The Montreal Roses carry a 3-0 aggregate lead into the second leg of their Northern Super League semifinal against the Vancouver Rise on Sunday, November 8 at Stade Boreale in Laval. The Montreal Roses Vancouver Rise November 8 return decides a place in the NSL Final, and Montreal needs only to protect the widest margin either semifinal produced in the first legs.
The first leg, played Sunday, November 1 at Swangard Stadium in Burnaby, was one way traffic. Elyse Bennett opened the scoring in the 12th minute, Marie-Yasmine Alidou doubled the lead nineteen minutes later, and substitute Lisa Pechersky, playing against her former club, made it 3-0 in the 73rd minute. Montreal outshot Vancouver 18-6, and the Rise, the defending champions playing at home, did not register a single shot on target in ninety minutes.
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Montreal Roses Vancouver Rise November 8 starts at 3-0
The size of the task in front of Vancouver deserves plain numbers. The Rise must score at least three times in Laval just to level the tie, against the league’s Supporters Shield winners, on the ground where Montreal closed the regular season by beating Ottawa 1-0 to lift the Shield. Vancouver’s one reliable route to goals all season, Golden Boot winner Jessica De Filippo, was held off the scoresheet entirely in the first leg, while Montreal spread its three goals across a starter, a Canada international in Alidou, who also assisted the opener, and a bench player in Pechersky.
Vancouver interim head coach Iain Derbyshire did not hide from the performance, but he did contest the margin, and his reading frames the second leg’s one honest hope.
They punished us on three mistakes.
Derbyshire also called the scoreline a bit flattering. Both things can be true, and both point the same way: Vancouver’s case in Laval rests on the first leg being an aberration rather than a measurement. The problem is the season long evidence. Montreal finished first with 45 points from a 12-9-4 record, took five of the ten meetings between these clubs across two seasons, and arrives at the second leg unbeaten in eleven matches.
The double is Montreal’s to close
What Montreal is actually playing for on Sunday is larger than a final place. The Roses are chasing the first double in the league’s young history, the Supporters Shield and the Diana B. Matheson Cup in the same season, and they are chasing it as the top seed with a three goal cushion and a home crowd. Bennett, who scored the opener and set up the third goal in Burnaby, and Alidou, who assisted the first and scored the second, give Montreal two separate in form finishers, which matters in a leg where Vancouver must chase the game and leave space behind.
Vancouver’s counter case is real but narrow. The Rise are the defending Diana B. Matheson Cup champions, they scored 47 goals this season, second most in the league, and a team with De Filippo and Latifah Abdu up front can score in bunches when a game opens up. An early Vancouver goal changes the temperature of the entire afternoon. The likelier script, on the evidence of the first leg and the season, is Montreal managing the tie the way Shield winners manage things, in control of the ball, the territory and the clock.
The final waits at TD Place
The winner of this tie advances to the NSL Final on Saturday, November 14 at TD Place in Ottawa, against the winner of the other semifinal, where AFC Toronto leads Ottawa Rapid 4-2 after its first leg. A Montreal win or draw on Sunday sets up a final between the Shield winners and whichever side survives the Ontario tie, and would put the league’s two best regular season stories one match apart with the cup between them.
Kickoff in Laval is 2 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern. Three goals is not a lead teams protect by accident at this level, and Montreal has spent a full season proving it protects leads by design. Vancouver needs the game of its season. Montreal needs only to be itself for ninety more minutes.
The semifinal weekend closes in the right order. AFC Toronto defends its own lead at Ottawa on Saturday, November 7, and Montreal finishes the set on Sunday, which means the two finalists for the November 14 championship match at TD Place will be known within roughly twenty four hours of each other. For a league in just its second season, a final four featuring the Shield winners, the defending champions and two sides carrying multi goal storylines into their second legs is exactly the playoff picture the format was built to produce. Sunday in Laval is the last piece of it.
