.14 xG snap as Minnesota killed the back end of a penalty for 4-3 MIN; P3 4:46 , Stacey again on the still-running 5-on-4, this one her highest-quality look of the night at 0.33 xG , for the hat trick and a 4-4 game. Three goals on a combined 0.50 xG inside 108 seconds, all on the same continuous power play that started before any of them. Goaltending, decomposed Maddie Rooney faced 25 shots worth 2.01 xG , allowed four for -1.99 GSAx . Save-process below expectation. The four goals against her came on shots graded 0.27, 0.13, 0.03 (PP), and 0.33 (PP). Two of those were medium-quality wrist shots; one was a tap-in PP feed; the Stacey 0.33 was the only legitimate high-danger chance Montréal scored. On a regular night Rooney stops at least one of the two mid-quality goals, that's the gap between her -2.00 GSAx tonight and the average -0.5 to +0.5 line from the regular season. Ann-Renée Desbiens stopped 24 of 29 shots worth 2.38 xG, finishing at -2.62 GSAx . Five goals on 2.40 xG of shots faced is process near the third percentile of any single playoff start in the sample. Two goals against were on shots under 0.12 xG (Knoll, Zumwinkle); the OT loser was a 0.03 xG point shot from Roese. The geometry of those goals, clean angles, eyes on the puck, points at recovery and depth questions worth re-running on the next video review. Special teams ate this game Six of the nine goals came on the power play or shorthanded. Montréal went 2-for-5 on the PP; Minnesota went 1-for-7 with one extra shorthanded marker. The chance-quality distribution was bimodal: each team's PP mostly manufactured one A-grade look and a half-dozen low-percentage perimeter shots. The middle of the goal pile was sub-0.15 xG conversions on both ends, meaning the special-teams scoreboard read 4-2 Montréal but the underlying special-teams xG read closer to a 0.85-0.73 split (MTL-MIN). The Frost didn't win the unit-vs-unit battle; they cashed at a higher rate when special teams ran. OT on a 0.03 xG Jincy Roese 's OT goal at 4:30 sits on the low-quality end of the model's distribution: 0.03 xG , an unscreened wrister from the blue line. Sudden-death 5-on-5 OT compresses the goal-rate distribution toward exactly this kind of shot, the team that gets the next clean look from any zone usually wins, and shot quality matters less than shot count once both sides start trading. Minnesota generated the Roese chance on a clean entry after 4:30 of OT and a model that prices the shot at 3 percent took the under that night. The Frost lead the best-of-5 1-0 with home-ice advantage flipping to them for Game 3. The game in cumulative xG The scoring timeline P1 8:36 · Katy Knoll · xG 0.12 · MTL 0, MIN 1. P1 16:16 · Kendall Coyne Schofield (PP) · xG 0.21 · MTL 0, MIN 2. P2 2:46 · Shiann Darkangelo · xG 0.28 · MTL 1, MIN 2. P2 17:49 · Laura Stacey · xG 0.13 · MTL 2, MIN 2. P2 18:35 · Grace Zumwinkle · xG 0.11 · MTL 2, MIN 3. P3 2:58 · Laura Stacey (PP) · xG 0.03 · MTL 3, MIN 3. P3 3:46 · Sidney Morin (SH) · xG 0.15 · MTL 3, MIN 4. P3 4:46 · Laura Stacey (PP) · xG 0.33 · MTL 4, MIN 4. P4 4:30 · Jincy Roese (OT) · xG 0.03 · MTL 4, MIN 5 Top scoring chances MIN P1 16:16 · Kendall Coyne Schofield snap · xG 0.21 (goal). MIN P2 7:57 · Sidney Morin wrist · xG 0.18. MIN P2 6:14 · Kendall Coyne Schofield tip · xG 0.18. MIN P4 3:44 · Katy Knoll snap · xG 0.16. MIN P3 19:57 · Kendall Coyne Schofield tip · xG 0.15. MIN P3 3:46 · Sidney Morin snap · xG 0.15 (goal). MTL P3 4:46 · Laura Stacey snap · xG 0.33 (goal). MTL P2 2:46 · Shiann Darkangelo default · xG 0.28 (goal). MTL P3 4:45 · Abby Roque tip · xG 0.23. MTL P3 10:58 · Laura Stacey tip · xG 0.15. MTL P2 17:49 · Laura Stacey default · xG 0.13 (goal). MTL P3 7:35 · Laura Stacey tip · xG 0.12 What this read isn't Not a knock on Montréal's process. A 2.00 xG home playoff game on a 25-shot night is below where the Victoire want to live, but Stacey's line carried real volume and the special-teams xG was the higher of the two PPs. Lose the goalie battle, lose the game.. Not a Stacey-vs-the-world night. The hat trick clusters around a single PP power play, with the deciding 0.33 xG snap helped open by a Roque tip 1.5 seconds earlier (0.23 xG) that re-set the goalie. Stacey finished; the line set it up.. Not a calibration problem with the OT shot. 5-on-5 sudden-death OT is genuinely lower-quality on average, fewer set plays, more recovery wristers from the blue line. A 0.03 xG game-winner is exactly the kind of shot 5-on-5 OT is designed to produce.. Not a series referendum. Game 1 winners take the best-of-5 ~70% of the time historically; the Frost are home for Game 3. One game, one 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.. 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; OT shots are included.. 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/309 . The series projection, including how this Game 1 result moves Minnesota's series-WP, lives at /playoffs/bracket .