Reaching their potential
Riding seven-game win streak, Toronto is cementing its contender status
There was plenty of whooping, laughing and good vibes at the Monday workout of Toronto‘s PWHL team, which is probably to be expected when you’re riding a seven-game winning streak. But as his team prepares for the final 10game stretch of its first season, coach Troy Ryan is increasingly wary of the slides of March.
Toronto has played two interesting but diametrically opposed seven-game sets to start the season. The first seven games, the team was in survival mode, losing games it probably should have won because it couldn’t score. The hockey goddesses are funny that way.
“At times, we didn’t get what we deserved at the start,” Ryan said. “Now we’re getting some (wins) we don’t deserve.”
Going into Minnesota’s game against Ottawa on Tuesday, Toronto was in third place, one point behind Minnesota but ahead in points percentage. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight has outscored its opponents 25-10 during the sevengame streak and goalie Kristen Campbell, who had struggled alongside her teammates, has racked up a .948 save percentage.
Ryan, whose team embarks on the final push with a home game against Boston on Wednesday night, was candid about the challenge facing his team.
“I think sometimes the streak can hurt things,” Ryan said. “Sometimes it’s what lets complacency creep into your game. (Monday’s) practice wasn’t a great practice and the details get sloppy sometimes. I find that when you’re on a streak, that’s when bad habits creep in.”
One of the things Ryan has noticed is his team’s proclivity for allowing teams the chance to get back into games, as in Saturday’s 5-2 win over Ottawa. Toronto outshot Ottawa 9-4 in the first period, then gave up double digits in shots in each of the second and third periods in being outshot 21-16. The team has been outshot 56-33 in the third periods of its last five games.
“At the end of games, we get passive at times, instead of that full confidence to close out games,” Ryan said. “We’ve got to learn to bury people when we have opportunities to bury them. And it comes down to being aggressive instead of sitting back and letting teams have a firing squad on us with a minute to go.”
Toronto believes it is a championship team in the making and there is little doubt the components are there. After some early concerns about goaltending, Campbell has been outstanding. The defence corps has come as advertised and the team is becoming precisely what GM Gina Kingsbury and Ryan envisioned it would be — a team that grinds out games, is awful to play against and does its scoring by committee. (That committee is definitely chaired by league goals leader Natalie Spooner, but it has been spread out more as of late.)
One of the reasons for optimism has been the play of the No. 1 defence tandem of Jocelyn Larocque and Renata Fast, which has shouldered a significant load in terms of ice time. They each average more than 27 minutes per game and Larocque has played 30-plus minutes five times. Even though Ryan has been gaining trust in his second pairing of Kali Flanagan and Allie Munroe, the veterans are doing much of the heavy lifting.
Women’s hockey never had TV timeouts before this year and, with the luxury of a two-minute break three times each period, Ryan said he is more comfortable adding five minutes to the workload of Fast and Larocque, particularly in a 24game season with no back-to-back games. Fast pointed to a recent game when she played 34 minutes and Larocque played 30.
“We were, like, ‘How did we play 35 minutes because it didn’t feel like it,’ ” said Fast, who was named the league’s third star of the week.
“Those TV timeouts are the biggest help ever. If you have a long shift, you can completely recover and go back out again. If we didn’t have that, it would be deadly.”
Speaking of deadly, the penalty kill has been just that. Toronto has given up just two goals on 42 shorthanded situations, none on the road. A big reason for that, and the recent overall success, has been the play of Campbell. With the opportunity to play every game after a couple of years of little game action brought on by the pandemic and the fact she is the No. 3 goalie on Canada’s national team, Campbell has definitely found a groove.
“Finishing first and winning this whole thing is our goal as a group,” Campbell said.
“We haven’t even reached our peak yet and I think that’s what’s most exciting. We still haven’t played our best game.”