PWHL Season Recap and Playoff Preview (2024 Edition)
The PWHL regular season is over and the playoffs begin tonight (as of publishing). So I’ll be going over both playoff series and what I expect. After that, I’ll go over both eliminated teams and give a quick recap of their season.
Minnesota vs. Toronto: The top-seeded team, Toronto, chose Minnesota as their opponent. Completely understandable why. They haven’t won a single game since the break for the IIHF Women’s World Championship. It’s been ugly for Minnesota and they barely squeaked into the playoffs thanks to Ottawa losing to Toronto in the final match of the season. It makes sense to choose the team that’s on a cold streak. Look, I’m a Minnesota fangirl. I can’t pretend to be objective here. I refuse to believe that Minnesota stays cold and my heart tells me that they rediscover their winning ways and beat Toronto in five games (it’s a best-of-five series). Unfortunately, my head tells me that’s not happening and Toronto wins in four (even my head refuses to accept a sweep, though objectively, that’s likely to happen). Toronto is a wagon. They cannot be stopped. Every part of this team is deep and talented. Minnesota is not.
Boston vs. Montreal: Here we come to an interesting one. Montreal started the season hot and was battling Minnesota and then Toronto for the top spot for more than half the season. That said, they’ve been mediocre since coming back from the World Championship break. This hasn’t been the same team we saw battling for the top spot. Instead, Boston is the hot one. They are 4-1 since the break, their sole loss being to Ottawa in a shootout. We might be in store for an upset. I could see it happening. Boston is hot at the right time, Montreal is not. I’m going to predict Boston in four games.
Ottawa: They put up a challenge at the end and almost made it in, but losing 5-2 to Toronto put an end to their playoff ambitions. The start to their season was “meh”, going 2-2 but then went on a five-game losing streak and then was almost .500 from there. They were simply a middling team that probably shouldn’t have remained in the playoff race as long as they did and only did so because Minnesota has been terrible since the break. Solid offense, mediocre goaltending, poor defense. That was the story of their season.
New York: This team was terrible. Truly terrible. There’s a reason they were the first eliminated from the playoffs. It was the Alex Carpenter and Ella Shelton show and that’s it. Ok, that’s not completely fair. Corinne Schroeder did what she could in the net, but the team defense in front of her was abysmal. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where a team’s #1 goaltender had both the second-best save percentage in the league but also the worst goals-allowed average. This team has a lot of work to do before they get good. I would hope that they focus on defense first before trying to become an offensive juggernaut. That defense needs work and not just on the blue line. Better defensive forwards are needed as well.
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