Minnesota Frost Have Experience Heading Into 2026 Postseason – The Hockey Writers – Minnesota Frost

The Minnesota Frost made their way into the postseason for the third consecutive season, but this time they clinched a spot without having to wait for another team to lose or snuck their way in at the last second. They secured their spot in the postseason with five games to go, and that gave them time to fine-tune things in their game that needed work. 

With time to relax a little without having to worry about a spot in the postseason, the Frost started those games off with a win, but then went on to lose the next four and will head into the playoffs on a loss. Of course, there are arguments on both sides of playing as hard as possible all the way to the end, or letting up a little since they had a spot. In this article, we’ll preview their series against the Montréal Victoire, which starts on the road, on Saturday afternoon, May 2. 

Victoire Pick Frost 

For the second time out of the past three seasons, the Frost were picked by the number one seed. The PWHL allows the top seed to pick who they want their semi-finals playoff opponent to be, and for the Victoire, that was the Frost, who are the third seed, instead of the Ottawa Charge, who sit in fourth, and the Boston Fleet rounds out the pack in second place. 

The Victoire likely chose the Frost because they had a great regular season series against them, they won all four meetings, and they likely didn’t want to face the Charge, who eliminated the Victoire in the 2025 postseason. The first two match-ups this season between the Frost and Victoire were one-goal games, but then the Victoire shut them out in the final two. 

The Frost have a mighty hill to climb, but they have a lot of experience and have done this before. However, they’ll have to once again find another level to their game if they want to get past the Victoire. 

Frost Have to Rely on Experience 

While the Victoire have had a very strong season, the Frost were in the top four pretty much the entire season as well. They do have to improve some areas of their game if they want to win, but they’ve done this in the past and have been in worse situations. In the first two seasons, no one believed the Frost would win the entire thing, yet they did. 

After the expansion draft, it was expected the Frost would drop off a bit, but they held strong as they still had most of their main players. Those players were key in getting them through the postseason. They’ve had all the odds against them, and while they aren’t stacked up against them as much this season, they still aren’t the favorite. 

“I think it’s taking it one game at a time, I think it’s not looking at it as a five-game series, looking at it as a one-game series, one game, one period, one shift at a time and know that there’s going to be highs and lows, there’s going to be ebs and flows, there’s going to be mistakes, there’s going to be great moments and just making sure that we stick together through all the moments that we’re going to experience,” said Kendall Coyne-Schofield after practice the day before heading on the road for Game 1. 

Frost Have Areas to Focus On 

The Frost scored a lot of goals this season, and although a lot of them were against other teams, they know they have the ability to score. They also had a strong power play, the best in the league, despite it feeling like they struggled quite a bit. However, the area they have to work on is their penalty kill, which was dead last in the league, and they’ll be facing the league’s best. 

Going in, the Frost had time to see what they are strong in and what they’re not compared to the last two seasons, where they were fighting for their playoff lives until the very end. Of course, they knew their strengths and weaknesses, but they didn’t get to experiment with them like they could this season.

“The biggest key is they’re very strong defensively, so I think we’re going to have to get in front of Ann-Renée (Desbiens) and try to best her offensively,” said Grace Zumwinkle after practice the day prior to heading out for their road trip to Montréal. 

“You know I think it’s going to have to be putting pucks in the net, I think like you look at the series that we had against them in the regular season, and obviously we know Ann-Renée (Desbiens) is a great goaltender and so it’s going to be getting pucks behind her, getting bodies in front and really working hard in that area,” said Coyne-Schofield after practice when asked about the biggest area of improvement heading into the postseason. 

Frost Can Win 

The Frost have proven in the past that they can never be counted out. They do well when under pressure and their backs are against the wall. They also have shown they aren’t a team that gets flustered when things don’t go their way. Hopefully, they can put these recent losses behind them and start fresh with a big Game 1 win.