PWHL Toronto will face PWHL Minnesota in the opening round of the PHWL playoffs. It was a choice the team got to make, and one that Toronto GM Gina Kingsbury called "very, very difficult."
PWHL Toronto got to choose their first round playoff opponent. It's a new rule the PWHL is using giving the first overall team a choice between the third and fourth seeds. For Toronto that decision came between third place PWHL Boston and fourth place PWHL Minnesota. Each team had an identical 35 points, but in the end, PWHL Toronto chose Minnesota.
"Very difficult decision as you can imagine with the parity in the league all year long," said PWHL Toronto general manager Gina Kingsbury. "It was a very, very difficult decision, one that we didn't take lightly, that we certainly looked at all different angles."
Toronto had time to prepare their decision as the first team to clinch a playoff spot, and with games remaining after clinching first overall as well.
"The process started a long time ago when we knew the rules...and when we clinched first place," said Kingsbury about making their decision. "We started those discussions on the hypotheticals of who that may be that we get to choose from."
In their season series, Toronto beat Minnesota with two regulation wins, a shootout win, and a regulation loss. In the end, according to Kingsbury, the decision came down to analytics, and discussing with their players.
"We talked to our leadership group, we leaned on our athletes, what they're feeling and how they feel against all of these opponents," she said.
"There was a lot of pros and cons on picking Boston or Minnesota and in the end we went with what seemed to be a little bit more of the pros,"