The PWHL this week: Top spot still up for grabs as teams prepare for playoffs
CBC
A little more than two weeks into the season, PWHL Toronto sat last in the league.
The team lost four of its first five games, including an emotional inaugural game on home ice. The team that should have had the most familiarity early on looked disjointed.
Three months later, Toronto became the first team in the PWHL to clinch a playoff spot, thanks in part to an 11-game win streak built on solid defence and a turnaround in net from starter Kristen Campbell, who hadn't played much coming into this season.
"Looking back on it now, the start helped us get where we are now," Campbell said after backstopping her team to a 3-2 overtime win on Saturday in Montreal, in front of more than 21,000 fans at the Bell Centre. "The adversity was good for us."
Toronto sits in first place with three games to go before playoffs begin, but the picture at the top of the standings is still very much in flux. Montreal and Minnesota sit only three points back each, and as Toronto learned while climbing back up the standings, a regulation win can change a lot. Each team has three regular season games left to play.
At stake for the team that finishes first is the chance to pick their first-round playoff opponent between the third- and fourth-seeded teams.
WATCH l Hockey North — PWHL playoff race heats up:
Toronto completed a season sweep of Montreal on Saturday. But don't think that means Toronto is eager to sign up for playoff hockey against Montreal and big-game players like Marie-Philip Poulin and Ann-Renée Desbiens.
"If I had to answer right now, no, based on the performance they gave tonight," Toronto head coach Troy Ryan said on Saturday about whether the team would choose to play Montreal. "But we'll discuss it as a group."
It felt like the roof of the Bell Centre might come off when Poulin's name and number were announced on Saturday.
Every time Montreal touched the puck, every time Poulin looked poised to do something magic, the crowd roared.
"It's hard to find the words," Montreal's captain said after the game. "I've been talking about it's incredible, it's surreal. But it really is. It's been years in the making. We've been striving, we've been wanting to be in that moment, and we're here."
The attendance at Saturday's game set a record as the most-attended women's hockey game, eclipsing the crowd of 19,285 that watched the same two teams battle in February at Scotiabank Arena.
Toronto won in overtime thanks to a goal from Sarah Nurse, but Montreal's coaching staff saw a lot of positives in the loss.
