Everyone has a process – Gina Kingsbury wants hers to bring a championship to PWHL Toronto

As Canadians were celebrating Family Day and hundreds of children filled the Ford Performance Centre in the west end of Toronto, the city’s newest professional hockey team practises on one of the facility’s many rinks, with coaches barking out orders at the players and the younger children being picked up by parents in order to see the action, while the slightly older ones go on their tippy toes to see over the boards.

At the top of the stands in the southwest corner is the office of PWHL Toronto, a long and wide room with a kings table for the players to eat at after practise and smaller tables for the various staff that occupy it. One desk that oversees the room is that of Gina Kingsbury, the franchise’s first general manager.

The Toronto executive agreed to speak with Daily Faceoff for a sit-down interview to discuss a variety of topics, including starting a team from scratch, developing relationships with other general managers and the evolution of women’s professional hockey.

Read Daily Faceoff’s Tyler Kuehl interview with New York GM Pascal Daoust

Starting a team from scratch

As of the publication of this piece, the team is 5-1-0-5 (W-OTW-OTL-L) with 17 points through its first 11 games, third in the league standings. A sluggish start saw the team go 1-0-0-4, hovering near the bottom and having some wondering if the early expectations of the league’s first championship trophy were misplaced. But Kingsbury said her team never lost sight of the process.

“We set a plan where we knew we would have bumps and ebbs and flows of a season ahead of us,” Kingsbury said. “If we stuck with the plan and really invested in the process, we would be in a good position down the road.”

Toronto has won four straight and five of their last six games, led by Natalie Spooner’s league-leading 10 goals in 11 games and a resurgence from netminder Kristen Campbell, who struggled to begin the season but has bounced back, stopping 101 of the last 105 shots in her last four games, recording two shutouts during that span.

Kingsbury is well aware of the challenges of starting a team from scratch. Hired by PWHL Toronto last September, she was tasked with drafting over a dozen players, signing them to contracts and recruiting the game’s best players to join the franchise. A week after officially taking the job, she signed Sarah Nurse, Blayre Turnbull and Renata Fast to three-year contracts, all Olympic gold medal winners in Beijing 2022 and stalwarts for the club through its first few months of existence.

But she sees a lot of similarities in managing Toronto with previous jobs she’s held, whether it’s coaching at the collegiate level or serving as GM for the Canadian National Team, a title she still holds.

“I think your values don’t change, or your approach to how you build teams,” Kingsbury said. “One common theme is that we value people. We want to build a good environment and a good culture for our team. That’s something that was a priority to us.”

Like any professional with strong leadership skills, Kingsbury recognizes there are things she doesn’t have a lot of experience with. With an entirely new league and franchise, there’s plenty of off-ice challenges that need to be addressed. She credits a laundry list of talented professionals that have helped her transition into the role.

“I have the support of incredible staff members … our coaches, our strength coaches, our managers of hockey ops and game ops, they’re all well experienced and allow me to delegate a lot more and focus on hockey.”

Trading in a new league

In the inaugural season of a new league, there’s going to be plenty of firsts. The PWHL had its first trade on Feb. 12 as Boston traded the reigning Patty Kazmaier Award winner in defender Sophie Jaques to Minnesota in exchange for forward Susanna Tapani and Abby Cook.

At the beginning of the season, general managers were still navigating the mechanisms of the league and trying to find where the boundaries with their colleagues. When asked if conversations between the league’s other executives were beginning to heat up, she said part of the process is having a finger on the pulse.

“Not every conversation you have with a GM has to do with trades. You’re building those relationships and building that trust,” she said. “I think that some GMs seem to be eager to make a change and some are very comfortable with the roster they have.”

Kingsbury isn’t sure if it’s necessarily gotten more competitive as the season has played out, but teams are definitely more aware with where teams stands in terms of what they need. However, collaboration between the teams is still prevalent as everyone steers through the first season.

Part of Kingsbury’s thought process as a GM is learning what the draft will look like next season and what some of the rules and regulations of the salary cap will be moving forward before making big decisions.

“I like to know what the forecast looks like.”

The evolution of women’s professional hockey

Kingsbury has found plenty of success through a life in hockey, winning two Olympic gold medals with Team Canada as a player in 2006 Turin and 2010 Vancouver, as well as three gold medals and three silver medals at the World Championships.

She also played professionally, skating one season with the NWHL’s Montreal Axion, scoring 21 goals and 29 assists for 50 points in 30 games. After her first Olympic experience, she spent the next three seasons with the Calgary Oval X-Treme of the Western Women’s Hockey League, scoring 55 goals and 75 assists for 130 points in just 63 games. She helped the team win a National Women’s Championship in 2006-07.

Since she retired, there’s been different iterations of women’s professional hockey leagues, like the CWHL, the NWHL/PHF, the PWHPA and more. When asked if there was one thing she’s noticed in the new league that’s changed since her playing days, she didn’t hesitate in saying its professional environment.

“You can have a lot of aspects that come with a professional environment, like the quality of staff that these athletes get to work with .. the resources that allow them to practise in the middle of the day and not have to have a second job to support them,” said the four-time Olympian. “The people surrounding these athletes are truly the best at what they do. That might be the greatest environment boost that these players are getting, being surrounded by experts and passionate people in their fields.”

The environment for these players on the ice in front of sold-out arenas may be just as impactful for them as the environment off it.

“To play in front of 19,285 fans (for the Battle of Bay Street held on Feb. 16), I’ve played in front of 18,000 fans but it was for an Olympic gold medal game, and now you’re talking about a regular season game on a Friday night. There’s a massive difference between the professional leagues I played in and the one we are in right now.”