MONTREAL — Prior to the game, in warmups, the Bell Centre was perhaps a quarter full, if that.
PWHL Montreal and PWHL Toronto were doing their twirls around the ice, as they always do, except this time they were doing it at the Bell Centre, knowing a capacity crowd of 21,105 — a new world record for a women’s hockey game — would be filing in eventually.
Except they weren’t there yet.
There were people lined around the glass for warmups holding signs supporting their favourite players, just like they are for Montreal Canadiens games, and the environment — the stage — was definitely different for these players.
But the building was still mostly empty, and still, for Marie-Philip Poulin, a living legend, this was a lot to take in.
She skated over to the bench for an interview with the arena hostess that would go live in the building, and the first question was about how she felt in this moment, in this environment, on this stage, about to play a professional hockey game in her native Quebec in front of this many people.
In front of this many of her people.
Poulin paused and had to compose herself before answering, and that pause said so much about the work she has put in to create what was about to happen at the Bell Centre, about the women who came before her who never…
