Sarah Nurse will take a reminder of her first year in the PWHL into the off-season with her in the form of a splint on her left hand
Those positive memories and franchise-establishing steps that were taken were the overriding memories of a year that fell just short for PWHL Toronto but a group that refused to only see the end result as a Year 1 takeaway.
Nurse actually broke the finger in the final game of the regular season against Minnesota and then played the entire five-game series with it in a splint.
Nurse said she should be fully healed in six weeks, the finger at least.
Getting over a best-of-five series loss after being up 2-0 might take a little longer.
“We had such high expectations of ourselves,” Nurse said Sunday morning as the team conducted its exit interviews and final media interviews. “We wanted to win a championship in the end and we weren’t afraid to say that at all.”
High on that list for Nurse and Blayre Turnbull and Renata Fast and Jocelyne Larocque, all members of PWHL Toronto’s leadership group, is the foundation that has been laid for the generations of players to come.
There’s a way PWHL Toronto plays and conducts itself and this group fully expects that will be the way for years to come, even after some of them depart.
“I think that is what I am most proud of as the leader and someone who has a lot of experience playing hockey and being on a lot of different teams,” Turnbull said. “I am so proud of the foundation that we set here in Toronto. Just to think about the culture and the environment and the buy-in we got from all of our players and staff. It was just incredible to be a part of and I know moving forward this franchise will succeed and the success will have a lot to do with everything we did this year.”
Larocque said her fondest memory of the season will probably be the closeness and togetherness the entire leadership team helped create within their locker room.
“The amount of people I heard after Game 5 – I mean we took our team getting undressed – and the amount of players that said this was the best team they have ever been a part of made me feel so proud,” Larocque said. “And I agree with them. It’s such a great team. The way everyone felt included, everyone felt they could be themselves and was proud to wear that Toronto jersey.”
The reality of the situation is though that this team will not be back together as is a year from now. The dynamics of the league – from the contract lengths to the incoming talent in the draft — mean change is a certainty.
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