PWHL - Minnesota vs Toronto May 1, 2024 Photo by: Alex D’Addese/PWHL
The best-of-5 series between Toronto and Minnesota will begin Wednesday evening in Toronto. Montreal will play Boston in the other semi-final series, which begins Thursday evening in Laval, Que.PWHL Toronto has chosen fourth-place Minnesota as its first-round playoff opponent, the team announced on Monday evening.
The team announced its decision in a video posted to social media on Monday, which featured Natalie Spooner's son, Rory, helping announce the pick."It was definitely not an easy decision," Toronto GM Gina Kingsbury said. "There's no easy opponent in this league. We looked at all different angles." "We know that we've got our work cut out for us against Minnesota," Toronto captain Blayre Turnbull said, pointing to the performance of Minnesota's goaltending tandem of Nicole Hensley and Maddie Rooney, and offensive threats like Kendall Coyne Schofield and Taylor Heise.
After a rocky start in January, Toronto emerged as a defensive powerhouse thanks to one of the best blue-line pairings in the world in Jocelyne Larocque and Renata Fast, hard-to-play-against forwards like Turnbull and Emma Maltais, and a turnaround in net from Kristen Campbell. The team won 11 games in a row from the end of January to the end of March.
But Minnesota hasn't looked the same since that break, struggling both to score and to prevent other teams from scoring, particularly on the penalty kill. The team needed only one point to clinch a playoff spot but couldn't do so over five opportunities, and only secured a playoff spot thanks to several losses by Ottawa.
Boston went into the third period of Saturday's game with a 3-0 lead, only to see Montreal storm back and even the score. Kaleigh Fratkin saved the day for Boston by scoring with 1:20 left, giving the home team the regulation win needed to clinch a playoff spot."The way that our group stuck together is the type of team that we are," Boston defender Megan Keller said after the win.
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