By Canadian Press

The PWHL effect: Players expand their individual arsenals for the international stage

Apr 15, 2025 | 8:13 AM

ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICE — The Professional Women’s Hockey League not only altered the makeup of rosters at the women’s world hockey championship, but allowed even experienced players to expand their tool kit for the world stage.

A player who might not get a sniff of power-play time with her national team might get those minutes with her PWHL club, which is a chance to prove she can handle that responsibility.

That poses interesting decisions for Canada’s head coach Troy Ryan, who also coaches the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres.

With 23 of Canada’s 25 players at the world championship from the PWHL, Ryan has seen how players’ skill sets evolved in a league now in its second season.

“Do we adjust to fit their new roles or do we try to squeeze them back into what they’ve done so well at the national-team level?” he asked “Those dynamics can be really, really tough because they’ve branched off a little bit and they’re liking their new role and their new responsibility.

“Do they understand that may not apply here? There’s other people to do that? Those are the things our new dynamics exposed a little bit.”

The six-team PWHL, which put 57 players on seven of 10 rosters in Ceske Budejovice, Czechia, has nine games remaining in its regular season when it resumes April 26.

An example of the PWHL altering a player’s role on the national team can bee seen on its forward line.

Laura Stacey, Blayre Turnbull and Emily Clark was a Canadian staple, but the Montreal Victoire’s top line of Stacey, Marie-Philip Poulin and Jennifer Gardiner stayed intact in the preliminary round in Czechia. The trio was Canada’s most productive with a combined seven goals and 15 points over four games.

Stacey, in her second season with the Victoire, said “100 per cent I think I’ve definitely grown as a person and as a player, and I think also as a leader.”

The PWHL freed players from the shackles of uncertainty, the 30-year-old said, because the league now provides what they were scrounging for before its first game Jan. 1, 2024.

“There’s just so many resources around us that now our sole focus is how do we get better every single day,” Stacey explained. “In the past, we had to focus on how do we get to and from training? Where is training? Are we going to play this weekend? How do we get more ice time?

“Now, we literally show up. We have coaches who want to make us better. We have skills coaches who are pushing us outside of our comfort zone. Just the amount of treatment that’s available, it’s like everything is to make us perform at our best when it’s time to perform.”

Kendall Coyne Schofield of the Minnesota Frost, who was a driver behind the formation of the PWHL, echoed that sentiment on the U.S. side, which is carrying 14 PWHL players in Czechia.

A player’s growth slowed after NCAA graduation because she no longer had daily ice time and regular games to expand her skill set, which in turn limited what she showcased to national team scouts.

“You’re kind of always in that tryout mentality versus trying something new,” explained the 32-year-old American forward. “You’re really just sticking to your strengths because your focus was just trying to make a team.

“While you’re still trying to do that, playing in the PWHL gives you that opportunity to play 30 games, have the same coaches in front of you every day, watch video on a consistent basis with the same people every day, work with an assistant on the same system every day, similar to the college process you went through. You absolutely have the ability to get better.”

Canadian and Ottawa Charge defender Jocelyne Larocque, 36, feels her game has taken a step forward.

“Prior to the PWHL, we were playing random games on random weekends, and we were just practising,” she said. “Practice is important for development, but games are where you get better.

“I’ve had now a season and three quarters of playing an extremely high level of hockey day-in, day-out. I know I’m getting close to the end of my career, but I truly believe that I’m getting better every game and every season.”

Canadian forward Daryl Watts was out of hockey entirely less than three years ago. The PWHL-forerunner Premier Hockey Federation rebooted her hockey career, before the PWHL launched her onto the national team.

“Without the PWHL, I would not be here, and without the PHF I wouldn’t have come back to women’s hockey,” Watts said.

The 25-year-old, who has two goals in four games in Czechia, says her biggest improvement in the PWHL is her pace.

“I would say I’m faster,” she said. “Probably my speed is the most notable difference from college to now. Speed kills in the PWHL. If you can’t keep up, no matter how skilled you are, you won’t be able to make an impact.”

Players who weren’t identified early in their careers as national-team prospects now have an avenue to a world championship or Olympic Games as a late-bloomer.

“For so long, we thought the window of preparedness and peak for players at this level is a lot younger,” said U.S. forward Hilary Knight of the Boston Fleet. “Some people just take a little bit longer to develop.

“You’re seeing players who haven’t necessarily scratched the surface, their capabilities and their potential upside is huge, and now they get to work on those capabilities, day in and day out with the league with teammates at the highest level.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2025.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press