It's not time for a full-scale panic in Toronto, but that day is approaching. The Toronto Sceptres have continued their fall toward the bottom of the PWHL standings, and the team looks like change is needed, soon.

The Sceptres have had many personnel changes on the ice, and a trade might still be in the cards for another shot at a lineup shuffle. Or the Sceptres could make the difficult decision to go in a new direction behind the bench.

Calls for change from fans continue to gain traction and increase in volume as fans have witnessed not only the Sceptres' continued struggles over the past 12 months, but also those of Team Canada under head coach Troy Ryan.

It begs the question, is it time for a coaching change in Toronto?

Toronto has hit the midway point of their third PWHL season. After making the playoffs in each of their first two seasons, the Sceptres are currently sitting on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. Perhaps more concerning for Toronto is that the teams currently surrounding them in the PWHL standings are trending upward. 

To date, there has yet to be a midseason coaching change in the PWHL, but there have been coaching changes in Minnesota, Boston, and New York in the league's short history. 

There are two vastly different questions in Toronto. One is if Troy Ryan should be feeling heat and be on the coaching chopping block? The other is if that's even a legitimate possibility given the deeply intertwined connections between the Sceptres' staff and Team Canada. 

It's unlikely Ryan will lose the attention of his bench in Toronto given the impact it could have on players' opportunities with Team Canada, but following the Olympics, that tone could quickly turn in Toronto. 

Following Toronto's second straight playoff collapse last season, the team laid goaltender Kristen Campbell on the sword for the loss, but there are signs that the issues with Toronto, and Canada's, success is less of a player personnel issue, and more of a problem from the top down off the ice. 

As Ryan said earlier this season while discussing Toronto's sputtering power play, “We can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect different results."

Despite those words, it's what Toronto has tried over and over. Toronto for the bulk of this season have kept the same six players in their top six.

Where Toronto has 'tried something new,' it has failed. The team went out this offseason and acquired Ella Shelton, adding to what was already one of the league's more formidable defensive groups, and upon her arrival Ryan split up his successful units of the last two seasons. Separating Kali Flanagan and Allie Munroe and Renata Fast and Savannah Harmon has not worked out with Ryan keeping Shelton alongside Renata Fast, who has not looked like her dominant self this season.

While other teams are improving, the Sceptres look stagnant. A major point of that failure is the lack of in-season development for Toronto's rookies. Toronto traded away their first-round pick, which would have been Casey O'Brien, who is currently outscoring all but Daryl Watts from Toronto's roster as a rookie in New York, and has yet to utilize their top picks in a meaningful way. Toronto picked Emma Gentry, Kiara Zanon, Sara Hjalmarsson, Clara Van Wieren, and Hannah Baskin in the 2025 PWHL Draft, but the entire cohort sits in the bottom half of Toronto's ice time leaders. Zanon leads the way averaging 12:52 through 15 games, followed by Gentry's 11:28 and Hjalmarsson and Van Wieren's 10:47 and 10:43 respectively. 

Without a development league, the main opportunity for improvement on rosters in season is through the development of rookies. Ryan, however, has been less than willing to put his top prospects in key situations and roles, something that he did last year with Julia Gosling, who has seen her time on ice rise by five minutes per night this season over what she received last year in Toronto. As a result, Gosling has already surpassed her 30 game points total from last season with Toronto in 12 games with Seattle and sits in the top 10 among PWHL scorers. It's a similar issue that has plagued Canada's national team this season, showing this aspect of Ryan's coaching approach is more than a trend, and instead is perhaps ingrained in his coaching philosophy. 

While Ryan hasn't lost his bench yet, there are signs he may be out of ideas and running out of time. With Toronto's power play struggling recently, Ryan spoke of telling his team who was on the power play units only an hour before a recent game, and then sending them into a room with a white board and telling them to "go sort it out." It's certainly a tactic, and putting ownership in the players' hands can be effective, but it's not the type of strategy that builds confidence in a coach.

In game, Toronto, and Canada, have failed to make adaptations to their opponents, another item that has been highly critiqued by fans and pundits as it relates to Canada and Toronto's success, or lack thereof. 

The connection between Troy Ryan and Gina Kingsbury makes it less likely a coaching change will occur, but it might be what is needed to turn the corner with a Toronto group that continues to falter in the same way.

While the coaching situation in Toronto might be stable in the eyes of management, in the eyes of fans, and likely in the eyes of players, that stability is wearing thin. If the Sceptres fail to make the playoffs this season, it could, and potentially should, be Ryan's final campaign behind the bench with the Sceptres.