Before they’ve played a single game, Toronto is already one of the PWHL’s hottest tickets.
The team – which will play out of the Mattamy Athletic Centre – sold out all its season ticket memberships two days after they went on sale. Half-season packs and single-game tickets were quickly snapped up, too.
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Officially, each PWHL Toronto home game, in the team’s first season, will be a sellout crowd.
And it’s all to see a team stacked with talent and some of Team Canada’s brightest, and most marketable, stars. Sarah Nurse, of course, highlights this roster alongside Natalie Spooner, Blayre Turnbull and one of the best defensive pairs in the game in Jocelyne Larocque and Renata Fast.
The team is led by Team Canada’s general manager (Gina Kingsbury) and coach (Troy Ryan), who have won three gold medals, two at world championships and one at the Olympics, in the last three years, which should give the team an added edge — particularly in the early stages of the season. While most teams are still feeling each other out, Toronto will have some lines and pairs and staff members who already know each other well. That can go a long way in a shortened 24-game season.
GO DEEPER
PWHL season previews: How do the teams stack up heading into the first season?
The roster
The strengths
Toronto has a strong core, starting at the top with Nurse. She’s a star in the women’s game, a high-impact player — and the Olympic record-holder for the most points in a single tournament (18). Nurse is a well-rounded player who can be relied on in the defensive zone and penalty kill, but also has great offensive instincts, great hands and a good shot.
During preseason Nurse spent the most time on the wing with Turnbull, who we’ve come to know on Team Canada as a gritty two-way centre. But, on Toronto, she’s going to be tapped to provide more offense and she should be up to the task. In the first preseason game, Turnbull scored a hat trick by the second period against Boston, and it’s not because she changed her game in any major way. Turnbull always had offensive skill — the difference will be in her deployment with more time on ice, and offensive zone starts. Spooner, meanwhile, adds a power forward to the mix. At her best, Spooner can be a dominant net-front presence and an offensive threat. She missed most of the 2022-23 season to start a family, but made a comeback to Team Canada only a few months postpartum at the 2023 world championships. She played once in preseason, and Kingsbury says Spooner is on track to play in the team’s opener on Jan. 1 against New York.
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Perhaps no two players are more important to Toronto than Larocque and Fast. Each individual player is excellent on their own, but together the duo is one of the best defensive pairs in the game. They’re physical, hard to play against and eat tough minutes in all situations. They will be critical to Toronto’s success this season.
Toronto’s depth at forward is another highlight. Emma Maltais has played a bottom-six role for Team Canada and now has a chance to shift back to a more offensive role like we saw her play at Ohio State University — she scored 206 points in 169 career games, becoming a two-time Patty Kazmaier finalist. There’s also Jesse Compher, a hard, heavy player who makes a great middle-six winger. Hannah Miller and Brittany Howard could be lethal secondary scoring options. Howard led the PHF’s Toronto Six in scoring last season and has a hard shot and quick release. Miller’s shot is the highlight of her game. If Toronto can get elite production from Howard again this year — or Miller — in a middle-six role, they could be tough to beat with that much depth and secondary scoring. Even someone like Victoria Bach, a skilled center who is currently a reserve player, could add a further boost to this forward group if she’s added to the active roster.
The big question
Does Toronto have enough top-end offensive skill?
Toronto certainly has skill on its roster, but it might not have the one star player who can carry the offense on a nightly basis. Realistically, the team is much more likely to score by committee.
But that brings us back to the decision to draft Larocque over someone like Alina Müller at second overall in the PWHL Draft.
Elite offensive talent isn’t easy to come by, especially down the middle. Toronto’s centre depth is not bad by any stretch — especially if Toronto ever split up Nurse and Turnbull as a one-two punch up the middle, and got Bach into the fold. But with Müller, the team could have had two reliable scoring lines that could go head-to-head against any roster. Not to mention, it would have stopped one of their rivals from adding to their stacked roster.
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To be fair to Toronto, Müller — while highly skilled and dominant in college — is still unproven as a professional hockey player. And if Toronto took Müller at No. 2, then they wouldn’t have Larocque, and we’re probably talking about Toronto’s blue line as a potential area of weakness instead.
The decision to prioritize a strong defensive presence likely speaks to the style of play expected from this roster: structured defensively, scoring from up and down the lineup and being a pain to play against. Toronto is probably not a team that is going to win games 7-5. There’s nothing wrong with that — or with drafting one of the best defenders in the game, to be clear.
Because it’s not that Larocque won’t thrive in Toronto, or be a critical piece to the team’s success. She’s the picture of stability on the back end and has proven her value at the national team level for more than a decade now. But, it’s also fair to say that the long-term outlook of the team is different with a 35-year-old defensive veteran on this roster versus a 25-year-old rising star.
Opting for the former just means that Toronto has to hope that on any given night its deep forward group (and offensive defenders) can step up and add to the offence. Whether it’s Nurse or Turnbull on the top-line scoring or Maltais and Compher in the middle-six, or a young player like Maggie Connors emerging as a secondary scoring threat, Toronto should have enough offense to win games — especially if they are so stingy defensively that Kristen Campbell isn’t often tested.
Perhaps the bigger question is what will Campbell, who has been the No. 3 goalie for Canada, look like as an everyday starter.
The wild card
The Hockey Canada Factor
It’s no secret that Toronto has a Hockey Canada flair to it. Both the general manager and coach currently lead the senior women’s national team, and are locked in to do so through the 2026 Olympics. And there are seven players from the 2023 world championship team on the roster, and several more players who have been Team Canada-carded athletes.
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This should largely be positive for Toronto. While most coaching staffs are playing with team chemistry, figuring out their players’ styles and personalities — their staff members too — Kingsbury and Ryan know how to work with each other and several of their players. They know which leaders to lean on early in the season — likely Fast or Turnbull — to get their message across. Even their goalie coach, Brad Kirkwood, who works with the women’s national team, knows what his No. 1 goalie in Campbell needs.
Perhaps more importantly, there will be natural chemistry on the ice up and down the roster. No duo has played more for Team Canada over the last few years than Larocque and Fast and they will bring that partnership to the pro game and give the Toronto blue line a stabilizing presence. Turnbull, Nurse, Maltais and Spooner have been on the national team together for several years. The chemistry this team will have right out of the gates should serve Toronto well in the early stages of the PWHL season. All six teams in the league are going to be good, and having a slight edge early in the year could really matter when it comes to making the playoffs.
What’s also interesting to consider is that because of the Team Canada brass at the top of this club, Toronto might get every Canadian player’s best game. If, say, Jessie Eldridge on the New York team can get by Fast, or score on Campbell, it would be hard to not bring her back to a national team camp. At least that’s how the thinking would go, which means showing up big against Team Canada’s GM and coach could be a major motivating factor for Canadians in Toronto — and those hoping to beat them. Because Toronto is a team made up of national team players and staff (and it’s Toronto), the team is naturally going to have a target on its back this season.
(Photo: R.J. Johnston Toronto Star / Toronto Star via Getty Images)