The PWHL pauses for the Women’s Euro Hockey Tour this week, but almost every player will stay in their hockey markets. Here’s how the break could help the Toronto Sceptres make progress.
The PWHL pauses for the Women’s Euro Hockey Tour this week, but almost every player will stay in their hockey markets. Here’s how the break could help the Toronto Sceptres make progress.
When the PWHL schedule was announced, you could be forgiven for wondering why the league would start on Nov. 30 and then “pause” for ten days just a few days into December.
The first of three “international breaks” takes place to accommodate the Six Nations stop of the Women’s Euro Hockey Tour in Tampere, Finland.
As it turns out, however, almost none of the players in the PWHL are taking part in the tournament. Instead, most teams and players will use the time to make early adjustments and work on team-building during the time off from games.
For Toronto, who have had a slightly shaky start to the season, the break will allow some focus on four areas where some questions have appeared in the early going:
Coach Troy Ryan said, “We knew that was going to be important – that international break was going to be important for us to just regroup. And I knew we were hoping that you want to at least steal a win or two heading into that.” (Toronto has one win and two losses).
Apparently, the practices have been important enough that the team kept them closed to the media. The first day’s session was described only as “hard” by a few of the players. Perhaps the concepts being drilled down and repeated are to remind the team of the work it will take to improve.
Here are four areas the team might focus on:
Special teams
Penalty killing has been an early problem for the team, with only a 50% success rate. The “No Escape” rule might be contributing to this trend as teams work to build communication and adapt to the requirement for four players to stay on the ice who might not be used to killing penalties. Extra time working on the roles and expectations for anyone playing shorthanded will be a welcome opportunity.
The power play might get some more time in the week of practice as well. They have only scored two power-play goals on eight attempts (25%). Building a unit (or preferably two units) that can apply pressure and create momentum at the very least is a priority for a team that scored regularly with the player advantage last season. Of course, leading scorer Natalie Spooner was a huge part of that success. Finding someone (Julia Gosling?) who can take up space at the front of the net and pounce on loose pucks would benefit the Sceptres.
Breakouts
One reason the Sceptres have struggled to get momentum in their games so far is that their breakouts aren’t clean. There is a disconnectedness between the defense and forwards, and often the puck is lost in the neutral zone or time is spent regrouping to find a path into the offensive zone.
“It's just tidying up some things,” according to Ryan. “If tidying up those things means we lose a game here and there then I'll deal with that long term.”
The small details of making clean, hard passes and finding each other on the ice are areas the team can clarify during this downtime.
Communication
Simply spending more time together on and off the ice can work wonders for a team that is still integrating its new members.
As assistant captain Renata Fast observed, “I think we're excited for an opportunity back at home, finding that connection among all the lines again, because it's obviously still early, but it's another opportunity to grow our chemistry together.
“Obviously you want your team to get to a point that you can — even in between periods — be communicating on the bench, to pinpoint exactly where we need to get better, and the whole team can get on board. And that takes time; it's like chemistry with your lines, it also takes time as a group, figuring out how to communicate properly and who has voices and certain timing.”
Many of the players are familiar with each other and with the systems, but first-year players might be struggling with the information given to them and the abrupt process of integrating everything into their game play.
“A top-end team is able to make adjustments on the fly during periods or between periods, and after games. We want to be that team ,” Fast added.
Defensive Play
The Sceptres have spent a lot of time trapped in their defensive zone, and have allowed opponents too many chances from high-danger areas.
“You're going to have those games at times - [we] just look disconnected and the angles were bad, our gaps were bad. Just a lot of things to clean up,” said Ryan after the loss against Otttawa.
This could be a function of having two rookie defenders (Lauren Bernard and Rylind MacKinnon) and missing their second-round draft pick, Megan Carter, who is a strong defensive presence.
“Today in practice, we worked on a lot of our angles and stick details. We've just got some bad habits that crept into our game and hopefully we tidy those up. And to me, that's even more important right now than the win or the loss.”
When Toronto resumes play on Wednesday, Dec. 18 against the Sirens, we’ll see if the ten days of practice and re-focus is a reset for the team.
“I was really excited about [the break],” said Ryan.
“From a coach’s point of view, it's perfect. You get a small sample size of your games. You get an idea of the league, you get to at least watch everybody or play against everybody once, and then you kind of regroup and work on some of the things that need to be worked on moving forward.”