On 18 March 2026, the Minnesota Frost played host to the Ottawa Charge at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, MN. As the league transitions into the final third of the regular season, this was a game with transient, but significant standings relevance. Minnesota sat three points behind first place Boston with a game in hand. Meanwhile, the Charge also sat one game behind them in the standings–three points out of fourth behind the Toronto Sceptres with two games in hand. For this important game, the Frost turned to Maddie Rooney in goal, while Ottawa went with Gwyneth Philips.

Before the six-thousand-six-hundred-seventy-three home fans were settled into their seats, Taylor Heise gave their team a lead twenty-seven seconds into the game (Opening period quick strikes from the Frost’s top line are becoming a trend). The Frost grabbed the momentum from here, placing two more shots on the net before the Charge committed a Too Many Players infraction at 5:51. The woman advantage was largely ineffective, but Kendall Cooper and Grace Zumwinkle put two quick shots on Philips before it was over. At the 10:40 mark, Alex Vasko successfully placed Ottawa’s first shot on goal. Peyton Hemp and Ronja Savolainen followed, but Rooney denied them. The game transitioned to a brief moment of low event hockey before Zumwinkle extended the Frost lead to two in the fourteenth minute. Eleven seconds later, on a rebound from an Abby Hustler shot, Kelly Pannek brought the score to 3-0. With the ice completely tilted, Carla MacLeod pulled Philips for Kendra Woodland, for Woodland’s first PWHL action. After a brief pushback by the Charge, an Élizabeth Giguère shot was blocked by Emma Greco, springing the Frost back the other way. Kaitlyn O’Donohoe put her first goal of the season past Woodland to bring the score to 4-0. First period shots were in favor of Minnesota 11-5.

Ottawa attempted to start the second period with offensive zone pressure, but after Rebecca Leslie got a shot to Rooney in the first minute, Fanuza Kadirova put the Charge back on the penalty kill at 1:21. Zumwinkle and Sidney Morin had looks with the extra skater, but Woodland kept them out. Despite Ottawa’s Kathryn Reilly going to the penalty box at 5:45 in the period, the first half of the second was dominated by hits and blocked shots as the Frost shifted to a more defensive strategy. In the fourteenth minute, Giguère and the Frost started hemming the Charge down in their zone until Pannek struck for her second goal of the game to extend the lead to five. Minnesota once again led shots 8-4 in the second.

After stifling a quick start attempt from Minnesota in the third, the Charge applied attacking zone pressure for the first time all night. Attempting six shots in the opening six minutes, and getting three to the net. Rooney, and the Minnesota defense were up to the task. Before the Charge could sustain the pressure into the back half of the frame, Savolainen took a holding penalty at 11:30. The Charge would only place three more shots on the Frost net by the end of the frame, unable to break Rooney’s shutout with a meager fifteen shots on goal.

Overall, Minnesota has settled into a system that works. Quick strikes on zone entries from neutral zone faceoffs and leveraging counterattacks from blocking opposing shots from distance work when your team has the skating speed and gap control to do it. Based on the past two seasons, the Frost will run-and-gun like this until the playoffs, and then their third period shelter-in-place strategy will become eighty-percent of the game with the Walter Cup on the line. For Ottawa, there doesn’t feel like there’s one precise solution to their struggles since returning from the break. The starting point has to be discipline. With the league’s second worst PK at 78.5%, they also can’t afford to be the most penalized at 70 times short handed, at a rate of 3.33 times per game. For context, Minnesota is the worst PK team in the league, but they only average two short handed tries per game. It is difficult to build momentum and be kinetic as an offense when you’re down a player for 6:40 minutes every night.