Les Canadiennes close out the regular season with 10-1 win over the Blades

With the CWHL Clarkson Cup playoffs just days away, Les Canadiennes to a 10-1 over the Boston Blades.

"It's tricky because at first we didn't really want to run up the score," said Les Canadiennes forward Jordanna Peroff. "But at the same time we have to prepare and go into next week with momentum so we made the decision to think about ourselves and we know what our goal is so we had to go for that."

Caroline Ouellette opened the scoring for Les Canadiennes early, beating Geneviève Lacasse with wrist shot that went into the top corner. A few minutes later, Emmanuelle Blais and Carly Hill set up Jordanna Peroff for her third of the season.

It was a good weekend for the Montreal third line of Peroff, Blais and Leslie Oles. They had been getting more and more scoring chances lately but this weekend was the first where they managed to make the most of them.

"For the last few months we've been producing a lot of good plays but not really producing the points on the scoreboard and I think this weekend was a good confidence boost for us," Peroff said.

Just over two minutes after Peroff put Montreal up 2-0, Alyssa Sherrard would find the back of the net tipping a shot from Karell Emard scoring not just her first of the season, but her first ever goal in the CWHL.

Kristina Brown took a two minute penalty for body checking, giving Monteal their second powerplay opportunity of the game. Ann-Sophie Bettez would capitalize on the chance, with assists going to Marie-Philip Poulin and Lauriane Rougeau.

Emard was the next Canadienne to find her way onto the scoresheet, scoring her seventh of the season with just over two minutes remaining. With 35 seconds remaining in the first period Kim Deschênes scored the first of her three goals giving Montreal a 6-0 lead after 20.

The Blades managed to stave off much of Les Canadiennes' offence in the second period, with only Poulin managing to beat Lacasse, despite the fact that Montreal outshot Boston 15-5 in the second.

The most exciting moment of the game came a little more than halfway through the third period when Megan Myers did something no Blades player had been able to do all season: score against Montreal. Grace Murphy fed Myers the puck, as she beat Charline Labonté on a breakaway, putting Boston on the board. She was mauled by her teammates on the ice, and she lept happily into the bench to celebrate with the rest of the Blades.

It was a nice moment and the goal even got some cheers from Montreal fans in addition to the small section of Boston supporters who made the trip.

After that goal, Deschênes would score two more to complete the hat trick and Noémie Marin also added a marker for Montreal.

With the regular season in the books, it's onward and upward to the playoffs. Les Canadiennes have their sights set on the fourth place Toronto Furies, who will be at the Etienne-Desmarteau arena in Montreal on Friday night for game one.

Peroff, who les Canadiennes acquired from the Toronto Furies in the off-season, is looking forward to squaring off against her former team in the semifinals.

"I'm kind of used to it at this point," she said. "When I first went to Toronto I was facing a lot of my old teammates on Montreal from McGill anyways. It's weird but it's fun to play against them. They're good competition."

Game two will be played on Saturday afternoon in Brossard, and (if necessary) game three will be at Etienne-Desmarteau on Sunday afternoon. Tickets are available here.

It's worth noting that home-ice advantage in the other semifinal matchup came down to the final regular season game between the Brampton Thunder and the Calgary Inferno, with Calgary coming out on top with a come-from-behind 5-4 win. Calgary was trailing 3-0 after less than 15 minutes but stormed back to take a 4-3 lead which Brampton then tied up but Meghan Mikkelson-Reid scored the winning goal.

The Inferno will host that semifinal matchup this weekend as well. The winners of the Montreal-Toronto series and the Calgary-Brampton series will compete for the Clarkson Cup at 4:00 PM on Sunday, March 13th at the Canadian Tire Centre. Tickets for the championship are available here.