With the Olympic break over, the real push begins for the Seattle Torrent.
Seattle welcomes back four American gold medalists in Hilary Knight, Alex Carpenter, Hannah Bilka, and Cayla Barnes, along with Canadian silver medalist Julia Gosling, and Team Czechia captain Aneta Tejralová. The resumés are stronger, but the PWHL standings still require work.
“While we were out realizing our Olympic dreams, we had a whole team here working their butts off,” Knight said during a February 25 press conference. “Getting ready for the moment that we all came back and could collectively continue this journey on behalf of Seattle… Hopefully this Olympic break was everything that we needed to really jump start and take advantage of the second half. And I’m confident in the group that we have. And we’re the ones that are able to do it.”
Heading into the second half of the PWHL season, Seattle sits at the bottom of the standings with a 4-1-2-7 record. The Torrent have scored 31 goals and allowed 40. The margin is not massive, but it has been decisive. A significant portion of Seattle’s losses have been one-goal games or overtime results; a bounce here or there and the record looks very different.
Offensively, Gosling leads the team with 12 points, including six goals. Knight has a team-high seven assists and continues to drive play in all situations. The scoring has been balanced but not explosive. Seattle has shown it can produce, including a six-goal performance earlier this season, but consistency and depth scoring has been the missing ingredient.
Defensively, the group has competed. Aneta Tejralová leads the team with 21 penalty minutes, a reflection of heavy defensive minutes and physical engagement. Danielle Serdachny carries a team-best +4 rating, an indicator that Seattle is often on the right side of play when she is on the ice. In net, Hannah Murphy has shouldered the majority of starts and leads the team with 3 wins and owns a 2.70 goals-against average. The goaltending has been steady enough to win, yet the offense simply has not always provided the cushion.
At home, though, there are signs of what this team can become. The Torrent are 4-0-1-3 at Climate Pledge Arena, compared to 0-1-1-4 on the road. Early in the season, more than 16,000 fans packed Climate Pledge Arena, setting a U.S. attendance record for a professional women’s hockey game.
Which brings us back to Knight’s words.
While several Torrent players were overseas chasing Olympic gold, the rest of the roster stayed in Seattle, practicing, conditioning and preparing for the stretch run. The returning Olympic experience signals what can turn to sharper execution and heightened confidence in tight games for a roster that has proven it can compete with anyone in the league.
The numbers before the break tell the story of a team still learning how to win together, and the medals they bring back tell the story of players who know exactly what winning requires. If the Olympic break was the jump-start Knight hoped it was, the second half of the Torrent season will be about climbing the standings and turning belief into results.