3-1: Final (MIN). 2.10-2.37: xG (MIN-MTL). Series 2-2: Semifinal. +1.37: Rooney GSAx For forty minutes Game 4 looked like Game 2 in a different room: heavy Montréal pressure, a tight Ann-Renée Desbiens night, a Maddie Rooney answer at the other end, no goals. Then the third period happened. Maureen Murphy put the Victoire on the board at P3 1:13 on a 0.28 xG wrister off a Hayley Scamurra entry. Sidney Morin answered with the highest-leverage four minutes of the Frost's postseason: a 5v5 wrister at P3 8:05 to tie, then a power-play marker at P3 12:01 to lead. Kelly Pannek 's empty netter at P3 18:43, primary Mae Batherson and secondary Maddie Rooney (the rare goaltender stretch pass), put the game away. The series is tied 2-2 with a decider at Place Bell on Tuesday. Forty scoreless minutes Both teams played the first two periods carefully, with shot-mix distributions weighted toward the slot but rarely the low slot. Through 40 minutes Minnesota had taken 19 shots and 1.22 xG ; Montréal had 21 shots and 1.63 xG . The two largest pre-third-period chances both came in the opening half of the first period: an Abby Hustler wrister at P1 8:25 ( 0.15 xG ) and a Catherine Dubois tip at P1 16:29 ( 0.14 xG ). Both stopped. By second intermission the scoreline looked like a regression to the mean from Game 2's triple-OT epic; what came next looked nothing like the games that preceded it. Morin, twice in four minutes P3 1:13. Maureen Murphy , 0.28 xG, 5v5. A clean entry by Hayley Scamurra gave Murphy the puck at the top of the right circle, and Murphy beat Rooney short-side. The Victoire took the lead they had been chasing for two periods. P3 8:05. Sidney Morin , 0.09 xG, 5v5. Morin stepped into a wrister from the slot off a Britta Curl-Salemme feed. The shot graded as a slightly-below-median goalie-stop. It went. P3 12:01. Sidney Morin , 0.12 xG, 5v4. Morin's second goal in 3 minutes 56 seconds was a more deliberate look: Kelly Pannek 's cycle pass through the slot, Mae Batherson 's shot-fake at the right circle, Morin stepping into the lane from the high slot. The model priced the shot as a median high-PP chance, and the Victoire's penalty kill never recovered the puck after the goal. Two Morin goals on a combined 0.21 xG of recorded shots flipped the game from 1-0 down to a 2-1 lead. The chance battle, almost even Across all 60 minutes Montréal slightly outchanced Minnesota 2.37 xG to 2.10 , but the Frost won the high-danger column 9 to 11 . Montréal generated 5 shots above 0.10 xG and converted the highest-graded one (the Murphy goal). Minnesota generated 6 , 2 of which came in the period that produced three goals. Montréal's loudest non-goal looks: Catherine Dubois 0.14 xG at P1 16:29, Kaitlin Willoughby 0.12 xG at P3 2:15, Maureen Murphy 0.12 xG at P1 16:14. Goaltending, decomposed Maddie Rooney : 29 of 30 on 2.37 xG faced , +1.37 GSAx . The one goal she allowed (Murphy at P3 1:13) graded as a high-quality chance. Across the four-game series Rooney is at +2.09 GSAx on 126 shots for a 0.937 save percentage. Add an extra assist credit to her count tonight: Pannek's empty netter was set up by Rooney's stretch pass off her own glove save. Ann-Renée Desbiens : 28 of 30 on 2.10 xG faced , +0.10 GSAx (EN excluded). The two even-strength goals she allowed (Morin and Morin) graded 0.21 xG combined. Across the four-game series she's at +1.47 GSAx on 125 shots faced and a 0.936 save percentage. This was the first game Desbiens has lost in the series. The game in cumulative xG The scoring timeline P3 1:13 · Maureen Murphy · xG 0.28 · MIN 0, MTL 1. P3 8:05 · Sidney Morin · xG 0.09 · MIN 1, MTL 1. P3 12:01 · Sidney Morin (PP) · xG 0.12 · MIN 2, MTL 1. P3 18:43 · Kelly Pannek (EN) · xG 0.00 · MIN 3, MTL 1 Top scoring chances MIN P3 11:52 · Lee Stecklein slap · xG 0.20. MIN P1 8:25 · Abby Hustler wrist · xG 0.15. MIN P1 5:26 · Élizabeth Giguère wrist · xG 0.14. MIN P3 12:01 · Sidney Morin default · xG 0.12 (goal). MIN P2 17:40 · Kendall Coyne Schofield tip · xG 0.12. MIN P1 5:36 · Taylor Heise wrist · xG 0.11. MTL P3 1:13 · Maureen Murphy default · xG 0.28 (goal). MTL P1 16:29 · Catherine Dubois tip · xG 0.14. MTL P3 2:15 · Kaitlin Willoughby backhand · xG 0.12. MTL P1 16:14 · Maureen Murphy wrist · xG 0.12. MTL P1 7:45 · Natálie Mlýnková wrist · xG 0.10. MTL P2 0:53 · Abby Roque wrist · xG 0.10 What this read isn't Not a Montréal collapse. 2.37 xG on the road in an elimination-adjacent playoff game is a clean process performance. The Victoire generated the highest-graded single look of the night and lost on two recovery wristers behind a goaltender having a strong series.. Not a Desbiens slippage. Two goals under 0.15 xG each on a 2.10 xG faced night is a small negative game on a four-game series that's still strongly positive overall: +1.47 GSAx and 0.936 SV%. The series has not been decided by goaltending.. Not a sustainable Morin breakout. Defenders don't normally score twice on shots that the model says they finish on a fraction of the time. Two Morin goals on 0.21 combined xG is the kind of postseason swing that won't repeat in Game 5.. Not a series swing back to even probability. Both teams have one home win and one road win. Place Bell hosts Game 5; PWHL home win rates this postseason are 71 percent. The simplest base case is a Victoire clincher, but the goaltending duel has been close enough that nothing in this series projects cleanly. 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.. 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, including the series cumulatives across games 309, 311, 312, and 315. Full play-by-play, shift overlays, and the per-player game log for this game are at /games/315 . The series projection, including how Game 4 moves Minnesota's and Montréal's series-WP heading to the decider, lives at /playoffs/bracket .