Road fatigue setting in for Montreal Force, who hope to have a home next season

Montreal Force coach Peter Smith has one item on his wish list for next season.

“We need home ice,” Smith said Monday after Montreal’s first professional women’s hockey team suffered a 3-2 “home” loss to the Minnesota Whitecaps at the Arena de la Rivière-du-Nord in St-Jérôme.

The Force used the Verdun Auditorium as its training base for its inaugural season in the Premier Hockey Federation, but was unable to secure a permanent site for home games. After playing its season opener in Verdun, the Force became the nomads of the PHF, with 11 of its 12 “home” games spread across the province.

“We had a late start and we knew this was going to be difficult, but we can’t go another season playing 23 of our 24 games on the road,” Smith said. “The good thing is we were able to promote the women’s game in different markets. We had 1,300-1,400 fans here yesterday.”

There were no more than 300 fans Monday, which wasn’t a surprise because it was a weekday and the game wasn’t on the original schedule. The Force and the Whitecaps were supposed to play Saturday and Sunday, but the games were pushed back a day because bad weather forced the cancellation of the Whitecaps flight to Montreal Friday.

The delay didn’t seem to affect the Whitecaps, because they won the opening game in the two-game series 4-1.

The losses dealt a serious blow to the Force’s hopes of earning a playoff spot. The Force is 10 points behind the fourth-place Connecticut Whale with six games remaining in the regular season.

“We’re working hard, the effort is there, but we can’t get the puck to go into the net,” said Smith, whose team went 0-for-5 on the power play on Monday “We have a young team. I think we have eight first-year pros. Scoring two goals today was a step forward because we’ve been scoring only one goal in most of our recent games.

Captain Ann-Sophie Bettez, the most experienced player on the team, scored the first Force goal Monday but her game — and possibly her season — ended in the final minute when she collided with a Minnesota player and suffered what appeared to be a knee injury. Alexandra Labelle scored midway through the third period to cut Minnesota’s lead to one goal.

Brittyn Fleming, Ashleigh Brykaliuk and Czech Olympian Denisa Krizova scored for Minnesota.

Amanda Leveille, a Brossard native who was part of four NCAA championship teams at the University of Minnesota, was the winning goaltender in both games. Leveille, who is the league’s all-time leader in wins, made 29 saves Sunday and 27 Monday.

Catherine Daoust opened the scoring for the Force Sunday, but Jonna Albers and Liz Schepers scored power-play goals to give Minnesota the lead. Sidney Morin and Fleming rounded out the scoring.

phickey@postmedia.com

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