TORONTO — Toronto Sceptres head coach Troy Ryan says his team has learned just how tough it is to win.
The Sceptres fell 4-3 in overtime on Wednesday to lose their best-of-five semifinal against the defending Walter Cup champion Minnesota Frost in four games. It's the second consecutive year Toronto lost to Minnesota in the semifinals despite being the higher seed entering the playoffs.
"Winning is not easy," Ryan said at the team's end-of-season press conference on Friday. "If I've learned anything through some of my time at the national team level, sometimes it's taken for granted. It's never easy.
"And I think this group, probably through some hard lessons, are learning that it's not easy to win, and you've got to invest your time in well before it's ever a playoff time to be, you know, putting yourself in a situation where you can have success."
Toronto finished second in the PWHL standings behind Montreal and clinched a playoff berth a week before its regular-season finale.
"I'm going to be unhappy every time (a loss) happens," Ryan said. "You can be unhappy where you are at. It doesn't mean you're not happy with where you're going, right? And I think this group ... (has) a pretty good sense of ... where we can improve."
Captain Blayre Turnbull said the main takeaway will be the importance of being consistent each day of the season.
"There were certain points throughout the year where I felt like, sometimes our habits weren't where they needed to be or where they should be based on what our standards and our expectations are," she said.
"Looking ahead into next season I think we have to make sure that those habits and details are being executed the way we want them to be every day so that by the end of the season and come playoff time, it's just natural and we can peak for longer than just a few games in the playoffs.
"It would be great for us to kind of have our on-ice identity completely solidified long before we enter playoffs so that we just hit the ground running and everything feels very natural."
The team entered the season with high expectations after an inaugural season that saw Toronto finish first in the league standings before its post-season loss to Minnesota.
However, the Sceptres faced their share of injury troubles throughout the campaign. Last season's MVP Natalie Spooner was out of the lineup until Feb. 11 after knee surgery, while top rookie defender Megan Carter was lost before season's start until Jan. 25, and star forward Sarah Nurse missed almost two months before returning late March.
Toronto also dealt star defender Jocelyne Larocque to Ottawa in December.
"We lost some big personalities in our locker room," star defender Renata Fast said. "We can't replace what someone like Joce (Larocque) brings on the ice and off the ice. But I really do think our group stepped up big. It didn't take us that long.
"We brought in two players that also have big leadership skills, and they came in and just like, it was seamless really. So once we started getting into games, it didn't take long."
With two new expansion teams set to enter the fold, in Vancouver and Seattle, Toronto anticipates losing some "competitive" players to the upcoming expansion draft.
"I think we're comfortable with our entire team," general manager Gina Kingsbury said. "I think, we'll add pieces here in the draft. We'll obviously be active in the free agency period as well and try to continue to build on what we have, but we love the foundation that we've started here as a group with our team.
"Again, we started with this vision and we've built this team here over the last two years. I think we've built it in a way where we feel that with expansion we've created enough depth that now we can try to add pieces and be on the right track."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 16, 2025.
Abdulhamid Ibrahim, The Canadian Press
