With a growing season and an expanded group of teams, Toronto Sceptres fans have so much variety to look forward to.
Regular-season matchups will begin in the first week of December and run until the middle of April. Over that time, Toronto will play host to four new expansion franchises, welcome back former Sceptres talent, and get on the road for more Takeover Tour stops than ever before.
With the expanded league comes the introduction of conferences. Toronto will compete as part of the Eastern Conference, which features five of the inaugural six PWHL teams: Boston, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, and Toronto. The only new team on this side is PWHL Detroit.
This means that Sceptres games against same-conference opponents will hold more weight. Given the experience and past success of these teams, the Sceptres are staring down a big challenge as they look to build beyond last season and find their way to the playoffs once more.
This list of five games only scratches the surface of the 30 games Toronto will play this season, and there is still plenty of time for storylines to develop. But to get us started ahead of the regular season, here’s a look at five key matchups to watch on the Sceptres calendar and the storylines that make these contests so interesting.
Dec. 8 vs. PWHL Hamilton
Of course, the first one on this list has to be Toronto’s home opener. But it’s not on here just because it marks a return to Coca-Cola Coliseum after many months away. It’s a consequential game because of who else is pulling up. Dec. 8 marks the first-ever Battle of the QEW as the Sceptres host the new PWHL Hamilton at home.
Incredible rivalries already exist between Toronto and Hamilton. Just look at Canadian football and the Labour Day Classic between the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats — a team that helped inspire the colouring for PWHL Hamilton’s inaugural jersey.
The Tuesday night matchup offers a first look at two teams whose fans occupy largely the same geographical area. Before Hamilton joined the league, fans would catch the GO train in Hamilton and flock up to Exhibition Station. Now, fans in and closer to Hamilton have women’s hockey in their own backyard. There’s been some concern about the impact of this proximity on fan support — could Toronto lose some fans to their Steeltown neighbors? This first game will reveal whether those theories are grounded in truth. How many fans in gold, deep red, and burnt orange will make this first trip into enemy territory?
Dec. 20 vs. PWHL San Jose
For long-time Sceptres players like Natalie Spooner and Renata Fast, this matchup will be a big one.
Dec. 20 marks former head coach Troy Ryan’s first return to Toronto. Having been behind the bench for the Sceptres since the inaugural season, Ryan is an important part of the team’s foundation. Plus, his time with the Canadian national team and the number of those players on the Sceptres squad means this will be a weekend for connecting on multiple fronts.
It will be interesting to see which elements of last year’s Sceptres strategy and play style remain and which have been altered by the new head coach, Pascal Rhéaume, this early in the season.
This game is also exciting because of the top young talent that will take the ice. San Jose and Toronto are both in a building stage — both have young players and a need for a more concrete identity. Both will have to work really hard if they want to make the playoffs, and so both will be putting on a show every night.
Dec. 22 vs. New York Sirens
In general, the New York Sirens will be a really interesting team to watch this season. After missing the playoffs for three straight years, they have acquired a lot of strong young talent and their development trajectory will be exciting. Toronto, having just missed the playoffs last season and lost a lot of good talent during the offseason, find themselves in a similar spot of building up young players.
Rhéaume has talked about how he’s excited to establish strong development systems this season. Testing his team’s younger talent against that of New York will be a good opportunity.
This game marks the professional reunion of New York’s Casey O’Brien and Sceptres top rookie Kirsten Simms. They played on the same attacking line at the University of Wisconsin and were a deadly scoring duo.
Jan. 17 vs. PWHL Detroit
Former Sceptres Daryl Watts and Jesse Compher will make their first return to Toronto ice since April. The venue is currently still to be announced, but the timing of this game matches the usual placement of yearly Battle on Bay Street at Scotiabank Arena, so that venue is a possibility.
By this time in the season, we will have a stronger sense of how the Sceptres have fared following the loss of two of their top-three scorers from last season. Will Toronto have recovered their scoring ability elsewhere? Or will the gold and blue still be reeling from the losses of Watts and Compher?
Apr. 13 @ Ottawa Charge
It seems to be a tradition that the Toronto Sceptres play the Ottawa Charge in a high-stakes game down the stretch.
The Battle of Ontario is always entertaining, but there is something to be said about how frequently contests between these two teams carry major consequences.
Each of the first three seasons has ended with an important Toronto vs. Ottawa game. At the end of the 2024 season, Ottawa needed a win over Toronto to make the playoffs, but the Sceptres made sure that didn’t happen. In 2025, Ottawa qualified for the playoffs with an overtime win against Toronto in their last game of the season. And then, in 2026, the Sceptres missed out on playoffs after losing their final regular-season game against the Charge.
If the past tells us anything, it’s that we should circle late-season matchups between these two opponents.
