PWHL Toronto looked dominant against Minnesota in their opening two games of the PWHL playoffs. Game three was a complete reversal. Here's a look at what went wrong.
PWHL Toronto failed to close out their series as they fell 2-0 to Minnesota in a disappointing fashion.
Minnesota’s win comes with goals from Maggie Flaherty and Denisa Krizova, while Maddie Rooney stopped all 18 shots.
Power play stalls
Throughout the first three games of the playoffs, a constant has been Toronto’s inability to capitalize on their power play opportunities. These troubles were brought even more to the surface in game three where Toronto's high-quality scoring chances were limited.
So far in the playoffs Toronto has yet to score a power play goal going 0-for-7 with no signs of the drought ending.
This comes as a surprise as Toronto was starting to produce regularly on the power play in the regular season's final weeks. Heading into game three Toronto was 4-for-15 overall on the power play against Minnesota in their six games, their best percentage against any opponent this season.
Sloppiness kills
With the chance to end a team's season, you need to be sharp, and tonight Toronto simply made sloppy errors that cost them the game.
The most prevalent example of this sloppy play was the sequence of events that led to Krizova’s goal halfway through the second period. Kristen Campbell started the chain of events by deciding to stand up, revealing the puck in her pads before the whistle was blown. On top of that, Allie Munroe left her assignment assuming the play was over, leaving Krizova wide open to poke it through Campbell’s legs.
It is unacceptable for players in an important playoff game to not play until the whistle is blown and because both Campbell and Munroe didn’t do this, and it resulted in the puck ending up in the back of their net.
Picking and Choosing targets
The shot selection of Toronto continued to be an encouraging part of this team's offence again tonight.
In a game where Toronto only managed to get 18 shots on Rooney, ten of them were taken in a high-danger area. In the first two periods of play, 66.6% of Toronto's shots came in a high-scoring area.
Despite this, you would like to see this team try and get more shots to the net, especially from the blueline where they have had success this season. They did this a little more in the third period as Jocelyne Larocque got three shots but Renata Fast who was Toronto’s leading goal scorer from the blueline this season did not get a single shot through.
If this team is looking to solve Rooney, they need to go back to what was their bread and butter this year and start getting more bodies in front and look for tips.
“A lot of times you get what you deserve and we just didn’t deserve a whole lot more offence in that (first) period,” said Toronto head coach Troy Ryan. “For 26 games this year this group has played consistent and has played the right way and have been a top team in this league and one a lot of teams mirror themselves after.”