5 takeaways from Week 13 of the PWHL season: Trade Dud-line, Detroit deserves a team and Fillier deserves some MVP love

With just over a month to go in the PWHL’s 2024-25 regular season, the standings are starting to tighten up and the conversation surrounding the following season is starting to heat up.

This week, the league saw another successful Takeover Tour game, the fallout of a quiet Trade Deadline and its future Rookie of the Year continue to make a name for themselves.

Here’s five takeaways from Week 13 in the PWHL.

(Lack of) Trade Deadline Drama

The PWHL’s March 13 Trade Deadline came and went, and we saw a grand total of one (1) transaction, with the Toronto Sceptres sending Kaitlin Willoughby to the Montreal Victoire for Anna Kjellbin. The deal was first reported by The Hockey News’ Ian Kennedy.

Neither player averaged much ice time, with Willoughby never recording more than 7:12 in a game this season, while Kjellbin’s ice time shrunk as the season progressed, dropping as low as 3:34 and 3:41 in two of their last three games in Montreal.

Call them fresh starts for one another, but that was the only trade we saw, which left some fans feeling underwhelmed. There was debate as to why there were almost no moves made this year, with some wondering if potential expansion had an affect (more on that later), or was there being a lack of market causing some teams to hesitate before making an offer. Draft picks still weren’t eligible to be traded, and you have to imagine contending teams would happily move an early-to-mid round pick for a serviceable player in a playoff run.

Either way, it’s clear the young league doesn’t share the same taste for the dramatic as fellow professional leagues in hockey and other sports. I feel like some of that is by design, or at least is for the time being, as the amount of work that goes into a player packing their bags, leaving their apartment, finding a new place to live, learning how to get to their new rink, and start over doesn’t quite have the same infrastructure as other hockey leagues. It will take time, and eventually they’ll be systems put in place.

Until then, good luck to Kaitlin and Anna.

Detroit is Hockeytown

The PWHL’s Takeover Tour serves a number of purposes, but the most important two are:

1. Giving fans in regions without teams the chance to see elite hockey
2. Testing the market as a viable expansion option

Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena has now played host to two Takeover Tour games, both of which were a massive success, with Sunday’s game drawing nearly 14,300 fans and breaking a U.S. women’s pro hockey attendance record in the process.

Watching the broadcast, you could see fans wearing team gear and holding signs calling for Detroit to get their own team, while in between whistles, the sounds of fans screaming at the top of their lungs, chanting their favorite player’s name or singing whatever song the DJ played. There was a feeling as if the city already had a team the last two years, and you wouldn’t blink an eye.

For a more in-depth look at the PWHL’s latest Takeover Tour game in Detroit, read my colleague Tyler Kuehl’s latest for Daily Faceoff. He was lucky enough to get down to the Motor City and enjoy Sunday’s game, and his coverage of the evening was one of the highlights during the league’s second season.

As for the game itself, the New York Sirens picked up a 4-1 win over the Minnesota Frost, keeping their playoff hopes alive and, at the very least, keeping the PWHL postseason race a tad interesting.

Expansion on the way?

Following Sunday’s game at Little Caesars Arena, Amy Scheer, PWHL executive vice president of business operations, spoke with reporters and the topic of expansion came up. According to Daily Faceoff’s Tyler Kuehl, Scheer said the league has “one week, two weeks more of some work to do” before making a decision on expansion.

“Detroit has been wonderful for us,” Scheer added. “We’ve had two great games here…and they are certainly very much under consideration. We love playing here. Our players love playing here, and so we’ll see where the chips fall in a few weeks.”

It’s not clear how many new teams would be expanded to the league next season, but many have speculated it could be at least two. While the league found success in two western markets like Vancouver and Seattle, and there is an appetite to push further west on the league map, I wonder if it would be more feasible to add two franchises in markets closer to the teams that already exist, then grow outward in the future.

Let’s just put two cities together: Detroit and … Quebec City? It would keep the balance of the same number of Canadian and American teams, plus it’s become clear the Canadian French market has the ability to support two women’s teams, then develop rivalries with one another and the Ottawa Charge.

Whatever happens, we’ll know soon.

Fillier should be MVP finalist

There’s a curse in sports that no matter how good a player is, no matter how much production they generate – if they play on a non-playoff team, they won’t be considered for any league award. I’m writing this as a bitter Toronto Blue Jays fan who still can’t believe neither the 2010 or 2011 version of Jose Bautista won the American League MVP. The guy led the league in home runs, and in 2011 he had an On-Base Plus Slugging of 1.056! Video game numbers!

Ahem, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, star players on bad teams. I bring this up, because Sarah Fillier, last year’s No. 1 overall pick and one of the game’s most anticipated prospects in history, has been everything promised and more, with a league-leading 25 points and just seven games to go in the schedule.

Even with a chunk of games where Fillier didn’t score, largely because teammate Alex Carpenter was out with injury, Fillier continues to be one of the game’s most productive players. Now with goals in five straight games – the first player in PWHL history to accomplish that feat – she’s tied for third in the league with 10 goals.

What’s unfortunate is that even with New York’s regulation win that gives them three points, they’re still eight points back of the Frost for the fourth and final playoff spot in the standings, a gap that may be too wide with just seven games to go for the Sirens. If (or when) the Sirens finish last in the league, it will automatically cut Fillier from receiving any real consideration for the league’s most valuable player.

Sure, she may be a finalist like her teammate Carpenter was last season, but right now, who would you say has been the most valuable player? Marie-Philip Poulin with the Montreal Victoire? Hillary Knight and the Fleet? I’m not doubting these are all-world superstars who have already earned their flowers, and could very likely be one of the finalists at the end of the year. But there’s a case to be made that, night in and night out, the 25-year-old Fillier may already be the game’s best.

Sceptres need to do ‘soul searching’

The Sceptres are nearing the end of a 10-day break, with their last game coming March 9 in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Frost. Having been in attendance, it was clear the home team was sluggish, struggling to generate any attempts on the Frost goal.

Head Coach Troy Ryan didn’t hold back in his post-game comments.

“I think we have to do a little bit of soul searching. You’ve got to reflect on a performance like that at this point in the season you’ve got to ask some questions,” Ryan said. “It’s also important not to dive too deep into it and you hope it’s a bit of an outlier, but it’s definitely something we’ve got to find a way to deal with it as you can’t have something like that surfacing this close to playoff time.”

It’s funny that going into that Sunday matinee matchup, the Sceptres had won seven of their last eight games, climbing all the way from near the bottom of the standings to second-place overall. Sure, the Fleet moved past them and Toronto is now third with seven games to go, but they’ve still carved a spot for themselves at the table with the game’s best. Some may have felt like Ryan may have been too firm in his post-game comments, but having covered this game for a long time, you could hear the tone of a coach who doesn’t want their players to lose their edge at the end of a season.

It’s not rare to see a team that did well for the first chunk of the season go completely belly up in the spring, start losing games near the end and either finish with a bad playoff spot, or miss the postseason entirely. Ryan, a veteran coach who has won gold medals and led the Sceptres to a first-place finish last season, doesn’t want to let that happen.