Why hockey fans should expect much more from Year 2 of PWHL

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‘Faster, Higher, Stronger — Together’ is the Olympic motto. You wouldn’t be wrong in suggesting it’s being borrowed by the PWHL in Year 2 of the league’s existence. For a number of reasons, the level of play in the upcoming season, which begins on Saturday, is going to dwarf what we saw in Year 1.

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For starters the league welcomed in a stacked collegiate class with the June draft that was further augmented by an increased influx of international players.

So not only does the league add foundational talent like Sarah Fillier to the New York Sirens, Danielle Serdachny to the Ottawa Charge and Hannah Bilka to the Boston Fleet, but they also bring in veteran defenders like Daniela Pejsova from Czechia and Ronja Savolainen from Finland or Maya Nylen Persson from Sweden.

And those are just the very elite of those two groups. Both the NCAA and the European leagues provided plenty of volume, too.

Essentially it means just having a spot on a PWHL roster in Year 1 is no guarantee that there will be a spot in Year 2. Contracts of two- and three-year length, signed as the league was beginning, provide immediate security for some, but most everyone who came into the league on a one-year deal is battling to keep a job.

A lot is going to change in Year 2 in the PWHL from the look of the product, to some of the home arenas, and even some rules. But the biggest change is going to be on the ice where the level of play is going to skyrocket for a host of reasons which we will now get into.

IT’S NO LONGER NEW

You wouldn’t find a woman in the league last year who was fully prepared for the impact that travel and playing as much as three games in four nights had on them.

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It was new, plain and simple. The previous iterations of women’s leagues included a lot of the same talent, but they were playing a couple of games over a weekend at most. The schedule, even 24 games (it’s up to 30 now) was new territory and took some getting used to.

The travel that we do, the road trips, being able to recover properly, being able to just plan for my life and my dog. So, I think for me that will help on the ice.

Sarah Nurse on adapting to the league’s schedule

Even the women who played on their respective national teams had only experienced it in short intervals during tournaments. But 24 games spread out over four months — including breaks for Rivalry Series play and the world championship — was not something anyone in the league had experienced.

“I think it was interesting last year that we were all learning how to be pros, from coaching to staff to players,” Sarah Nurse, a veteran Canadian national team member said. “We were trying to navigate that because it was our first time. So, for me, a big piece of that is off the ice and being able to plan and understand what our schedule actually looks like, how it functions and flows.

“The travel that we do, the road trips, being able to recover properly, being able to just plan for my life and my dog. So, I think for me that will help on the ice. To relieve stress, relieve tension and just have that understanding of we know what is coming.”

Nurse provided a very specific example of one of those lessons she learned a year ago in this regard.

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“We talked about hockey for so long, but it’s been our hobby,” Nurse said. “It hasn’t been our profession. It hasn’t been something we absolutely have to do. I remember that day, the Scotiabank game (vs. Montreal), I actually had to close on a mortgage for my condo. It ended up being a day that I ran around the city of Toronto going to different banks to make sure I had all my ducks in a row.

“I remember getting to the rink that night and I was like, ‘I am so exhausted. I had to do life things today, but I also had to show up and be a hockey player.’ I remember thinking that day, ‘Wow, this is what this is like,’ right, because in the past I would be like, ‘Ahh, hockey tonight. A practice? Can’t do it. But at the end of the day, you have to do life and you also have to do your profession.”

Knowing that, the product will improve.

NOW IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HOCKEY

Year 2 is also going to free up all the athletes to just focus on the game.

Anyone who watched Game 1 of the inaugural season and certainly anyone who talked to the team after that historic occasion knew without question how much more than just a game it was.

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It was the culmination of years of effort and sacrifice to put the first truly professional women’s hockey league together.

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It was a celebration far more than it was a game. As it should have been.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the actual hockey came second. It wasn’t the only time on the schedule, either.

There were firsts all year and all necessitating celebration that sometimes took the focus off the game at hand. Simply put, at times the hockey wasn’t the most important thing. And there will be times in Year 2 that that is the situation again but they will be far fewer than in Year 1.

“I think I learned what our schedule looks like and what it takes to get through the first season and it’s a lot,” Sceptres captain Blayre Turnbull said. “The travel is a lot. The games are super intense. It’s not like you play one team and it’s an easy game. Every game is really hard. And every game is super competitive. I think understanding the workload and managing it away from the rink is going to be really important. We are also playing more games (Up from 24 to 30) this year so that will be a factor too.

“But I think a big thing for me mentally will be that in Year 2, I will be able to focus more on hockey and a little less on everything the league brings with it, if that makes sense.”

That too should see the product improve.

“Last year, yes, hockey was important, but I think the league in general was more important,” Turnbull said. “And I think it should have been that way because the attention that we gained and the new fan support that we received and everything that happened with the league that was so successful in Year 1.

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“But those talking points might be kind of the backburner to the on-ice play (in year 2). For me, I think that will be a little bit of a mental break.”

YEAR 1 CONVINCED OTHERS

It’s only natural that a new start-up would be met with some skepticism. While the PWHL certainly is the most organized and best-funded, women’s hockey leagues have sprung up before and failed to sustain.

The games are super intense. It’s not like you play one team and it’s an easy game. Every game is really hard. And every game is super competitive.

Blayre Turnbull

So those playing overseas in decent leagues weren’t about to just dump the security they had there to come to North America without the seeing some proof of sustainability. Of course, some were under contract and couldn’t come had they even wanted to, but that is a different group all together.

Laura Kluge, a native of Berlin, Germany, and a member of the German national team made the decision to come over to the PWHL this year and is fighting for a job on the Toronto Sceptres.

“For us, it was a big question mark how everything would work,” Kluge said when asked about the wait-and-see approach. “But now it has become clearer what the league is going to look like and what the goal of the league is. So now I feel like everybody is just trying to get a spot here.”

In Year 1, there were 17 players from 10 countries outside of North America in the league. Currently, ahead of training camp cuts there are 26 players of non-North American heritage in the six training camps.

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That number is only expected to grow and, with it, so grows the level of talent in the league.

OFF-SEASON TRAINING HAS HIT ANOTHER LEVEL

A year ago this past July, the PWHL was officially born with an eight-year collective bargaining agreement settled between league ownership and representatives of the player’s association. But even then details were sketchy.

When would the league begin? Where would the teams play? How many games would they play?

There was a ton of optimism about the new league, but few details. Players knew they had to be ready but didn’t know when.

Olivia Knowles, a defender on Toronto’s team a year ago and currently battling for a contract this year, remembers that time well.

“Last summer I was training at the Training Haus in Minnesota,” Knowles said. “It’s a beautiful facility on the Minnesota Vikings campus. That was a cool experience. They have the best of the best there … but it was a different mindset because we were kind of training blindly I felt. We didn’t know a start date, when was puck drop? Would we make a team? And what does the team look like.

“It was insane how blindly we were training and we were training as hard as we could because no one really knew what the future held.”

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It was insane how blindly we were training and we were training as hard as we could because no one really knew what the future held.

Olivia Knowles

The difference this past summer was night and day. Knowles knew exactly what she needed to be working on following exit interviews with the Toronto staff and was training with seasoned trainers who made sure she, and the rest of the women training with her, would be peaking for the start of the season.

“This summer we were able to set goals, progress at the right rate,” she said. “Burn out through six months working as hard as you can is a real possibility so we were really fortunate with the staff we were working with that they were able to monitor our training and our load-ups in the right way so that we are able to come into the season feeling healthy and strong. This year definitely had goals.”

On top of that, Knowles spent the off-season in Toronto training with people she was familiar with and playing at the same level.

“I could have gone home to Campbell River, B.C. I could have trained in Minnesota (where she played collegiately), but I knew this group would give me the best chance to make the team. Surrounding myself with players like Renata (Fast), Jocelyne Larocque came on the ice with us a lot, battling against Emma Maltais. That will give me the best opportunity to be on a team like this. I mean I love being around those girls.”

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I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Two Toronto newcomers via free agency, Daryl Watts and Emma Woods chose a different path.

Watts, who spent last year with Ottawa before signing as a free agent in Toronto returned to Gary Roberts Performance in Richmond Hill. Watts joined the former Maple Leaf’s gym a year earlier when she needed to get her “hockey muscles” back after retiring competitive hockey.

The former Patty Kazmaier winner hung up her skates at the age of 22 when it became apparent to her that she could not make the living she envisioned for herself in hockey. That changed when the PHF doubled its salary cap in 2023-24 opening the door to her record-setting two-year $150,000 contract, which made her the highest paid player in women’s pro hockey.

The arrival of the PWHL changed her path again as Watts signed a one-year deal with Ottawa before returning to Toronto on a three-year deal this past summer. Terms of her new deal were not announced. What has not changed is her off-season work with Roberts, who has attracted many of the best players in the world to his gym.

“I’m so grateful they wanted to work with me because his team, honestly changed the way I was living and really elevated my play on the ice and my lifestyle,” Watts said. “Definitely lucky to have them as a resource because they are so incredible and obviously they train the best hockey players in the world in the NHL, so to have the same resources as those guys is just incredible.”

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Watts even lured in former Toronto Six teammate Emma Woods this past summer to Roberts’ gym. One visit and Woods was hooked.

“Anything you need from an athlete perspective, they are able to help,” Woods said. “Gary is awesome. He’s around every day there. He delegates a lot, has experts from every field and he understands that they are experts in their field and he trusts them. I definitely learned a lot.”

Of course not everyone on the Sceptres spent all of their off-season in Toronto. Kaitlin Willoughby is back in camp and battling for a roster spot.

The Saskatchewan speedster spent the bulk of her summer in Minnesota where she accepted a 10-week travel nurse assignment.

A registered nurse before the PWHL came along, Willoughby says it makes no sense to let those skills fall behind, hence the 10-week gig in Minnesota this summer.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t training either. Willoughby would join members of the Minnesota Frost in their training sessions over the summer in addition to one-on-one training with a local trainer.

Like most of the Sceptres, Willoughby was back in Toronto by August training alongside her teammates.

Maggie Connors was one of those. She came directly from the NCAA and Princeton a year ago to establish herself with the Sceptres. Connors though has been training locally since June.

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“For me, I’m from Newfoundland, so growing up it was always just me and maybe one other girl that would join (in the off-season training). It was all right, but there comes a point where you are going on the ice and in the gym every day, you have a lot of self-motivation, but then eventually it becomes ‘who is pushing you? Who are you battling against?’ With a league of this caliber it’s pretty difficult to just off-season train alone and I realized that pretty quickly.”

With a league of this caliber it’s pretty difficult to just off-season train alone and I realized that pretty quickly.

Maggie Connors

The vast majority of Toronto’s roster either trained all summer or for a large part of it at Shield Athletics and Sports Medicine in Burlington.

Maltais, a Burlington native, got put onto the place by a former training partner, Montreal Canadiens defenceman Arber Xhekaj.

“I started training with the boys there and it was great and all and the training was phenomenal, but when the PW started I was like ‘Guys, this is amazing. Let’s get a real professional women’s group going here. And it turned out to be amazing,” Maltais said.

Maltais put the word out and soon Shield was a go-to destination for the bulk of the PWHL players spending the summer in and around the Greater GTA. The list was long and included Sceptres like Fast, Larocque, Nurse, Victoria Bach, Knowles, Hannah Miller, Jess Kondas, Connors, Willoughby as well as former Sceptre, now a member of the Ottawa Charge Alexa Vasko and New York Sirens forward Kayla Vespa.

Even a national team vet like Fast, who has had access to advanced training with Team Canada throughout past summers, saw how big this could be for the league and her own team and made it a part of her summer training.

“If you are not on the National team you are not really supported to train properly, but now there’s a real reason why you need to be,” Fast said. “So to be surrounded by players who weren’t necessarily from the National program and trained the way we were training … everyone just benefitted so much and the league is going to be so much better this year.”

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