Buckle up – it’ll be intense when PWHL Toronto/Montreal clash Sunday

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Sunday’s fourth of five regular season matchups between PWHL Toronto and PWHL Montreal is unlikely to be the kind of game anyone will deem tame or docile.

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A physical game Friday when Montreal was dominated on the scoreboard and felt they didn’t match the aggressiveness of their hosts set the tone for a pushback game when the two square off this Sunday in a matinee affair at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

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And if Montreal is out to prove they cannot be pushed around, fully expect Toronto to push right back. A team that sets the tone physically and is tough to play against is the identity that is now firmly rooted in the Toronto DNA and only became more entrenched in who they are when it helped them climb out of an early hole and run off nine straight wins.

Expect, therefore, special teams Sunday afternoon to have a major say in the outcome.

On that front Toronto has an edge going into this one.

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On the penalty kill side, no team has had the kind of success Toronto has had. They have been shorthanded a total of 47 times and allowed two goals against in those situations for a stellar 95.7% success rate. Factor in the two jailbreak goals the team has scored while down a player and you can make the argument that overall, they have been perfect on the kill.

Montreal, on the other hand, has struggled when they are short-handed. Teams have scored a league-high 11 goals against Montreal with a Montreal player in the box though Montreal has also been short-handed a league-high 59 times.

Toronto also has an edge over Montreal in power-play situations. Both teams have scored five times on the power play, but Montreal has had 13 more power play opportunities.

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PWHL Toronto head coach Troy Ryan admits his team’s 11.1% success rate with the player advantage has to get up to somewhere around 20% before he’s satisfied, but he doesn’t view either scenario in a vacuum.

In a game all Ryan wants for his team is to win the overall special teams battle and with a penalty kill functioning at a 95.7% success rate, he’s getting that most nights.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not focused on getting more out of his power play.

So it wasn’t that surprising that towards the end of practice on Tuesday, Ryan and his five primary power-play specialists — Renata Fast, Natalie Spooner, Sarah Nurse, Hannah Miller and Blayre Turnbull were huddled at one end of the ice talking things over.

“My conversation with them was for them to go over the goals they have scored this year (on the power play),” Ryan said. “Goals are scored around that blue paint. You have to get pucks there and on power plays you have to be comfortable getting pucks into that tough area and then have numbers there. A lot of times people think about what power-play goals look like but the truth is the majority of the time they are not that pretty.”

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Ryan’s message was as much as you want all those cross-ice passes with the defenders focus constantly being switched before you find that net-side open pass for the easy tip in, most power play goals begin with a good shot on net and someone banging home the rebound.

Miller for instance has five goals this year, and four of them have been scored in exactly that manner.

Spooner, the league-leader in goals with 12 has most of her success crashing the net.

It’s the willingness to go into those dirty areas as they are referred to in hockey and take the punishment defenders hand out when you get too close to the crease that is going to move Toronto’s power play from a middle-of-the-pack group scoring at just over 11% of their power play opportunities, to one that is closer to scoring every five power plays given consistently.

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“It’s easy to take your foot off the gas a little bit on the power play because you want that flank to flank play or you want some more highlight-reel type goals, but generally I believe (power-play goals) happen when you get a quick shot on net to disconnect the power play and then you get numbers in that area.”

It’s the one area of Toronto’s game that has room for significant improvement and it’s an area that is going to be pivotal this weekend as Toronto attempts to win its fourth in a row against a powerhouse PWHL Montreal squad.

QUICK NOTES

Sunday’s game takes on a much different look if Montreal forward and the widely considered best-player-in-women’s-hockey Marie-Philip Poulin isn’t in uniform. Poulin was a scratch from Sunday’s loss to Ottawa after she was visibly limping at the end of Friday’s game in Toronto.

As much as a Poulin absence would bolster Toronto’s chances, Ryan wishes only consistent health for the game’s best player. “I hope she is OK,” he said. “I know she played right to the last shift of Friday’s game. She was on the faceoff for the short-handed goal we got. I don’t know any details but she didn’t just look herself (towards the end).

“I hope she is OK,” he repeated. “I really do, for many reasons, but even just for her as a person, I hope she is OK.”

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