TORONTO — PWHL training camps are underway in all eight markets, and shortly before the Toronto Sceptres had their first skate with a full camp roster on Tuesday afternoon, they addressed the sizeable elephant in the room.
“Well, I mean, Day 1, you want to win a Walter Cup,” head coach Troy Ryan said, his first words to media at the Ford Performance Centre. “That's our goal. We just had a meeting about it.”
That “Walter” and “Cup” were the 11th and 12th words out of the Toronto coach’s mouth in front of cameras and reporters was no mistake.
“There’s no hiding it,” said Sceptres alternate captain, Renata Fast, after a more than hour-long practice.
“You can tiptoe around winning. Some people are scared to put it out there, but we want to put it out there. Like, we want to win the Walter Cup. That’s what we come to the rink every day prepared to compete for, and we’re all hungry for it.”
Toronto was bounced in the first round of playoffs in each of the PWHL’s previous two seasons, upset both years by the lower-seeded Minnesota Frost, who went on to win the title each time.
The landscape makes it even harder to win this season, with expansion to both Seattle and Vancouver, which means the original six teams all had to say goodbye to big name players. Among the star players the Sceptres lost in the expansion draft were forwards Sarah Nurse (Vancouver), Hannah Miller (Vancouver) and Julia Gosling (Seattle).
All teams have a new look, and Toronto’s is very noticeable. The Sceptres not only lost key players to that expansion draft, they also traded goalie Kristen Campbell, known to fans as “Soooooup!” To fill the void between the pipes, they signed free agent Elaine Chuli, formerly of Montreal, and drafted NCAA standout Raygan Kirk 42nd overall. But the Sceptres' splashiest acquisition comes on the blue line after they acquired New York’s now former alternate captain, Ella Shelton, in a draft-day trade.
A first-team all-star last season, Shelton had 21 points in 24 games. Now, she joins a blue line that already includes Fast (who co-led all defenders in points last season with 22) and Team USA’s Savannah Harmon.
“I think we have the most depth in the league on defence, and that’s a really good position to be in,” Fast said. “I feel really confident in all of us back there that we can all be put out in different situations, and I don’t think there’s a better feeling for the coaching staff and the rest of us players to know that you can tap on anyone’s shoulder and they can go out and get the job done, whether it’s in the defensive zone, or produce in the offensive end.”
Those shoulders in Toronto are bigger than they were last season: centre Emma Gentry, who the Sceptres drafted 11th overall, is five-foot-11. Shelton is five-foot-eight.
“I felt small out there today,” said the five-foot-six Fast, with a laugh. “Looking to my left and right I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, our team is huge.’ It’s exciting because we’re big and we can also move. So in a league that is physical and is fast and you have both those assets on your team, I think we’re going to be in a really good spot to make it really difficult on our opponents.”
“I’m average height out here,” added a grinning Natalie Spooner, who’s five-foot-10.
Spooner was sporting a black nylon brace on her left knee, on which she had surgery in May 2024, forcing her to miss the first half of last season. She was wearing a bigger brace until she got to Canada’s pre-Olympic training camp and received some advice from NHLer Zach Hyman, who had the same surgery himself.
“I was like, ‘You know, I’m just feeling slow,’ and he’s like, ‘Don’t worry, it comes back after a year’ or whatever,” Spooner recalled. Then Hyman advised her to stop wearing the big brace she’d been wearing regularly, and she listened.
The 35-year-old had her first proper off-season in two years after recovering from childbirth and her injury the last two. “I’m feeling pretty good,” Spooner said, though she admitted she isn’t quite at peak level yet.
“I mean, I am feeling like Spooner in the pre-season, like kind of getting back into the swing of things. But I think it’s just nice to kind of be able to go through all of that too with the team and not just have to come in (partway through the season) and not have those moments where maybe you’re bobbling pucks. I think it’s nice to get that whole pre-season too,” she said.
“Physically feeling good, feeling ready to go.”
She’s looking that way, too. Spooner scored the first goal in the scrimmage that ended practice on Tuesday.
“The one thing I’ll say is Spooner, from my time with her this summer (with Team Canada), she looks head and shoulders above where she was last year, she obviously needed that summer to regain some strength and get comfortable with her knee,” Ryan said.
Time will tell if Spooner can get back to being the MVP she was in Year 1.
Add that to the many questions ahead of Toronto’s first game of the season on Friday, Nov. 21, when they head to Minnesota for a 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT puck drop to kick off Year 3. This team, which looks very different from last season, is still trying to determine its identity. Players are confident that’ll come in the days ahead.
“A lot of things are up in the air,” as Ryan put it.
Except for one elephant-sized thing, that is.
"Obviously," Spooner said, "our goal coming in is we want to win the Walter Cup."
