You’d be hard-pressed to find a more ideal start to the season for a goalie.
Through her first five NCAA games, Ève Gascon has been close to perfect for Minnesota Duluth, having more shutouts thus far than goals allowed.
She’s faced 110 shots, stopped 108 of them, and has an NCAA-best four shutouts, 0.40 goals-against average, and .982 save percentage.
The only thing stopping her right now from adding to those NCAA totals is the fact that she was chosen as one of the three goalies for the Canadian National team at the upcoming IIHF Women’s World Championships, which will run Nov. 6-16 in Denmark.
An Elite Prospects ambassador and one of the top prospects for the 2027 PWHL Draft, Gascon is going to be joining us monthly at EP for an inside look at the story of the draft year through the eyes of a top prospect.
This is her first-person perspective, as told through interviews with Elite Prospects senior writer, Sean Shapiro.
[This season has] been fun so far. We’ve got a lot of new people on the team at Duluth, 11 or 10 new players, so it’s been fun to get started. We faced some adversity early against Vermont: we lost the first game, which I was the backup, and then we won in overtime the next night 3-2, so I think it’s good for the team to go through that early in the season rather than later in the season.
The overtime is always stressful as a goalie, I won’t lie. I love overtime, but it’s always grade-A chances that the teams get, and we had more pressure going into that game, not wanting to get swept. You think about making the saves at the right time, and fortunately I didn’t have to make any actually; we scored before they had a shot in overtime, but I think the fact we practice 3-on-3 more now [means] that we were really prepped better.
Those games are really important for us, tough out-of-conference games, so it was hard for us to lose one to them, but I really think it’s going to be best for us moving forward. For me personally, it’s really good for me to win those games for the team early and get some confidence going into camp.
Coming into this season, I really felt ready. I was on the ice two to three times per week. I personally like to have some days off from the ice in the summer because of how often we are on the ice in the season, so it helps you be ready. I really worked on specific things with my goalie coach, and I felt more ready for this season than I was the year before, ready to be more consistent and to really build on that.
With Duluth, I’m part of the leadership team this year [as an assistant captain], it means a lot. With the Bulldogs, we’ve had so many great leaders throughout my years here, so to be one now, in my last season, it’s an honour, and I think as a goalie you bring something a little different. We see the game differently than the players, so it adds a bit of a new perspective to games. So I’ve been working to bring the younger players under my wing, especially with our other goalie, Marilou Grenier, coming in, and with her being from Québec, we have this French connection where we can speak in our native language, and I can kind of help talk about things I struggled with as a freshman on and off the ice.
I think I can help our team be better this year, help us play Bulldog hockey all season, which really means to have good habits and consistency in practice every day. We want to put ourselves in a better position to go to the Frozen Four. Our goal is to compete against every team and be able to win against the best in the country. Playing as a Bulldog is a mentality for us – it’s about grit and accountability. It’s not about making mistakes, but how you recover from them.
It’s a really good start for me, and I’m focused here, and it gives me some mixed feelings when I think about the PWHL and what this season means. I’m excited about that opportunity and what the PWHL and the draft mean in the future, but I don’t want to miss or take anything for granted about my last year in college.
I also really wanted to prove myself to Hockey Canada in the camp and make the national team for world championships. I wanted to prove to them that I can make the team and represent my country.
In that camp, it’s always so fun to be around the players, because since I’m still playing in college, I don’t get to be around some of the players very often who are in the PWHL. You learn from them and from competing with them, and it makes me better, so the camps are always fun.
Every time I go to camps, I have kind of funny moments where you think about being there. I remember when I was 14-years-old playing bantam in Québec. We had a rough season that year, and before one of my games, Ann-Renée Desbiens called me and wished me luck, so now, being on the same ice as her and seeing her game up close, it’s always fun to learn from her.
It’s not always weird, but I feel like she’s one of my idols and I’ve been looking up to her for so long, so it’s kind of odd or funny competing with her in camp. For me, I’m trying to reach the level she’s at and to be as kind and as helpful as she’s been to me. She always takes the time to talk or answer a question. It’s fun to see her and learn from her, and now [to] be her teammate at Worlds.