Don't worry about PWHL Toronto; they'll be back
Article content
The dream season ended four wins shy of the expected outcome for PWHL Toronto.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Don't worry about PWHL Toronto; they'll be back Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
A team many in the league and certainly within the walls of its own locker room felt would not be denied were kept from that by a Minnesota team that possessed its own world class goalie – actually two of them — a defence that was as committed and unyielding as Toronto’s own and in the end a sniper who found the range at exactly the right time.
Full credit to PWHL Minnesota, a team few outside its own locker room gave a chance against a Toronto side that seemed destined to go the distance.
Minnesota lost its final five games of the regular season and then the first two of the playoffs and somehow rallied for three straight wins to knock off the PWHL’s first ever regular season champs.
Head coach Troy Ryan and two of his most vocal members of his leadership group in Blayre Turnbull and Renata Fast were brought to a podium after their season-ending 4-1 loss to explain how and why this happened, but there’s really no explanation that will satisfy everyone.
The first ever best-on-best women’s hockey league became a reality back on Jan. 1. That’s not meant to disparage any of the iterations that came before the PWHL, that’s just fact.
And a few months from now after its second draft the gap between what this league is and what any of its predecessors was is only going to increase as more of the best from outside North America and many more from the NCAA ranks make their jump to the most elite women’s league in the world.
Toronto hoped, even expected, to be the first team to hoist the Walter Cup as first-year champs, but that won’t happen.
Turnbull and Fast both used the word “stings’ in trying to convey their feelings in the moments just after its Game 5 loss.
In truth that probably doesn’t do justice to what those two women and all the teammates and staff that didn’t speak publicly last night were feeling. But in the moment, ‘stings’ was appropriate.
This was a group that was convinced it had everything it needed to go the distance and they weren’t wrong.
At the top there was dedicated management and coaching staff willing and able to set them up to achieve maximum potential success.
In the room, all 26 athletes including the three reserves were on board and willing to do whatever it took to make this first season a championship one.
If there ever was any dissension within the ranks, it was kept in-house as only the most successful franchises manage, but it’s hard to imagine there was any.
Tried and true leadership within the room, the kind of group that knows what it takes to build a team culture and how to make it successful gave this team a leg up on its competition from the outset.
At the root was the same successful culture that has carried Canada’s National Women’s hockey team to such heights over the past eight years.
Just a short week ago this was all moving in the direction they and we thought it would with a 2-0 lead on Minnesota and needing just a win to punch their ticket to the first-ever PWHL Championship Final and a short at the Walter Cup.
In the moments after the crushing end to the season, Ryan struggled to explain what happened to take it all away from them. You could hardly blame him. The turnaround was rather abrupt.
“It was no different than what we were doing,” he said of Minnesota’s improved play after a tough Game 1. “Just playing playoff-type hockey and doing the little things that you have to do to be successful. There was just a definite shift in the way they were playing and that usually comes when a team starts to get a little bit of confidence.”
The absence of Natalie Spooner of course came up in the aftermath. Spooner was lost for the series midway through Game 3 and with her went almost 30% of Toronto’s season-long goal production.
Ryan wanted no part of that excuse. Years in the game have driven home the need for team success above all and to single out one missing player as a reason to not achieve that success counters that.
But, of course, Spooner’s absence did play a part.
Where Minnesota still had its own sniper, two in fact in Taylor Heise and Grace Zumwinkle to turn to in a pivotal Game 5, Spooner’s absence was palpable. Toronto’s struggles to score were amplified without its top shooter.
When Heise scored the game winner in pure sniper fashion just over eight minutes into the third, it only drove home what Toronto was missing in that moment.
It was one more bullet that Toronto didn’t have to fire and in a league where the margins are so fine, that one bullet can mean a lot.
That does not take away from the effort or the desire on full display in an entertaining Game 5 by both teams.
Toronto too gave it their all but someone had to lose.
This team will be back, of that we have no doubt. They’ll look a little different for sure which is expected given the 70 new faces that will enter the league through the upcoming draft.
But they’ll get an opportunity to avenge this loss and we’ll see what happens the second time around.
Stoked by a premature end to this year, this is not a group anyone would want to bet against.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.