Sceptres Gameday: Toronto at Ottawa

Toronto Sceptres @ Ottawa Charge
7:00 pm at TD Place
Watch on Amazon Prime

It's another Prime game. If you're not a Leafs viewer, the Prime experience may be new to you. The games are on in Canada only. Prime is not the same service in the US as it is in Canada. This game will likely be streamed on the PWHL YouTube channel as well.

Prime NHL games have a dramatically higher technical quality than either Sportsnet or TSN, and the playback can be started and stopped, watched on delay or paused at will.

Toronto won their season opener in regulation and sit atop the standings with three points. Ottawa lost their season opener to Montréal in a shootout and have one point.

Them

This was Ottawa's lineup for their first game, to give you a feel for the team:

New to the Charge! (sorry, I can't hear the name without the exclamation mark) are Mannon McMahon and Stephanie Markowski, both drafted this summer. They were signed out of training camp.

The big name rookie is Danielle Serdachny the second overall pick in last summer's draft. Anna Meixner, former captain of Team Austria was drafted in the sixth round, and had Ottawa's first goal of the season.

Also up front for Ottawa are former Toronto players Rebecca Leslie and Alexa Vasko.

After Serdachny, Ottawa's biggest addition is veteran defender Ronja Savaolainen, who is a rookie to the PWHL, but not pro hockey as she has eight seasons in the Swedish league.

The rookie backup goalie, Gweneth Philips was drafted and the number three, Logan Angers, was signed as a free agent. Both are NCAA graduates.

Emmerance Machmeyer, the best player on the team in their opening game, returns for another season. Ottawa was heavily outshot in their first game but managed to bust through the rather flimsy Montréal defence fairly easily.

The glaring hole in the lineup needs to be filled with captain Brianne Jenner who is injured to start the season. With her not in the lineup, the Charge have to rely on depth, systems and their goalie. She is listed as day-to-day with an undisclosed injury from training camp. Might she play against Toronto? We'll find out closer to gametime.

Us

Toronto played a very ineffective style for the first half of their opener, but they got into the groove and dominated utterly in the third period, vastly improving their shot quality.

Ottawa was a tough team for Toronto last year, as they always had the defensive counter to the hot Toronto offence. The Sceptres are better up front this year, with more dynamism on multiple lines. This was their opening day crew:

The top line with Daryl Watts and Izzy Daniel supporting Sarah Nurse was fantastic, and yet Julia Gosling was getting a lot of good zone time from the third line. The Turnbull line is more of a shutdown and irritation line, but they also can get some goals. That fourth line is so good, it's an advertisement for expansion.

If Toronto has a weakness, it's the defence off the top pair. But on paper they are a much better team than Ottawa.

The Game

(which is not played on paper)

Toronto needs to be in that groove from puck drop. And also stay out of the box because I don't think they're a team that lends itself to surviving the "no escape" PK rule.

For those not in the know, when a team takes a penalty, the four remaining skaters start the PK with no line changes until the first stoppage. The key is to win the faceoff or to have your goalie freeze the puck quickly. Or get a jailbreak goal as the Sceptres did in their first experience of it.

Go Sceptres Go! See you at 7 pm for the game.