The Montreal Roses drew the Vancouver Rise 2-2 at Stade Boréale in Laval on Sunday, November 8, 2026, winning the Northern Super League semifinal 5-2 on aggregate to reach the first NSL final in club history. The Canadian Press report carried by TSN confirms the result that ends Vancouver’s reign: the defending Diana B. Matheson Cup champions are out, and Montreal will face AFC Toronto for the trophy.
FINAL: Montreal Roses 2, Vancouver Rise 2 (Montreal wins 5-2 on aggregate)
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How to watch the final: AFC Toronto vs Montreal Roses, Saturday, November 14, 2:00 p.m. ET at TD Place Stadium, Ottawa
TV (Canada): CBC, TSN, RDS (final pre-show 1:30 p.m. ET on TSN)
Stream: NSL YouTube channel and ESPN+ in the United States, per the league’s official broadcast release
Montreal Roses vs Vancouver Rise Result: The Champions Fall Short
Vancouver arrived in Laval needing a four-goal win to advance outright after losing the first leg 3-0 at Swangard Stadium on November 1, and the size of the task showed early. Former Roses forward Latifah Abdu crashed a long shot off the underside of the bar against her old club after eight minutes, the tie’s first what-if moment. Montreal then landed the goal that broke the comeback maths: Noémi Paquin drove a shot past Morgan McAslan in the 39th minute to push the aggregate lead to 4-0.
The Rise answered with the two fastest punches of their season. Jessica De Filippo, the NSL’s Player of the Year and Golden Boot winner, scored two minutes after Paquin, and Abdu put Vancouver ahead on the day in the second minute of first-half injury time, dribbling around Gabrielle Lambert and Anne-Valérie Seto at the near post. At half-time the aggregate stood at 4-2, and Vancouver needed two more goals just to force extra time. They never got one. Tanya Boychuk dribbled through two defenders and set up Lisa Pechersky, who levelled the match at 2-2 in the 78th minute and closed the tie for good.
Pechersky Scores Against Her Old Club In Both Legs
No player carries this semifinal’s story like Pechersky. She won the Diana B. Matheson Cup with Vancouver in 2025 before moving east, scored Montreal’s third goal in the 3-0 first-leg win in Burnaby, where Elyse Bennett opened the scoring in the 12th minute and Canada international Marie-Yasmine Alidou added the second, and then scored the goal that eliminated her former club in the second leg. She entered these playoffs as the only player to have won both the Matheson Cup and the Supporters’ Shield, and she now stands one win from lifting the Cup again, this time against the side she beat in last year’s final.
The first leg set the terms the Rise could never escape. Montreal outshot Vancouver 18-6 at Swangard, put five shots on target and scored from three of them, a 14-point gap between the first and fourth seeds made visible over 90 minutes. Vancouver, who had sacked their head coach late in the regular season and scraped into the fourth playoff spot on the final weekend, needed a perfect night in Laval. Abdu’s bar, De Filippo’s strike and the injury-time lead were their best half-hour of the series, and it still left them two goals short.
A First Montreal Roses NSL Final, With A Double In Reach
Montreal’s run has already rewritten the club’s short history. The Roses won their first trophy, the Supporters’ Shield, by finishing top of the six-team league with 45 points, and they did it after changing coaches in August: Robert Rositoiu departed following a Canadian Championship loss to semi-professional Simcoe County Rovers, and interim head coach Maryse Bard-Martel guided the side through an unbeaten final 10 games of the regular season. A win on Saturday would make Montreal the first club to complete the regular season and playoff double in NSL history, a feat nobody managed in the league’s inaugural season, when Toronto took the Shield and Vancouver took the Cup.
The club has been building toward this stage for a year. Montreal’s first season ended at this same hurdle, a 6-1 aggregate semifinal loss to AFC Toronto, after which Rositoiu said in the Roses’ official match report: “We learn, we grow, and we’ll come back stronger in 2026.” The Roses have done exactly that, and the team that knocked them out is the team waiting in the final.
Toronto Wait In Ottawa, Chasing Their Own Redemption
AFC Toronto booked their place on Saturday with the more ruthless semifinal, beating the Ottawa Rapid 4-0 in the second leg at TD Place to win 8-2 on aggregate. The Canadian Press report of Toronto’s win records another two-goal game for Kaylee Hunter, who also scored twice in the 4-2 first-leg win at York Lions Stadium. It is Toronto’s second straight trip to the final, and the memory driving them is fresh: the league’s official report of the 2025 final shows Vancouver rallying to beat Toronto 2-1 at BMO Field, denying the Shield winners the double on their own turf.
So the second NSL final pairs the 2025 Shield winner with the 2026 Shield winner, a Toronto side playing for redemption and a Montreal side playing for a first double, at a neutral site in Ottawa. The Rise’s defence of the Cup is over after one season, ended by the player who helped them win it. On Saturday at TD Place, one of the two clubs that have topped this league will finally hold both trophies at once, and the other will leave with the same unfinished story Toronto carried out of BMO Field a year ago.
