PWHL Toronto makes Julia Gosling its first-round draft pick

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PWHL Toronto didn’t have to do a ton of homework in making its first-round pick, sixth overall in the 2024 PWHL draft.

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London, Ont., native Julia Gosling is very familiar to general manager Gina Kingsbury and head coach Troy Ryan, having played for that pair in their alternate roles as GM and head coach of the Canadian national women’s hockey team.

Gosling is a goal-scorer at heart, and provides the kind of coverage Toronto may require if the team’s leading scorer Natalie Spooner is to miss any time in the upcoming season.

Spooner sustained a knee injury in Game 2 of the team’s PWHL semifinal series against eventual Walter Cup champion Minnesota.

Spooner has undergone surgery, and while the rehab timeline is not known, it could very well eat into the regular season.

Gosling has a tremendous release and a penchant for scoring goals. It doesn’t hurt either that Spooner has been a role model of sorts for Gosling, who shares her combination of a nose for the net and even size (5-foot-11).

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Gosling scored 22 goals in her senior year with St. Lawrence University last season, a total that included seven game-winning goals which speaks to her ability to score not just any goals, but big goals for her team.

Gosling was the not the first Canadian off the board or even the first Canadian national team member to be drafted. Both those honours went to Georgetown native and Princeton standout Sarah Fillier.

Fillier, who was named tournament MVP of the 2023 world women’s hockey championship held in Brampton, was the favourite to be the first overall pick. Only the recent hire of long-time Colgate head coach Greg Fargo by PWHL New York had some suggesting he might influence his new team to take a face a little more familiar to him in Edmonton native and Fillier’s Canadian national team teammate Danielle Serdachny, who spent five years at Colgate.

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In the end, New York opted to stay with Fillier.

Toronto stayed close to home for its second pick as well, selecting Milton native Megan Carter from Northeastern.

Carter will bolster an already loaded Toronto defence corps as she joins the likes of Renata Fast, Jocelyne Larocque, Kali Flanagan and Allie Munroe on Troy Ryan’s blue line.

Kingsbury and Ryan went back to offence with the team’s third round (18th overall) selection, grabbing Cornell’s Patty Kazmeier winner Izzy Daniel.

Daniel, like Toronto’s first round pick Gosling, is a highly skilled offensive player as her 21 goals and 38 assists last season with Cornell will attest.

Ottawa, picking second overall, grabbed Golden Goal scorer Serdachny.

The Edmonton native scored that overtime winner for Canada at the world women’s hockey championship in Utica N.Y. in April, denying the United States a win at home.

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Serdachny joins an Ottawa club already loaded with familiar faces from national team players such as Brianne Jenner, Emily Clarke and Ashton Bell.

She’s also well acquainted with Ottawa head coach Clara MacLeod, who she played for as an 18-year-old at the Canada Winter Games where Alberta won gold in women’s hockey.

Minnesota, in a bit of a surprise, took Claire Thompson with the third overall pick. The 26-year-old Toronto native was on New York’s inactive list this past season but did not play as she was completing her medical degree.

The first trade of the 2024-25 off-season belonged to PWHL New York and PWHL Boston. New York gave up its first pick in the second round (No. 7 overall) along with its first pick in the seventh (No. 37) and final round in exchange for Boston’s second round pick (10), its third round pick (16) and its fifth round pick (28).

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New York winds up with an extra pick but have to give up a high-end defender in Daniela Pejsova, who was half of SDHL Lulea’s top defensive pairing along with Ronja Savolainen.

But the first real surprise of draft night probably didn’t come until the third round when Montreal, which took its first of two allotted five-minute timeouts to talk things over in depth, before selecting Abby Boreen, who actually played 14 games with Minnesota but only after completing pharmacy school.

She wound up back in the draft and Montreal, looking to add a little bit of grit to its team, selected Boreen.

That opened the door for Toronto to grab Daniel.

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