PWHL Toronto’s young gun breaks out in a most timely fashion

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Maggie Connors is just getting started.

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The 23-year-old playing on PWHL_Toronto’s top line at the moment is the second youngest player in the PWHL.

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Only Ottawa’s Akane Shiga who turns 23 in a few months is younger.

A native of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Connors is currently playing alongside centre Sarah Nurse and veteran winger Natalie Spooner on Troy Ryan’s No. 1 line.

On Saturday night she scored her first goal and picked up her first assist in helping Toronto snap a three-game losing streak.

The goal was nice. She picked a top corner beating the always-tough-to-beat Ann-Renee Desbiens in the Montreal net to get Toronto back on even terms early in the third period but it was her assist that was the wow moment of the night for her.

Sitting alone at the bottom of the PWHL standings a full nine points behind league-leader Minnesota as the night began and approaching the quarter mark of the schedule, Toronto desperately needed a positive result Saturday night in Verdun.

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They had lost three in a row and appeared locked in another game where they would dominate the majority of play but not be rewarded with any points at the end of the night.

It had been recurring theme throughout all but one of their first five games of the season. Own the possession battle, dominate in terms of chances but ultimately lose in the end.

Something had to change. Two things did in fact.

First it was Connors making one of those plays where you know it’s going to hurt but you do it anyway because you’re just sick of the losing.

Entering the Montreal zone with the score tied at two and overtime just around the corner, Connors went down the boards knowing the door was closing. Montreal defender Kati Tabin took Connors hard into the boards with Connors caroming off the boards and landing flat on her back.

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But in taking the hit, Connors advanced the puck deep into Montreal territory and an alert Nurse pounced on it in the corner and fed the streaking Spooner for a Toronto goal and its first lead of the game.

Full credit to all involved in the play but this was Connors paying the price and doing so willingly that made it all possible.

Now Marie-Philip Poulin of course wouldn’t let that stand getting the equalizer with 18 seconds remaining in regulation on a one-woman rush through three or four Toronto defenders before she would beat Kristen Campbell to force overtime.

Then it was Campbell time as the woman who answers to “Soupy” took matters into her own hands stopping five of six shootout attempts by Montreal, including rejecting Poulin on three of her four attempts, as Toronto finally got rewarded for its hard work.

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Neither Connors nor Campbell somehow made the list of the three stars for the game, but that hardly takes away from the impact both had.

Campbell, who has come under plenty of outside scrutiny through the first five games for Toronto’s early struggles could not have had a better answer to her detractors than her play particularly in the overtime and shootout portion of the game though she also stopped a pair of breakaways in regulation.

For Connors it was without question a breakout night in the very earliest stages of a promising career. Her first goal, her first two-point game and her first major impact on a Toronto win.

Ryan saw the potential, but this might be a little earlier coming than even he projected.

“I don’t necessarily anticipate her being dominant for years, at least for a couple of years anyway, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with her coachability,” Ryan said in an interview before the team left for Montreal. “Sometimes a lot of young players come in thinking they know everything and I think she has come in thinking I have to learn a lot if I want to impact at this level. She just seems open to that.

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“She has got some real sneaky kind of skills that she has to learn how to use at this level,” Ryan said. “She has deceiving little plays and little passes. She just has to figure out where to use those instead of maybe always going to the high risk side of things. She has to manage that risk reward, but I have love the coachability side of her so far.”

The past few months have been a bit of a whirlwind for Connors leaving Princeton where she was an Eastern Conference Athletic Conference All-Academic Team honouree in each of her four years to getting drafted into the PWHL and moving to Toronto where she and roommate Emma Maltais have together navigated that next step in adulthood living out in the real world.

Having carried a full academic workload at Princeton alongside the countless hours on the ice with the Tigers in games and practices, Connors candidly admits she probably a little less busy in her first year out of Princeton than she was while in it.

That said, she’s also a lot more focussed on hockey now than she ever was at Princeton and we’re already starting to see the results of that.

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