NATURAL FIT
A ll eyes are on Ella Shelton as she corrals the puck. For a moment, New York’s left-shot rearguard makes like she’s going to shoot, as she so often does from her office just inside the blue line, but she’s got time and space, and she intends to use both. Head on a swivel, her brown braid whirling with the movement, Shelton takes three strides towards the fray around the net and fires a wrist-shot through traffic and past Toronto goalie Kristen Campbell.
Ask Shelton what she remembers most about that historic goal — the first in PWHL history, scored early in the league’s first game, on the first day of 2024 — and she admits, nearly two years later, the details around the play itself are a little foggy.
“To be honest, when I think back to how it started or how the game was going, I couldn’t tell you — it’s like a blacked-out moment,” she says. “I don’t think it really hit me until after the game. Once I got up to the stands and I saw my family and my support system and how emotional they were for me, I was like, ‘Oh my god, that just happened.’”
Even now, as she sits in a high-top chair post-practice, overlooking the ice at Ford Performance Centre in Etobicoke, Ont., there’s still a bit of awe in her voice as she reflects on the memory.
“I mean, that little girl in me probably wouldn’t even believe at this point that she would be [here],” she says. Then she adds with a laugh, “Like, I’m a trivia question! Which is just insane to say, you know what I mean?”
That it happened so close to home for the Ingersoll, Ont., native, and with so many family members and friends able to make the 90-minute drive to Toronto to take in the inaugural game in person, made the moment all the more special.
Shelton’s history-making goal is one of the few records written into the PWHL history books that will remain forever, but a lot has changed since that very first game. A visitor suiting up against Toronto two seasons ago, Shelton is now a key part of the Sceptres’ core thanks to a draft night trade in June that sent shockwaves through the league. Her arrival in Toronto gives a new and focused identity as a physical, defensive-minded powerhouse to a team in need of a jolt, and a one-year extension signed just days before her Sceptres’ debut will see her stay with the club through 2026-27. Her veteran presence, honed over five years on Team Canada’s blue line and two as one of the PWHL’s premier puck-moving defenders, instantly re-asserts Toronto as a top contender following two early playoff exits. And her strong ties to Toronto have Shelton looking right at home with all of it.
T he third of four kids, Shelton grew up on a farm just outside of Ingersoll, in the same farmhouse her dad grew up in, built by her great-grandparents straight out of the Sears catalogue. The old kitchen’s yellow vinyl floor — which she calls the “yellow brick road” — serves as the bright stage of her first hockey memory: The day her oldest brother, Jesse, first helped her into every last piece of her hand-me-down hockey gear, still a few sizes too big.
Once at the rink and set onto the ice, Ella cried, overwhelmed by her equipment and unsure what to do. Luckily, some local figure skaters ran a before-school program in town aimed at helping kids learn the fundamentals — without the equipment — and Shelton took to it immediately.
“Every morning at, like, six or seven, I would go and skate for an hour just with my skates and my helmet, my gloves. And honestly, that was probably the biggest reason why I continued to play hockey, because as soon as I learned how to skate and be comfortable on my blades, the hockey part and the equipment part just became a non-issue,” she says. “I loved it since then. I haven’t really looked back.”
Family, farm work, and hockey have been the consistent threads woven through Shelton’s life. No matter how far the latter has taken her — to Clarkson University in upstate New York, across the globe with Team Canada, and back to New York for her first two professional seasons after being selected fourth overall by the Sirens in the inaugural PWHL draft in 2023 — she always comes home. She spends off-seasons on the farm with her parents, Cathy and Warren — “they’re empty nesters at this point, so I get to fill that nest,” she says with a smile — which also means getting to be close to her three brothers, Jesse, Jack, and Maxx, all of whom live nearby.
“I love being around my brothers. I love being around my family. We get along really well,” says the 27-year-old. Evenings together are spent over home-cooked meals, a deck of cards never far. (Euchre has always been a favourite.)
“That means a lot to me, and that’s something that I envied in the last two years, when my family could get together and I couldn’t be there,” she says of her time in New York.
After so much time away, being traded to Toronto felt like a homecoming for her.
“Now, I know if there’s something going on and it’s a quick hour-and-a-half [from Toronto], I mean, all the merrier for me to just drive down.”
There was even an off-day from Team Canada camp in Toronto last month when Shelton made a quick trip home to help with some farm tasks. “I drove home and I worked and then I was able to drive back on Sunday and still be back in camp,” she says. “That’s a pretty cool luxury for me.”
It makes perfect sense, then, that Shelton was having dinner with one of her brothers when she learned she’d been dealt to the Sceptres, with Toronto’s third-overall pick heading to New York in return.
“I think it surprised me as much as it surprised everybody else,” she says of the deal. Two calls in quick succession, first from New York general manager Pascal Daoust to inform her of the trade, then from Sceptres GM Gina Kingsbury to welcome her to her new team, preceded the draft-night announcement made just after New York’s first-overall selection and before Toronto was slated to pick.
As she watched it unfold on television, the news still settling in, Shelton’s phone started blowing up with texts. A wave of warm welcomes from her new Toronto teammates — an ‘OMG’ from Toronto’s Emma Maltais, and bursts of excitement from Renata Fast and captain Blayre Turnbull among them — combined with disappointment from teammates and friends in New York.
The messages reflected her own jumble of feelings at the time.
“At first, I was kind of more shocked that it actually happened because I felt I played a really big leadership part in New York in general,” says Shelton, who was New York’s first-ever selection and led the team in points by a defender both seasons. She also scored more goals in those first two years than any other defender league-wide.
“At the end of the day, you have to recognize it is a business. New York obviously hasn’t been successful in the past two seasons, and I think for them, they felt that they wanted to shake things up, I guess, and try something different, and maybe that’s the answer they needed,” she says.
Her arrival in Toronto certainly answers several key questions for the Sceptres, whose core — like the other six original teams — took a real hit in the expansion process. Foundational players like forward (and franchise face for the first two seasons) Sarah Nurse, second-leading scorer Hannah Miller, and No. 1 netminder Kristen Campbell are now all in Vancouver with the newly introduced Goldeneyes. The team lost some key depth pieces, too, in forwards Izzy Daniel (Vancouver) and 2024 first-rounder Julia Gosling (Seattle), and defender Megan Carter (Seattle).
With offence and goaltending in transition, Toronto will be turning to Shelton and the rest of the veteran blue liners early and often in all facets of the game as the team looks to shake off back-to-back early playoff exits and push for a championship this season.
“I think that we have to lean on our blue line for everything, to be honest,” says head coach Troy Ryan. “It’s probably a lot of pressure for them, but I know they can handle it. I think they’ve got to be solid defensively — we have two goaltenders that are not used to being in a No. 1 goalie position, so they’re two people that are trying to figure out where they fit in the league. We have a ton of experience in our defensive group. Offensively, on paper, I don’t think anybody would look at our team and think ‘Well, that’s a high-end offensive team,’ so we’re going to have to score by committee. The one thing that we’re pretty certain of is our back end — so, we want to make sure we’re maximizing that to the best of our ability.”
Ryan was in the boardroom, along with Kingsbury and the rest of the Sceptres’ staff, for the trade talks with the Sirens. He doesn’t mince words when talking about the deal: “I think the bottom line was, if you have an opportunity to get her, you just get her,” he says. “Because of the player she is, but just the person, too. You just know you’re adding a great human. Some people don’t think it matters that much — it does. You’ve got young players that are coming from college and they’re impressionable, so just knowing you have someone like that in your organization, you know it’s going to help so many other people as well.”
Few understand Shelton’s game better than Ryan, who in addition to his post with the Sceptres has been a mainstay behind the bench with the Canadian national team since 2016 and has been head coach of the program since 2020. He’s seen Shelton evolve from a young depth defender and newcomer on Canada’s 2022 Olympic roster to a powerful force capable of breaking a game wide open. He points to the 2022 women’s worlds, about six months after Canada claimed gold at the Olympic tournament in Beijing, as a major turning point in her national team trajectory.
“I almost saw a different attitude in her,” he says, thinking back. “She kind of went from, you know, a player — and a good player — to now, just, she finds greater impact.”
Shelton’s offensive prowess and ability to drive plays from the blue line are a major asset in her still-growing game and something Ryan hopes she’ll embrace even more in Toronto. Her impact can already be seen plain as day on the scoresheet. But it’s felt in much more visceral ways, too. You won’t get far in any conversation about Shelton without hearing about the power and strength in her five-foot-eight frame and the physicality she’s embraced in her game.
Shelton takes pride in that, and is in good company on a team that boasts some heavy hitters up and down the lineup, and especially along the blue line. She’s spent much of her summer training focused on her play along the wall and creating time and space for herself.
“I think you’re gonna get quite a feisty game every time you play against our D core,” she says, smiling. “You’re not gonna want to go into any corner against any of our D pairings, really, if I’m being honest.”
Says Ryan of his new rearguard, “She’s like a runaway train once she gets going. Like, why would you want to step in front of that?”
The addition of a player like Shelton, explains Ryan, transforms the entire focus of the team. “Because now, when you have five D, for example, that can play in all situations, it just gives you depth that you sometimes don’t have the luxury of [otherwise].”
He hopes to see Shelton take her game to yet another level with the Sceptres, particularly when it comes to her ability to jump into the offensive rush. And he’s excited to help her thrive in her new surroundings.
“I actually think Ella is still trending upward. I don’t think she’s fully arrived yet, either. And I’d be curious what, as a group, collectively, we can do to help her reach those other levels,” he says. “Because I think it’s there.”
He’s already seeing the potential as he mixes and matches defensive partners. Shelton’s familiarity with her Sceptres teammates — she suits up alongside Fast on the national team, played with Savannah Harmon in college, and at camp has taken plenty of reps with Kali Flanagan — gives Ryan the kind of lineup flexibility most coaches can only dream of.
“Ella’s probably the easiest person to bring into a team,” he says. “She’s just a natural fit.”
There’s an entire roster in Toronto feeling the same way.
H armon beams as she talks about Shelton. The Sceptres have just wrapped up their first week on the ice together at camp, and chemistry is strong. Asked what it feels like to be reunited with her former college teammate in the pros, Harmon’s response is so filled with joy she nearly sings the words.
“Oh my gosh, I love it!” she declares. “Love it, love it, love it.”
It’s easy to understand why. The two are good friends from their shared time at Clarkson, during which Harmon — her junior and senior seasons matching up with Shelton’s freshman and sophomore campaigns — captained the Golden Knights to back-to-back NCAA championships in 2017 and 2018. Harmon knows well the many strengths Shelton brings to the blue line, not just from personal experience partnered up with her in college, but through suiting up opposite the Canuck in international tournaments and on the PWHL circuit.
“I just think she’s so good, she’s so strong, she’s so fast, she’s so skilled,” says Harmon, who started her PWHL career in Ottawa but was traded to Toronto in a blockbuster last December. “I’m just excited to now be in the same colours as her and get to play with her.”
Sceptres leading scorer Daryl Watts calls Shelton “one of the best D in the world,” and considering Shelton’s standing with the national team and stats across her first two pro seasons, she’s not wrong.
“Her vision back there is really special. She can do it all, really — passing, she’s got a great shot, she’s fast, she’s strong,” says Watts. “And she’s a really great person, fits right in with the group. She’ll be huge for us back there.”
“She’s just an incredible player,” says forward Emma Woods. “She’s shown it the last couple of years in the league and at the international level. She’s an amazing player. I mean, she plays fast — she is fast, but she also just moves the puck fast and creates a lot of good opportunities for her teammates. I think she’s gonna help us create offence and also just getting the puck north quicker. She’s gonna be huge for this team, for sure.”
That so many of her Toronto teammates are already so familiar with her game is a testament to her national team reputation with those who also wear the Maple Leaf and the chemistry she’s so quick to build with everyone she skates with.
“Walking in that door, there’s obviously a lot of familiar faces between my college days and now, and even on the national team and friends outside of that who I skate with in Toronto during the summers,” she says. “So, that felt really normal and felt really good. So, yeah, pretty happy walking through those doors.”
And if she ever needs a reminder of her first defining moment in this market, before she ever donned Sceptres threads, she’ll see one just through those locker room doors, where a mural depicts that very first faceoff in that very first game — the day Shelton made history so close to home.
“To see that mural every day, I think for me, it’s a good reminder to just go day-by-day and not take anything for granted,” she says. “You know, you’ve worked so hard to get to this point and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be pushing the envelope a little bit further and see how much more you can gain out of that.”