The PWHL season resumes on Saturday after a three-week international break for the Women’s World Championship in Czechia. In the absence of play, there has still been some action: The league announced plans to expand to Vancouver next season, at a press conference this week. But people around the PWHL have come to question the breaks, which accommodate an international tournament schedule designed before the league existed. “It's a long three weeks,” Marie-Philip Poulin told The Canadian Press, adding that it might make more sense to reschedule the international tournaments so they are not happening, say, right in the middle of a playoff push.
If nothing else, the break makes for a fun, weird wrench in the season. For the league-leading Montréal Victoire, whose games before the break were tense and sluggish, maybe it was needed. For the New York Sirens, winners of back-to-back regulation games before the break, maybe it was ill-timed. When teams take the ice again, all of them but Montréal still vying for the spot in the four-team playoff, they'll have three regular-season games left to play before the postseason starts.
Every fan, coach, and player will tell you about the importance of “momentum” heading into the playoffs. In truth, it’s hard to say a strong finish to the season really matters. The Minnesota Frost lifted the Walter Cup last year after finishing their post-break schedule on a five-game losing streak. Boston, the team Minnesota faced in the Cup Final, only just squeaked into the 2024 playoffs themselves. In the PWHL postseason, at least, momentum is not real.
If there is one player who seems to counter and defy momentum herself, it is 35-year-old Hilary Knight. The Boston Fleet captain earned her fair share of "washed" allegations last season amid disappointing production. In 24 games last year, she scored just six goals and five assists. If you didn’t know Knight better, you might have written her off as past her prime. But of the many impressive things about her, one is that her career no longer seems to follow any discernible shape. She can look slow at one tournament, dominant the next. This year, not surprisingly, Knight leads the PWHL with 15 goals and 13 assists through 27 games. “I don’t really think I’ve scratched the surface of my capabilities at the pro level quite yet,” she told the Athletic's Hailey Salvian last month. From Hilary Knight, I’d believe it.
Knight's Fleet hold the third spot in the PWHL standings right now, but the teams competing for the last three spots are all pretty bunched together. The league’s 3-2-1 point system, which gives regulation wins extra weight, means the standings can be shaken up fast, too. In last year's postseason, which saw Boston complete a three-overtime sweep of Montréal and take Minnesota to Game 5 in the Final, Knight assumed more of a defensive role.
“Even when she’s not putting pucks in the net and finding a way there, she’s finding a way to impact us in a way that allows other people to step up and put pucks in the net,” Fleet GM Danielle Marmer told the AP recently. Knight has said she played through an injury last year that limited her production. In this postseason, it'll be nice to see her score.
Knight returns to the Fleet after captaining the U.S. team to a gold medal at Worlds, her 10th gold at the tournament. (Yes, against Canada. Yes, in overtime. It is always in overtime.) She left Czechia in possession of all three Women's Worlds scoring titles, this time passing Hayley Wickenheiser on the career assist leaderboard. Playing for Team USA means Knight spends plenty of time in the company of the game's youngest, flashiest offensive freaks, like Abbey Murphy and Taylor Heise. It is next to those young, flashy freaks that you can best appreciate Knight's game, which is understated by comparison. Her 5-foot-11 frame can usually be found in the net-front trenches. She might have two defenders draped on her. No matter! She will win the puck battle. She will poke in the goal. Her game lacks the long, furious drama of an end-to-end rush. But who needs the big windup when you know how to finish?
