Buzzapp Master 
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“Maybe there were some jokes about trying to get it done in less than four,” Clark added of the talk in the Ottawa dressing room heading into the sudden death. “We were just trying to stick to our game plan, but obviously it’s a relief that we get to go to bed a lot earlier than last time.”
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Speaking of time, a win at TD Place in Game 2 on Thursday would leave the Charge one shy of capturing the second Walter Cup and first for a franchise located above the 49th parallel.
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The Ottawa Charge celebration begins as Minnesota goalie Nicole Hensley leaves her goal crease after giving up an overtime goal to Emily Clark on Tuesday night. Now it’s on to Game 2 on Thursday night in Ottawa. Photo by Tony Caldwell /PostmediaArticle content
Not to make it an us versus the U.S. thing, but the most recent time Ottawa won a professional title in a series against an American squad was 1995, when the now-defunct Lynx won the International League baseball championship against the Norfolk Tides.
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Before that, it was 1927, when the Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup in a showdown with the Boston Bruins.
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A full 98 years later, people are calling a pro franchise in the capital “Canada’s Team.”
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About time.
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“There’s no talk of it internally,” Charge coach Carla MacLeod said when asked about that label. “Every team in this league is trying to get into the Walter Cup finals, and the fact that we are the first Canadian team, it’s a fun trivia, but, at the end of the day, it doesn’t change anything about who we are and what we’ve been doing.”
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That they were doing it on Tuesday in front of just 6,184 fans raised eyebrows.
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It’s not a low crowd total by PWHL standards — the defending champion Frost had just 3,000 witness its opening-round clincher at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul last week — but, for a game of this magnitude, should TD Place not have been full?
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Emily Clark acknowledges the fans after being named the first star of Game 1 on Tuesday night at TD Place. Attendance for the first game of the final was only 6,184, which was not terrible, but not close to a sellout. Photo by Troy Parla /Getty ImagesArticle content
Never mind that the arena has a roving number when capacity is announced, but this is even more bewildering:
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Just 31 hours before game time, the Ticketmaster website showed there were only 651 tickets available for Game 1, and yet attendance was announced on Tuesday was 1,827 fewer than the crowd at last Friday’s elimination of the Victoire.
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With ticket prices of $130 between the blue lines and $150 for seats in two end sections, that should include one of those novel caps Clark wears, will Thursday’s game be the sellout it should be, or will the numbers drop even lower?
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“If you look at any league in any of the two countries here in North America, playoff pricing increases,” Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice-president of business ops, said before Tuesday’s opening faceoff. “It’s the normal course of business. The games have more value. In Ottawa, three of the five ticket prices were under $100, so I don’t think we’re asking for unreasonable prices.
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“If we didn’t have some affordability, like a $65 ticket or something like that, I would sit here and agree with you (that prices are too expensive). But I think we’re affordable and do have prices that would meet anybody wanting to come to a game. I would take our ticket prices and put them up against any other league in North America, both men’s and women’s.”
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