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The atmosphere at Laval’s Place Bell Thursday night was just like old times — with a new twist.

There has always been something special about Montreal and Boston squaring off in a playoff hockey series, and it used to be an annual thing.

The Canadiens and Bruins met every year in the playoffs from 1984-92. There was also a period when Montreal totally dominated Boston. When the Bruins beat the Canadiens in the second round in 1988, it was their first playoff series win over Montreal in 45 years. Boston had lost 18 consecutive series against Montreal, dating back to 1943.

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The Canadiens and Bruins haven’t met in the playoffs since 2014 when Montreal won a second-round series in seven games with Carey Price and P.K. Subban leading the way.

The Montreal-Boston playoff rivalry was finally renewed Thursday night with the female version. Not surprisingly, it was a fierce, entertaining battle.

Montreal outshot Boston 54-26, but ended up losing 2-1 in overtime in the first PWHL playoff game for both teams in the league’s inaugural season in front of 9,135 fans at Laval’s Place Bell. Kristin O’Neill scored for Montreal, while Lexie Adzija and Susanna Tapani (at 14:25 of overtime) scored for Boston.

Ann-Renée Desbiens, who won a gold medal with Team Canada at last month’s world championship, was in goal for Montreal. In the Boston net was Aerin Frankel, who was the Team USA goalie for the 6-5 overtime loss to Canada in the gold-medal game at the world championship. Franklin got some revenge with an outstanding 53-save performance.

Game 2 of the best-of-five semifinal series will be Saturday at Place Bell (7 p.m., TSN4, RDS2, YouTube). Toronto beat Minnesota 4-0 in Game 1 of the other semifinal Wednesday night.

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Place Bell was rocking before the puck even dropped, with fans cheering loudly and waving the rally towels that were provided. Montreal came out flying to chants of “Let’s go Montréal!” and had a 10-0 edge in shots before Boston got its first shot at 9:37 of the first period. Montreal ended up outshooting Boston 12-2 in the period, but the score was 0-0.

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The crowd and the atmosphere seemed to intimidate Boston.

“I think coming into Montreal, you know you’re going to have to weather the storm,” Boston coach Courtney Kessel said. “The energy in this rink was tremendous. It was loud from the warmups to the end of that game. We knew that. Did it go on a little bit longer than we wanted it to? Yeah, for sure. But you got to do what you got to do in the playoffs. Anything can happen. So I think weathering that storm and coming out of that first period 0-0 was huge.”

O’Neill finally opened the scoring with a power-play goal at 1:07 of the second period. Boston, which plays a physical style of game, kept hanging in and eventually tied the score when Adzija scored at 1:48 of the third period.

As the game headed toward overtime, the pressure seemed to shift to Montreal’s side and they looked intimidated.

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Montreal’s Laura Stacey had a great chance to win the game nine minutes into OT on a partial breakaway, but missed an open corner of the net. Montreal was also given a power play 11 minutes into OT, but couldn’t convert.

“We can’t dwell on it too much,” Montreal coach Kori Cheverie said. “We know that it’s going to be a long series and if we can continue to put together a full game like that defensively …

“We had opportunities to score. Obviously, we need to put a couple of those in. It’s disappointing, but for us I’m happy as a coach with that effort, aside from the outcome. I know we need outcomes here. But if I look at the game as a whole, I’m happy with what our group did, what they were able to achieve in this game and I think that gives us momentum moving forward.”

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Poulin said she and her teammates really appreciated the support from the crowd in Laval.

“Every time we come here, people show up,” she said. “On a Tuesday night, on a Thursday night, people are here. The energy is unbelievable. The noise, the people, we feel it, we see it. And trust me, that seventh player does make a difference and we truly appreciate people coming in and even after the game (when the players went to centre ice to salute the fans). It sucks to lose, but knowing that the fans are still there with us to celebrate us it just shows a lot about our fans and what they mean to us.”

With the marvellous success of the PWHL’s inaugural season, this Montreal-Boston women’s rivalry should have plenty of time to grow.

“I think we knew heading into this game it was going to be a battle,” Kessel said. “Exciting that we can bring this battle over to the women’s side with Boston vs. Montreal. I think it’s just incredible what this league has been able to build and the attraction is only going to grow.”

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