Les Canadiennes offence breaks out

Ann-Sophie Bettez, Caroline Ouellette and Marie-Philip Poulin all had five point nights as Les Canadiennes defeated the Boston Blades 14-0 at the Etienne-Desmarteau Arena on Saturday evening.

The game broke open in the third period when Montreal scored four goals within the first 2:03 of the final frame. The game was 5-0 after two periods.

"I think unfortunately in the third the first few minutes kind of got them and it changed the intensity of the game a little bit but the first two periods they battled really hard," said Canadiennes defender Julie Chu, who had a goal and two assists.

Caroline Ouellette opened the scoring at 5:04 of the opening period when a passing play between her and Noémie Marin ended with the puck trickling by Boston goaltender Geneviève Lacasse. Montreal would make it 2-0 when Emilie Bocchia banked one in from behind the goal line and Poulin made it 3-0 when she fired a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle on the power play.

In the second period, Ouellette scored her second when she picked up a rebound in the slot and

Bettez scored an unassisted goal to make it 5-0 before the second period ended.

Cathy Chartrand started the third period barrage. Bettez scored two in the period to finish off the hat trick. The other goals in the period were scored by Leslie Oles, Emmanuelle Blais, Chu, Kim Deschênes and two from Marin.

After the eighth goal, Lacasse made way for backup goaltender Amanda Cariddi.

Although Boston only had nine shots on Charline Labonté, Labonté needed to come up big as most of the Boston shots were on strong scoring chances. Grace Murphy had a great chance alone in front after intercepting a pass and Boston's leading scorer Erin Kickham had a chance off of a 3 on 1 but each time Labonté made the save.

"For us the most important thing is to make sure we still have good habits," said Chu about playing in a game where the score is lopsided. "It’s easy to get individual. It’s easy to do things that we typically wouldn’t do. And that was something that we wanted to make sure we were continually checking ourselves on the bench. If someone was doing something outside of what we usually would, we needed to bring each other back and it’s important at this point of the season."

Les Canadiennes will finish off their regular season today at 1:30 p.m. against the Blades. They start their playoff series against the Toronto Furies on Friday at 6:45 p.m. at the Etienne-Desmarteau Arena. It is a best-of-three semi-final with all three games held in Montreal.