PWHL Toronto forward Natalie Spooner fires a snapshot during third period action as PWHL Toronto takes on PWHL Minnesota during the 2024 playoffs at Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto on May 10.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
As the Professional Women’s Hockey League feels its way through an inaugural season with a more physical game, the realities of high-octane pro hockey were felt Wednesday when top-seeded Toronto lost its marquee scorer, Natalie Spooner, for the rest of the playoffs after a collision earlier this week.
Spooner’s hockey postseason is over after she suffered a knee injury in Game 3 of her team’s semi-final playoff series against Minnesota on Monday.
Game 4 was Wednesday night in Minnesota with Toronto leading the best-of-five series 2-1.
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The Canadian Olympic gold medalist took an awkward hit in the boards from Minnesota’s Grace Zumwinkle. Spooner hit the boards on her left side, then fell awkwardly while entangled with Zumwinkle. The 33-year-old Toronto star remained curled up on the ice before crawling off through the open door of her team’s bench. Trainers helped Spooner out of the tunnel as she hopped along, avoiding weight on her left side.
It’s a massive loss for Toronto in its quest to win the first Walter Cup. Spooner led the PWHL with 20 goals and 27 points in 24 games during the regular season and had a goal and one assist in three playoff games. She’s arguably the league’s MVP. Opponents have struggled all year to move the 5-foot-10, 170-pound power forward off the puck. She is elusive, aware on the ice, tough to catch on a breakaway, and especially immovable when she plants herself in front of an opposing goalie.
There was no call on the hit on Spooner. A PWHL player safety committee did not deem the play illegal or ill-intentioned. Spooner, put on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) on Wednesday, has not yet spoken about it.
The loss of Spooner and the league’s tough play has put the PWHL under a microscope.
Players wanted more body contact in their league, saying they are well-trained athletes, strong enough and fit enough to allow more body contact in their fast, skillful game. Most of the women – especially those who have played in feisty Canada-USA battles – were used to a degree of intense, physical hockey. So the PWHL, looking to be innovative, gave leeway for a more physical brand, but insisted player safety be respected.
But how much physicality is too much? There have been lots of hits this year, plenty clean, but others resulting in major penalties, suspensions, or missed games for injured players. Most recently, those included two hits that drew punishments earlier this month. Minnesota forward Liz Schepers faced a $500 fine for her hit along the boards on New York’s Jill Saulnier, who was not carrying the puck. Montreal’s Sara Lefort was suspended one game for an open-ice hit on Boston’s Jamie Lee Rattray – one that caused Rattray to miss the start of her team’s playoff series with Montreal. Boston’s Lexie Adzija received a five-minute major and was ejected from Game 2 for a hit to the head of Montreal’s Laura Stacey.
Boston beat Montreal 3-0 in that series to advance to the final.
While no one wants injuries, the PWHL’s senior VP of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford, says that the physical play has been well received by players and fans. They’ve held video sessions throughout the season with player reps and coaches around the standard of play, and things that need cleaning up.
“We’ve had some players go on LTIR that had nothing to do with the level of physicality, and we have a few that probably have,” Hefford said. “But we also have a chief medical officer, Dr. Tina Atkinson, and there has been no flag raised that the standard of play has elevated the number of injuries this season. If she ever said ‘this is getting too much’, then we would need to would respond to that. But that’s not the case.”
Body checking has never been banned in women’s international hockey, but it has been called more strictly. But in the PWHL’s rule book, according to Rule 52, “Body Checking,” allows for contact “when there is a clear intention of playing the puck or attempting to ‘gain possession’ of the puck.”
Open-ice hits are not allowed in the PWHL. Two players chasing a puck are “reasonably allowed to push and lean into each other provided that ‘possession of the puck’ remains the sole object.” It adds that “The referee, at their discretion, may assess a match penalty if, in their judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately injured her opponent by bodychecking.”
The director of the players’ union says “we wanted contact, we relish it, we value it, but it’s got to have a limit, and we think we’re close to that limit now.”
“This is what the women asked for, what they wanted, what they signed up for, and what they want to continue,” said Brian Burke, executive director of the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players Association. “But my view is – and I’ve told the players this – we’ve got a real good level of contact that’s permitted, but it can’t go up from here. It cannot increase.”
He offers this from his experience in the men’s game: “We don’t want this player pool to suffer the same kind of injuries that we all did.”
“I think we’ve got really good people in charge,” Burke said about the PWHL’s player-safety committee. “I think they understand the limits that have to be observed.”
Many players have spoken positively about the body contact, happy to have the freedom to display their strength and the power, along with their finesse and speed.
“I think we can lead in the physicality factor but if other teams bring it to us, we’re going to give it right back and so it depends on what teams bring that day,” Toronto’s Sarah Nurse said earlier in this series. “But I think that we do a lot of dictating out there and you know, testing the officiating a little bit seeing what is going to be allowed, what we’re going to get away with.”
Hefford says the increased physicality in the PWHL has prompted talk at various levels of the female game about when and how to introduce contact to its players. This has not been taught as widely throughout the female game as it is in male hockey.
“There’s been a lot of discussion around, you know, we need to educate players much earlier, in terms of how to take a hit, how to not put yourself in a vulnerable position,” Hefford said. “I think those are things that should be taught anyways, because whether there is increased physicality or not, those dangerous hits happen, and they’ve happened before in the women’s game in the previous standard of play.”