2-1: Final (MTL). 1.23-1.63: xG (MTL-MIN). Series 3-2 MTL: Semifinal. MTL vs OTT: Walter Cup Final Game 5 of the Montréal-Minnesota semifinal was the lowest-event game of the series, and it ended on the kind of play Montréal has built two seasons of identity around: Marie-Philip Poulin on the power play, 37 seconds into Minnesota's first minor of the third period, wrist shot from the bumper, in. The model priced the look at just 0.06 xG ; Poulin found a release lane Rooney couldn't track through traffic. Montréal shot just 17 times in 60 minutes on 1.23 total xG and beat a Frost side that outshot them by 9 and outchanced them by +0.40 . The Victoire advance to the Walter Cup Final to play an Ottawa team that won its semifinal in four games. Dubois off the Poulin saucer P1 12:18. Catherine Dubois , 0.05 xG, 5v5, assisted by Marie-Philip Poulin . A Poulin saucer over a stick at the blue line found Dubois entering the zone with speed. A slap from the top of the right circle through a Lina Ljungblom screen at the high slot. The model rates the shot as well below the median goalie-stop, and that flagged the rest of the first-period plot: a Place Bell home crowd in crescendo and a Minnesota team that had to come back from a deficit with most of regulation still to play. Cogan answers off Hustler P2 8:15. Samantha Cogan , 0.15 xG, 5v5, assisted by Abby Hustler and Britta Curl-Salemme . An Abby Hustler centring feed from the left half-wall hit Cogan in the slot, tipped through Desbiens's pads. The model rated the look as the highest-quality Minnesota chance of the game, and the recovery off Kendall Coyne Schofield 's shift earlier in the period set up the screen the Frost needed. The game was 1-1 heading to the second intermission. Poulin on the first PP of the third P3 3:06. Marie-Philip Poulin , 0.06 xG, 5v4, assisted by Erin Ambrose and Nicole Gosling . Élizabeth Giguère took a hooking minor at P3 2:29 . On the power play, Gosling fed Ambrose at the right point; Ambrose held the puck just long enough for Poulin to slip into the bumper from below the dot. Wrist shot through traffic, in. The model rated the shot as a below-median PP look on quality, but 37 seconds into Minnesota's first power-play kill of the third period Montréal was back ahead and the Place Bell bench responded the way a home team does at the start of a series decider. The last shifts, no Frost answer After the Poulin go-ahead, Minnesota had the rest of regulation to find an equalizer. Lee Stecklein 's P3 5:29 wrister ( 0.11 xG ) was the Frost's loudest answer. In the final five minutes Minnesota generated 0 recorded shots to Montréal's 1 ; the Frost's last shot of the season came at P3 11:58 (8:02 of regulation remaining). Rooney pulled with under two minutes left and the Frost never registered a shot in the empty-net push. Desbiens closed the game without facing a final-minute chance above the model's high-danger threshold. The buzzer ended Minnesota's season and gave Montréal its first Walter Cup Final berth in franchise history. Goaltending, decomposed Ann-Renée Desbiens : 25 of 26 on 1.63 xG faced , +0.63 GSAx . The Cogan goal graded as a high-quality chance ( 0.15 xG recovery tip); the rest of her workload was medium-and-down. Across the five-game series Desbiens finished at +2.11 GSAx on 151 shots faced for a 0.940 SV% . She gets the Walter Cup Final against an Ottawa team that just produced its own outlier goaltending series. Maddie Rooney : 15 of 17 on 1.23 xG faced , -0.77 GSAx . The two goals she allowed came on shots worth a combined 0.10 xG . Five-game series GSAx: +1.31 on 143 shots faced , 0.930 SV% . Her season ended on two recovery wristers neither the model nor a clean read could have called saves. The game in cumulative xG The scoring timeline P1 12:18 · Catherine Dubois · xG 0.05 · MTL 1, MIN 0. P2 8:15 · Samantha Cogan · xG 0.15 · MTL 1, MIN 1. P3 3:06 · Marie-Philip Poulin (PP) · xG 0.06 · MTL 2, MIN 1 Top scoring chances MTL P2 2:21 · Maureen Murphy snap · xG 0.16. MTL P2 1:32 · Maureen Murphy snap · xG 0.14. MTL P1 18:02 · Lina Ljungblom snap · xG 0.12. MTL P2 10:38 · Skylar Irving snap · xG 0.12. MTL P2 4:10 · Laura Stacey wrist · xG 0.10. MTL P3 16:45 · Hayley Scamurra snap · xG 0.10. MIN P1 17:45 · Kendall Coyne Schofield wrist · xG 0.22. MIN P1 0:43 · Klára Hymlárová snap · xG 0.18. MIN P2 8:15 · Samantha Cogan tip · xG 0.15 (goal). MIN P3 5:29 · Lee Stecklein wrist · xG 0.11. MIN P1 19:58 · Kendall Coyne Schofield wrist · xG 0.11. MIN P1 17:45 · Kendall Coyne Schofield wrist · xG 0.10 What this read isn't Not a Minnesota collapse. The Frost generated 1.63 xG on the road in an elimination game and lost it on two wristers worth a combined 0.10 xG. Across the five games they ran 11.11 xG to Montréal's 11.31 and outshot the Victoire by 9 shots.. Not a Rooney indictment. +1.31 GSAx across a five-game playoff series on 143 shots faced and a 0.930 SV% is a strong postseason. The two goals she allowed tonight were neither read failures nor positional errors.. Not a sustainable Poulin process line. Poulin's series-winner was a 0.06 xG wrister; she scored 2 times across the five games on a combined 0.13 xG of recorded shots. The asymmetry won't repeat for the Walter Cup Final unless Ottawa gives Montréal even less than Minnesota did.. Not a Walter Cup Final preview yet. Both finalists rode outlier goaltenders into the final: Desbiens at +2.11 GSAx across the semifinal, Philips at a similar mark across hers. The team whose goaltender doesn't come back to earth, wins. 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, 315, and 316. Full play-by-play, shift overlays, and the per-player game log for this game are at /games/316 . The updated Walter Cup Final bracket and the first Ottawa-Montréal series projection live at /playoffs/bracket .