Lou Orlando
NEWARK — Wednesday had all the makings of yet another backbreaking New York Sirens loss — that is, until star winger Sarah Fillier entered the frame. Behind her first career PWHL hat trick, Fillier willed the Sirens to a 4-3 overtime win over the Minnesota Frost at Prudential Center.
Fillier scored twice in 14 seconds to singlehandedly erase a 3-1 third-period deficit. She capped off the natural hat trick at 4:45 of overtime, walking in at 3-on-3 and snapping a wrister that floated over the glove of Frost goalie Maddie Rooney.
The reigning PWHL Rookie of the Year became the 14th player in League history to record a hat trick, and the first to complete one with an overtime winner. She joins teammate Taylor Girard and Minnesota’s Grace Zumwinkle as the only PWHL players with a natural hat trick.
“Just a special player,” Sirens coach Greg Fargo reflected postgame. “Put us on her back there in the third period.”
Fillier delivered New York’s first overtime win of the season. The Sirens were the only team in the League without one in 2025-26.
New York snapped a four-game losing streak (0-0-0-4), earning points for the first time since March 8 — a 6-2 win at home over the Ottawa Charge. The Sirens entered play with just one win in their last 10 games (1-0-2-7). They remain five points out of a playoff spot after the Toronto Sceptres’ regulation win Wednesday, but Fillier’s heroic performance keeps them in the race for now.
“I’m just so happy to get this win for the for that group,” Fillier told sideline reporter Abby Labar postgame. “We deserve it, and hopefully we can get a playoff run going here.”
Sirens backup goalie Callie Shanahan made 22 saves on 25 shots, including a massive right-pad stop in overtime, denying Frost forward Britta Curl-Salemme on a breakaway. The 22-year-old found her bearings after an inauspicious start.
Taylor Heise needed just 16 seconds to silence the Prudential Center crowd, scoring on the game’s first shot. Minnesota caught the Sirens up ice with a quick rush, as Heise took a centering feed from Curl-Salemme and beat Shanahan underneath the glove with a wrister. The 2023 No. 1 overall pick extended her League-leading total to 24 points (12 goals, 12 assists), including six goals in nine games since winning gold at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Sirens rookie Maddi Wheeler got the crowd back on its feet at 5:20 of the first period, punching home her third goal of 2025-26. Clair DeGeorge circled behind the net and connected with a crashing Wheeler in the low slot. Wheeler is tied for fifth among PWHL rookies with 11 points (three goals, eight assists). DeGeorge picked up her first point of the season; she had three assists in 68 career games entering play Wednesday.
New York had a chance to jump in front after Heise took a pair of minor penalties in 2:23 of game time. Instead, a slumping Sirens power play managed one shot on goal across four minutes.
Minnesota retook the lead after a holding penalty on DeGeorge at 2:19 of the second period. Zumwinkle began the rush with a breakout pass to Curl-Salemme and capped it off with a slick backhand finish at 4:07.
But Zumwinkle’s score quickly became a footnote in a wildly hectic middle frame.
At 6:33 of the second, Fargo challenged that Frost forward Elizabeth Giguere was not listed on the official gameday roster. After review, officials ruled in favor of New York and deemed Giguere ineligible to play the remainder of the game.
“We get the lineups before the game, and some of our players noticed that Giguere wasn’t in the lineup,” Fargo explained. “So towards the end of the first period, when we saw her on the ice and realized she was in the game, we had a conversation between periods about it, and just had an opportunity to flag the ref on it.”
“We just made a mistake,” Frost coach Ken Klee said postgame. “Something with the roster where she didn’t get listed, but it was just an honest mistake. Unfortunate for her, because she was playing well.”
Giguere, who spent two seasons with the Sirens from 2024 to 2025, logged 2:45 on Wednesday before she was removed from the game.
The second period concluded with three Frost penalties in the final 3:45, gifting the Sirens a 5-on-3 advantage and — at one point — an extended 6-on-3 edge after a delayed roughing call on Peyton Anderson. Yet Minnesota completely stifled the New York power play, holding the Sirens to one shot on goal throughout the sequence.
The Frost struck again moments after Anderson’s penalty expired in the third period, extending their lead to 3-1 just 40 seconds into the frame. Shanahan crept out past the right post and attempted to freeze a loose puck, but a misplay allowed Frost defender Sidney Morin to scoop it up. Morin wrapped around and set up Zumwinkle, who fired her second goal of the game into an empty net before Shanahan could recover.
A deflated-looking Sirens squad floundered after the Zumwinkle goal, taking three straight penalties in a 6:05 span, including a hooking call on Fillier at 10:13 of the third. But New York killed all three Frost power plays, and Fillier swung the moment almost instantaneously.
Fillier jumped out of the penalty box, intercepted a long pass from Morin, and beat Rooney on the breakaway with a smooth backhand finish at 12:20. She added her second at 12:34, whacking a rebound past Rooney’s right pad after Maja Nylen Persson’s shot ricocheted off Frost forward Vanessa Upson. With two goals in 14 seconds, Fillier owns the fastest two-goal stretch by any player in PWHL history.
A rejuvenated New York team fed off the momentum and carried it into overtime. Fillier took a centering feed from Nylen Persson and fired a shot that passed through the legs of defender Lee Stecklein on its way to the net.
“We’ve been grinding these last couple weeks and haven’t got the results we wanted. Haven’t really played the games we wanted,” said Fillier. “But I thought after that first shift, we didn’t quit.”
Even with a 14-game goal drought from Dec. 3 to March 5, Fillier is tied for fourth in the League with 19 points (eight goals, 11 assists). The 25-year-old has seven goals and eight points in her last six games.
Shanahan earned her first career win in her second career start, getting the nod in net for the first time since Jan. 20.
“Callie was outstanding tonight. Made some big saves at the right moments for us,” Fargo noted. “It’s been fun to watch her development over the course of the year. Every opportunity that she’s had, I think she’s shown some improvement, and that’s what you want in a young player. She’s worked really hard for this opportunity. Great to see her get her first professional win tonight.”
Denisa Křížová logged 10:42 with two hits in her Sirens debut, just two days after departing Minnesota in a trade-deadline swap for defender Jincy Roese. Roese recorded one shot on goal in 19:24 of ice time against New York.
“It’s been a lot in last 48 hours. Definitely not easy to move across the country,” Křížová acknowledged postgame. “But I had a really nice welcome here. I’m really happy we won. This is a great team. I always didn’t like to play against them, because they are pretty hard-working team, so happy to be here.”
Minnesota suffered its third straight loss (0-0-1-2), but still owns a comfortable nine-point edge over the fourth-place Sceptres. Zumwinkle scored two goals in each of her last two outings against the Sirens.
Key takeaways after Sarah Fillier keeps Sirens’ playoff hopes alive
Sirens ‘ride momentum’ of Fillier hat trick
New York was headed towards its 10th loss in 11 games before Fillier intervened in the late stages of the third. Fillier’s three-goal outburst marked a stunning display of sheer will and elite skill — though it seems her teammates have come to expect it.
“She really feeds off her own energy. When she’s going, she’s going,” Wheeler explained postgame. “Sometimes, when somebody gets one under their belt, it’s just a matter of time that all the chances are going to start going in. But burying three — it’s the type of player she is.”
It couldn’t have come at a more important moment. While a loss would not have eliminated the Sirens from playoff contention, the team could not afford to come up empty in the points column again.
“This was, in my opinion, a must-win game for New York,” PWHL analyst Madison Packer said after the 4-3 final. “[Fillier] really did everything that she could to put her team in a position to win tonight. And her teammates followed suit.”
Fillier’s energy could be felt throughout the lineup in the comeback effort.
“I think that we were just able to ride the momentum that her and her line brought in that third period,” Fargo noted. “But it wasn’t just one player. Filly had a great game, but this was just a lot of really solid efforts up and down the lineup — of us doing things the right way for a good amount of the game.”
Nylen Persson and Casey O’Brien both recorded two points in the win, assisting on Fillier’s final two goals. O’Brien ranks seventh League-wide with 18 points (six goals, 12 assists), pacing all PWHL rookies in scoring.
The Sirens will need Fillier to maintain this impressive scoring stretch, especially with the team’s leading-scorer, Kristyna Kaltounkova, joining Girard on long-term injured reserve (LTIR).
Sirens answer Greg Fargo’s call for stronger resolve
After the Sirens surrendered three unanswered third-period goals Saturday in a 3-1 loss to the Montreal Victoire, Fargo urged his group to be more resilient.
“When we have a tough play or something that ends up in the back of your net, we’ve got to find a way to respond in those moments a little bit better,” Fargo asserted.
New York delivered on Wednesday.
Despite a gut-punch goal by Heise just 16 seconds in and a deflating tally by Zumwinkle in the third, the Sirens rallied to defeat a talented Frost squad.
“I don’t think it was just like the final minutes and overtime,” said Fargo. “What I liked about our group tonight — [the Frost] score on the first shift of the game, we responded really well. Tough start to the third period, we go down again, and our group responded really well.”
That response can be hard to muster in the midst of a lengthy losing skid, but New York found an answer on home ice.
“I think especially like in this losing skid, we’ve kind of been up and down and haven’t played a full 60 minutes, but I think today we actually played a full 60,” Wheeler said. “I think sometimes we let emotions run high, but today was the first time in a while that we’ve really handled it and stayed calm and actually had belief in ourselves to come back. And I think that showed up on the ice.”
With six games remaining in the regular season, the Sirens still have a path to the playoffs — though they can’t afford any more stumbles the rest of the way.
“We’re young. We know that. We don’t shy away from it. We don’t have a ton of experience, but we’re hungry,” Fillier stated. “We want to make the playoffs so bad.”
Sirens identify power play as ‘number one area to grow’
The Sirens can’t seem to find any consistency with their power play. New York is 0-for-12 across its last four games, and Wednesday marked one of its worst efforts yet.
Despite extended stretches at both 5-on-3 and 6-on-3, the Sirens managed just two shots on five power plays.
“We’re going to dive into that,” Fargo said postgame. “I think coming away, that’s probably the number one takeaway or area to grow.”
New York ranks fifth in the League with a 13.8 power-play percentage, but their streaks of success have been offset by prolonged droughts.
“I think we’ve got to find a way to be more threatening immediately and be ready to fire,” Fargo continued. “A lot of perimeter play on that 5-on-3 that we’ve got to find an answer to.”
Sirens set sights on MSG game
The next time the Sirens hit the ice, it’ll be in the heart of New York City — in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd.
The Sirens and Seattle Torrent square off Saturday, as New York looks to mount an ascent up the PWHL standings. It’s also an opportunity to build upon Wednesday’s exhilarating victory.
“You use the crowd to your advantage. You use the fans, use the venue,” said Wheeler. “It’s all about momentum. And I think once you get it in the right direction, you want to keep it going.”
Saturday’s MSG game is an important PWHL milestone, but the Sirens’ chief focus is winning back-to-back games for the first time since Jan. 6.
“It’s going to be really special for us,” Fillier said. “But we’re trying to get any win we can at this point. And what better stakes than MSG?”
