Calm in the crease: Inside Gwyneth Philips' ascension to the Ottawa Charge's starting job

A few days after more than 11,000 fans of the opposing team chanted her name inside Minnesota's Xcel Energy Center, Gwyneth Philips was alone with her thoughts in the forest.

The rookie goaltender led her Ottawa Charge to the PWHL Finals against the Minnesota Frost. Ottawa came up short in four games against the reigning Walter Cup champions.

None of the blame could be placed on Philips' shoulders. The 25-year-old, who was thrust into the role of starter after an injury to Emerance Maschmeyer earlier in the spring, led all goaltenders with a 1.23 goals against average. She didn't lose a game in regulation over two playoff rounds.

The performance earned Philips the Ilana Kloss Playoff MVP Award, even though her team lost. It ultimately earned her Ottawa's starting job, as the team chose to protect her over Maschmeyer in the expansion draft.

But days after her first PWHL season ended, Philips was alone in a camper, a TAXA TigerMoth she'd bought from a guy in Florida over Facebook Marketplace two months earlier. Her mom and aunt helped facilitate payment while Philips was in another country, and her dad drove it to their home in Ohio.

"It's futuristic and so simple," she said. "Everything's well thought out. The thing's awesome."

It was the first big purchase she'd ever registered in her name.

She drove the camper through Utah's Zion National Park, endured the dry heat of Death Valley and drove through California, all the way up to Redwood National Park near the Oregon border.

She chronicled some of the trip on TikTok, including her discovery on night one: she'd forgotten to pack a pillow.

"It was kind of healing, I guess," Philips told CBC Sports at the PWHL Awards, a few days after she returned from her solo camping journey.

"I love to be outside and camping and honestly, I really like to drive. The past few months of this season, there was a hard corner for me. Things ramped up really quick for me personally and I think I needed a little bit of a break, mentally and physically."

Solo camping through the desert might not be how every hockey player likes to decompress after a long season. But Philips isn't like every other hockey player.

You won't find Philips watching hockey games at night after practice. (If she watches TV at all, she prefers "brain rot.") She's found a balance between the rink and life outside of it, giving her a calmness that seems to spread to the players in front of her.

But when she's in the rink, she wants to stop the puck more than anything else.

"Her personality just compliments her competitiveness because as much as she's a happy go lucky type of person, she loves to win," Ottawa Charge goaltending coach Pierre Groulx said. "She loves to compete."

Growing up in a small city in Ohio, sports weren't on the Philips' TV at home.

Their town, Athens, was home to Ohio University, which had a hockey team. That led Philips' brother to hockey, and she wanted to be just like him. They played for the same teams growing up and eventually went to the same prep school.

Philips was playing for a team in Pittsburgh when Northeastern University's head coach, Dave Flint, first saw her play at a national Under-14 tournament.

The teenager had only given up a couple of goals throughout the tournament, and carried her team to the national championship game, Flint remembered.

"It was her athleticism and the effortlessness of moving around the net," he said.

"At that age, usually kids don't have command of their body that well. They're still trying to figure things out. But she was so smooth and she just made everything look easy."

Her team lost that tournament, but Flint kept following Philips, and eventually, recruited her to come to Boston to play for the Huskies.

But she wasn't guaranteed to be the team's starter out of the gate. She would be the number two behind a talented goaltender named Aerin Frankel.

Philips spent the first three years of her college career behind Frankel, who's now the starter with the Boston Fleet. They pushed each other, and Philips tried to learn from the ultra-competitive Frankel.

She could have gone to another school, where she'd be a guaranteed starter. But Philips stayed put, seeing the value in the engineering degree she was earning at Northeastern.

By the time her opportunity came in her fourth year, after Frankel graduated, Philips made the most of it.

"She never gave up more than three goals in a game in her whole career, and that's over 90 games," Flint said.

She owns the NCAA record for the top career save percentage, just ahead of Montreal's Ann-Renée Desbiens and Frankel.

Philips didn't make her country's Under-18 team, but her performance in college caught the eye of USA Hockey's scouts. She played for the U.S. at a Collegiate Series against Canada before making the 2024 World Championship team, and earning a silver medal.

She'd always dreamed of making an Olympic team, but when she didn't play much in college, and didn't make national teams, she felt those dreams begin to fade. But being back with the best in the country brought them back.

"Not only is it a huge honour, but honestly, it's just so fun," Philips said. "It's so competitive. As a competitive person, it's unbeatable."

That same spring that she won silver at Worlds, she was drafted to the Ottawa Charge with the 14th pick.

A few months later, Philips was on the road with her eight-year-old French bulldog, Paris, to a new home in a city she didn't know.

Like Flint, Groulx immediately noticed Philips' athleticism and willingness to compete for pucks, no matter whether her team was up or down. He noticed how well she was able to read the play in front of her, reminding her a bit of another pro goaltender he'd coached: Craig Anderson.

Off the ice, she always had a smile on her face. She worked hard at the rink, and when she left, she put hockey behind her.

"She's a very in the moment type of goaltender, which is huge because high moments or low moments, it doesn't affect her," Groulx said. "She turns the page very quickly and then she goes home with her dog and just forgets about the game."

Philips' role in Ottawa was supposed to be similar to the one she played in her first three seasons of college. She'd back up Maschmeyer.

"[Maschmeyer] was a great person to play behind for the season and get to learn from," Philips said. "Going in, I just wanted to be the best version of myself, be ready for Masch if she needed a game off while creating a healthy push to keep her working hard on her toes. She's the type of person that doesn't really need that, but it's kind of the role as the backup goalie."

Philips was called to take over for Maschmeyer when she went down with an injury mid-game in March.

When she found out Maschmeyer would be out long term, Philips knew she'd have to be up to the task.

Though she looked like nothing fazed her as she guided Ottawa to its first franchise playoff berth, she admitted there were "definitely a lot of nerves."

"I didn't have a whole lot of experience under my belt, but my team really picked me up," Philips said. "Masch, battling with an injury, was right there supporting me the whole time. The other goalie, Logan [Angers], we became pretty good friends. She was always really supportive."

In the midst of her rise to Ottawa's starting goaltender, she found herself in the Czech Republic, backing up Frankel on Team USA.

When Frankel went down in the second period of the gold medal game in a close game against Canada, Philips stood tall in a 4-3 overtime win for the Americans.

"Not a lot of people can do that," Groulx said. "But she's built differently and her personality suits that."

Inside Xcel Energy Center, the Charge players stayed on the ice and watched the Frost celebrate a Walter Cup championship in front of their home fans.

Philips was confused about why her teammates weren't going back to the locker room.

"I don't watch a lot of hockey, so I don't know what they do," she said.

It was Groulx who told her they were staying for her because she'd been named playoff MVP.

Philips told her teammates to leave the ice. She didn't want them to have to watch the opposing team celebrate, in the midst of their pain.

"I said, no, you deserve this," Groulx recalled. "They're here for you. They believe in you and they want to be here for you."

After the game, Philips told reporters that her individual award was superseded by the team loss. After time to reflect, alone in the forest, she feels pride at what her teammates did that night.

"I thought that was very supportive, but I hated seeing their faces," she said. "I just wanted them to be able to go sit, feel what they want to feel, not in the public eye. But that's the kind of locker room we had, where we support each other no matter what we were feeling."

Going into next season, with Maschmeyer now in Vancouver, Philips is set to be the Charger's starter.

She also has the chance to make Team USA and go to her first Olympics, and to even push Frankel for starts — a dynamic they're both very familiar with. The tandem could be Canada's worst nightmare in a gold-medal game.

Along the way, she'll trying to channel the calm that gave her teammates in Ottawa so much confidence through their playoff run.

She knows her demeanour can have that effect on the players in front of her, and that's why she tries to focus on hobbies that get her out of the rink and her head out of the game.

"Maybe things aren't going our way, but if your goalie isn't freaking out, usually it's a good sign," she said.