Looming expansion, close standings made for a quiet PWHL trade deadline

The PWHL's one and only swap on trade deadline day came down to the wire.

Toronto Sceptres GM Gina Kingsbury was in professional development sessions all day, stepping out to take calls from Montreal Victoire GM Danièle Sauvageau, who was travelling.

At the last minute, the pair completed the only deal of the day by exchanging two depth players: the Victoire got veteran forward Kaitlin Willoughby, while the Sceptres bolstered their defensive depth by adding Swedish defender Anna Kjellbin.

It was one of only three trades all season in the PWHL, the product of trades being extra tricky for GMs to pull off. Teams can't trade draft picks this season, nor do they have a bevy of prospects to pull from the way NHL GMs do. Any trade needs to be one-for-one to work.

With expansion on the horizon, teams are also preparing for the possibility of an expansion draft. Should that happen, teams don't know yet what such a draft would look like, including how many players they can protect.

On top of all that, the standings are tight. The Sceptres, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and Ottawa Charge are all within six points of each other in the middle of the pack. Four of the six teams will make the playoffs.

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That meant no one was really a seller, and GMs chose a more conservative path, not wanting to radically change their lineups.

"You're still trying to go for a Walter Cup this year," Kingsbury said on Friday. "There's not that separation that forces people to make bigger and bolder decisions because they know where they sit either positionally from a ranking perspective, but also just future wise."

The good news is that every GM found themselves in the same boat with the same set of rules to operate with.

"I'm pretty sure that all of us did the same thing, to look at what are those possibilities within those facts and within that situation," Sauvageau said. "We were able to have discussion about how could we, if that was possible, bring different changes on our team to be able to be prepared for the next situation, if needed." 

The Victoire's newest forward, 29-year-old Willoughby, has seven professional seasons on her resume across the PWHL, Canadian Women's Hockey League and Professional Women's Hockey Players Association. She registered one point for Toronto last season.

Montreal has been without third-line centre Alexandra Labelle, who is on long-term injury reserve. The team has only one forward on the reserve list to call in case of injury (Gabrielle David), and Willoughby should add some extra insurance.

The Victoire gave up Swedish national team captain Kjellbin, who was drafted 35th overall by Montreal last year. She found herself on the outside of the team's lineup when defender Dominika Lásková was activated from long-term injury reserve in February.