Daryl Watts had a hat trick for PWHL Ottawa, snapping Toronto's 11 game winning streak despite another heroic effort from Natalie Spooner.
Daryl Watts had a hat trick for PWHL Ottawa, snapping Toronto's 11 game winning streak despite another heroic effort from Natalie Spooner.
PWHL Ottawa snaps Toronto’s 11-game winning streak with a 5-3 comeback back win in the nation's capital.
Daryl Watts' hat trick and goals from Brianne Jenner and Hayley Scamurra helped lead Ottawa to its third win against Toronto on the season.
Here are my thoughts on the game.
Campbell holds Toronto In
In the first period, Campbell showed why she deserved to have her face on the team's t-shirts walking in this morning.
In the first period, a battle between Campbell and Daryl Watts of Ottawa began to brew.
The battle between the two started at the 14-minute mark of the first period, where Watts drove to the top of the crease and fire a point blank shot that Campbell denied.
Watts would find a way to test Campbell again in the first. With seven minutes left, she used her speed to get by the defence and crash into Kristen Campbell, who once again shut the door and kept Toronto even with Ottawa heading into the second.
Campbell made 11 of her 18 saves during the first.
The game did not end the way Toronto wanted, with Watts finally finding the back of the net in the final minute of the second and tallying two more in the third, but Campbell was the reason it was as close as it was.
Defensive coverage lacking
The staples of this team's play during its winning streak were its ability to keep the opponents out of the dangerous areas of the ice and its solid net-front presence.
Toronto did neither of these in the final 30 minutes of the game, and it cost them.
A prime example of this was Gabbie Hughes’ early third-period goal. Hughes simply outmuscled Sarah Nurse on the goal to poke the puck through Campbell—a spot where you would like to see Nurse tie up her stick.
The team also consistently missed assignments. On the Brianne Jenner goal in the third both Renata Fast and Allie Munroe collided and could not recover after the puck was turned over resulting in the goal.
“I think there were a lot of opportunities for us to go north with the puck and we decided to go south of it on the way out of the zone. We made a few east west plays in our zone that started with our D and ended up not making it out of the zone,” said assistant coach Rachel Flanagan.
“We have a lot of offensive turnovers at both blue lines and teams in this league, when you turn pucks over at your blue line are going to score on transition.”
These defensive lapses show how much Troy Ryan's number one defensive defenseman Jocelyne Larocque was missed in the lineup this afternoon, as she served her one-game suspension.
“I think today's game is not reflective of how we typically like to play the game” said Flanagan. “We haven't always brought our best effort to Ottawa.”
Spooner can't be stopped
Natalie Spooner continues to make her MVP case this season. She scored both of Toronto’s second-period goals to make it 2-0 before Ottawa scored four unanswered.
Putting the result aside, the two goals extended Spooner's point streak to six games, during which she has scored nine points for Toronto.
Her performance today extended her league-leading goal total to 15, with the next closest being Minnesota’s Grace Zumwinkle with nine goals. She also leads the league in points heading into the break with 20 in just 19 games.