Toronto Sceptres
The Toronto Sceptres have maybe had the most rollercoaster-like experience since the creation of the PWHL. Natalie Spooner goes off for the greatest season we’ve seen yet from a player in the inaugural season. Unfortunately, Spooner is injured in the playoffs and needs to miss the majority of next season. Don’t worry, though — here comes Daryl Watts! Oh no, Watts is gone now. Renata Fast wins 2025 PWHL Defender of the Year! Follows up the very next season with injuries and some of the worst numbers of her career. And how can we forget the Kristen Campbell saga? Campbell wins 2024 PWHL Goalie of the Year honours. Then, at the 2025 PWHL Entry Draft, Toronto trades Campbell to Vancouver after sitting her in an elimination playoff game.
It doesn’t look like the roller coaster is coming to a sudden stop, either. Daryl Watts left, as mentioned above. They also lost a big personality in Emma Maltais and one of their more consistent forwards in Jesse Compher. The cherry on top is three-year head coach Troy Ryan leaves Toronto as well. The team is going through a lot of changes, and I’m sure Sceptres fans are hoping for some kind of stability to return to the team.
Where Sceptres fans are going to look for that stability is in net with Raygan Kirk. The seventh round pick from the 2024 PWHL Entry Draft was promising in her debut in the 2024/25 regular season. In eight starts Kirk posted a 0.625 Quality Starts%, 0.928 Even-Strength SV%, and 0.060 Goals Saved Above Average/30 Shots Against. Kirk got injured in the later part of the season taking her out of contention for the net. When Troy Ryan was looking for someone other than Kristen Campbell to be the number one goalie in the playoffs, Toronto’s best option was out of action.
Toronto needed Kirk though for the 2025/26 season and did she ever show up. It was a bit of a rough go as her first five starts of the season featured a 0.400 QS%. Thankfully Toronto had signed veteran goalie Elaine Chuli for these moments. Chuli’s first five starts saw her post a 0.800 QS%. Kirk became the goalie Toronto hoped she would be after those first five starts. Kirk finished the regular season with a 0.636 QS%, 0.940 EVSV%, and a 0.344 GSAA/30.
Now, coming into her third PWHL season and her first season as the number one goalie from the get go, Kirk isn’t going to have the benefit of a goalie like Chuli behind her. Kirk has proven she can be a number one goalie in the league with a moderately high ceiling and solid floor. You can expect her to be an average number one goalie, and that’s very good. It means the team in front just needs to do their job and score goals.
As for the goalies behind Kirk, though, expectations are low. That’s not because they’re bad goalies who don’t deserve to be in the league. It’s due to the face that Jessie McPherson and Grace Campbell have a combined zero PWHL games between the two of them. McPherson has at least spent a season as Toronto’s number three goalie. There’s some familiarity with PWHL level players from the top to the bottom of the line-up.
McPherson’s NCAA career doesn’t provide much statistical insight, either. She had some good years at the University of Vermont. The Vermont program, though, wasn’t particularly strong, and long playoff runs in Hockey East were difficult. For McPherson’s fifth NCAA year she transferred to Minnesota State University and was a part of a three goalie rotation. The good news is that she was playing in the NCAA’s toughest conference. The bad news is that she only got into 15 games, and not all of those were starts.
The other goalie fighting for the number two spot behind Kirk is another former Hockey East goalie, Grace Campbell. The recent Boston College graduate is coming off her fourth straight season of posting a 0.920 SV%. Overall, Campbell leaves the NCAA with a career 0.926 SV%, which is very respectable. With three years as being BC’s number one goalie and never having a SV% below 0.920, why was she available for Toronto to add as an undrafted free agent?
Hockey East is a tricky conference to draft out of. It’s at best the third best conference in the NCAA. Now, it does produce PWHL talent, and has had very talented players come through such as Daryl Watts or Cayla Barnes. Recently, though, that top end talent has been scarce. We had to wait till the 20th overall pick in the 2025 PWHL entry draft to see a player out of Hockey East. This past draft we waited until the 25th overall pick for a Hockey East player. Northeastern and Connecticut are also the primary holders of the talent in Hockey East. When only two of 10 teams that make up the majority of your schedule are preparing you for the PWHL, it’s hard to parse out what’s real and what isn’t.
McPherson faced the same issues with her Hockey East numbers on Vermont. Considering the lack of talent on Vermont, McPherson did well. She signed a two-year contract with the Toronto Sceptres. It’s not as though Hockey East numbers are to be completely ignored. There’s just more to prove and more for the goalies to adjust to. It’s going to make training camp very interesting as Campbell had the better NCAA career but McPherson has a year of PWHL practices under her belt.
This is going to put tremendous pressure on Kirk, whether she realizes it or not. Maybe McPherson or Campbell have what it takes to be a reliable number two goalie and can take some starts away from Kirk. How many, though, is the question. With a roster in front that’s undergone big changes and two complete unknowns behind her, this is going to be Kirk’s trial by fire season.
Vancouver Goldeneyes
What a weird and interesting time it is to be a Vancouver Goldeneyes fan. The favourite to win the 2026 Walter Cup ended up winning the Gold Plan, drafting Caroline Harvey first overall. Then, when a four-team expansion comes around, the Goldeneyes came out pretty much unscathed. It’s as though they’re getting a redo on last season. That redo includes getting arguably the best tandem in the league back in Emerance Maschmeyer and Kristen Campbell.
Nearly everything went wrong for Vancouver last season. Players who hit career highs in shooting% the season before suddenly were struggling to score. The lack of center depth was exposed two games into the season when Sarah Nurse was out with an injury. Defense minded head coach Brian Idalski reined in what looked like should have been a high flying offence. Oh, and the defensive play of the team was a complete mess for the vast majority of the season.
Despite all of that, Maschmeyer and Campbell persevered. Maschmeyer ended the season with a 0.579 Quality Starts%, 0.919 Even-Strength SV%, and -0.213 Goals Saved Above Average/30 Shots Against. Campbell ended the season with a 0.636 QS%, 0.931 EVS%, and -0.290 GSAA/30. What’s interesting is the difference in Shots Against/60. Maschmeyer finished third in the PWHL in SA/60 (+10 games played) with a 30.63 SA/60. Campbell finished second last with a 25.08 SA/60. Vancouver was capable of playing defence, they just kind of chose not to in front of Maschmeyer.
Despite the inconsistent to bad defensive play in front of their goaltenders, the Goldeneyes received a combined 0.600 QS%. 18/30 games Maschmeyer and Campbell gave Vancouver the highest statistical chance possible at winning games. That they ended up winning only 12 games is a bit insulting. I can keep going on about the failings in front of the Vancouver duo, however, this piece is about the goalies.
What should be taken away from this past season for Maschmeyer and Campbell is that Cara Gardner Morey absolutely nailed it when building her goaltending room. Maschmeyer was Maschmeyer. She took on the brunt of the schedule with 19 starts to Campbell’s 11. Despite only playing in ~59% of the minutes available, Maschmeyer saw 64% of the shots against. Campbell saw one game with more than 30 shots on goal sent her way. Maschmeyer saw nine games that hit the 30 shots on goal mark or higher, including one game of 44 shots against.
It took until the last month of the season before Maschmeyer starting posting statistical Really Bad Starts. For the PWHL last season a RBS constituted a SV% in a start lower than a 0.856 SV%. In her 14 starts previously Maschmeyer had a 0.714 QS%, 0.928 EVSV%, and a 0.234 GSAA/30. Maschmeyer was the goalie Vancouver thought she would be.
When it came to Campbell the hope was she could revitalize her game away from Toronto. Campbell won the 2024 PWHL Goalie of the Year. The very next season Toronto sat Campbell for number three goalie CJ Jackson in a playoff elimination game. It was a rock bottom moment for Campbell. Toronto then traded her to Vancouver in order to make room for Elaine Chuli. To top it all off, Campbell had lost her number three spot on Team Canada’s depth chart, and it’s going to be an uphill battle getting that spot back.
Step one of getting back to where she was in 2024 was a rebound season. I think it’s fair to say that last season was a successful rebound for Campbell. It wasn’t an immediate rebound to Goalie of the Year status. It’s proof, though, that Campbell is a PWHL goalie who can handle a tandem role at least. If Campbell was a free agent this off-season it’s hard to imagine she’s not a number one goalie somewhere due to the sudden scarcity of proven PWHL goalies.
With one-year left on her contract, Campbell is looking to truly prove she should be given a number one spot. It’s going to be difficult taking away starts from Maschmeyer, so it’s going to come in different ways. For one thing, Campbell can’t continue to benefit from playing at home so often. She started in seven home games compared to Maschmeyer’s six.
Why does it matter that Campbell received more home games than Maschmeyer, especially in terms of home to road games ratio? Vancouver on the road had a 4-11-2 record, 47.1% Shots For%, 27 shots for per game, 29.94 shots against per game, 47.8 Even-Strength Shots For%, and 1.29 Even-Strength Goals Per Game. They couldn’t keep the puck out of the net, they couldn’t keep the puck out of their zone, and they couldn’t score. Now, at home, Vancouver had a 8-3-2 record, 49.5 SF%, 26 SF/GP, 26.7 SA/GP, 49.4 EVSF%, and 2.46 EVGF/GP. The defence was better, the games were a lot closer in terms of possession, and Vancouver was able to score a lot at even strength.
This is the biggest sticking point for Campbell’s case as a number one goalie after this season. Campbell needs to prove she can play anywhere and find success. Putting up such good numbers with Vancouver is notable. It’s what makes Maschmeyer and Campbell such a great duo in that they’re the only team from game one who will have confidence in being able to win a game no matter which goalie is in net.
The only question really remaining is Maschmeyer’s health. She’s dealt with injuries that have taken her out of the line-up in two straight years now. Campbell should be able to handle the number one duties if she has to — especially if Vancouver is finally as good as most people have expected them to be. If it’s a long term injury, does Vancouver have the goalie depth to give Campbell some games off?
Right now it looks as though it’ll be between last seasons number three goalie Kimberly Newell and 2026 PWHL entry draft pick Katie DeSa. Newell came out of retirement last season but didn’t see any PWHL game time. DeSa is coming from Penn State University after posting three straight seasons of +0.930 SV%’s. PSU was a dominant power in their conference (AHA). It makes it difficult to parse out just how impressive being the goalie for PSU was.
With Maschmeyer and Campbell in front of DeSa, at the very least, it’s going to be difficult to find game time. If DeSa makes Vancouver’s roster as the number three goalie, we probably won’t know how good she is until the 2027/28 season. The good news is that with Maschmeyer and Campbell, knowing how good DeSa or Newell is right now isn’t a concern. With Cara Gardner Morey taking the head coaching role, one position she won’t have to worry about is goaltending.
Author Note: If you’ve made it this far and read the over 11,000 words used in this series of articles discussing all 12 PWHL teams goaltending situations, thank you. This is my last article as a full time feature writer for The Ice Garden. Thank you to the readers for reading. Mike and Michelle, thank you for bringing me on, been a fun few years. Thank you to the editors for putting up with these long articles for so long. The Ice Garden is set up for a massive year with a lot of new, talented writers coming in. Even if I never write another article again, The Ice Garden more than has you covered.
