The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) still has a little over a week and a half left on its pause for the Women’s World Championship. In the final game for PWHL Minnesota before the break, their general manager Natalie Darwitz had a media availability and answered everyone’s big questions surrounding the team and the league.
“The league continues to have a lot of parity, top to bottom, everything is pretty close, is that what you would’ve expected going in? And what does that say about the state of the women’s game?”
Darwitz: “One hundred percent, just the way how the draft was set up, how the three free agents were set up. You knew there was going to be parity in the league, if you look at every roster, they have their Olympians on it whether they’re Canadian, American, Finnish, doesn’t matter; you have your handful of Olympians that are your core, so it’s just fun. It’s fun hockey every time you turn on the TV here you look at the standings. I watched the Toronto/Ottawa game, that was a phenomenal hockey game yesterday (March 23).
The thing where I’m talking about is a month from now, depending on how everyone’s roster is. This thing could go either way, right, could go right, left, up, or down right now. A team like Ottawa, who’s sitting in fourth place, could go well fourth place, no. They’re playing really good hockey right now, and that could just change with the wind right now, to be quite honest with you. I’m not surprised at all with the parity, I think it was really smart to start with six teams from top to bottom; everyone’s lineup is rock solid. It’s those finite things of culture, coaching, special teams, possibly travel, those are gonna be the things that set teams apart. And to be honest, the hockey gods come into play too.”
“You’re in a good position for a playoff spot, are you putting extra emphasis on trying to make sure you get home ice?”
Darwitz: “I think for us that would be huge. I do. I think for not only the fan base that we have had this first season, I do think we have a good home ice advantage. Traveling as we know, we’re going to have to travel regardless if we can put ourselves on the better end of only traveling once a series of a best of five. We’re going to have to travel no matter what, given those mathematic equations, but to not have to do it twice or go to a game five and then have to travel twice, I think is huge, so two things.
Obviously, home ice advantage for us with our fan base and then limiting the number of times we’re on an airplane, I think, is significant. I think another small factor that’s going into us playing well the last few games, we’ve been home the whole month of March, and I can tell ya when we have to hop on a plane in the middle of April for a five-night, our last two trips of the season are four-nighters. We haven’t had that yet.”
She went on to explain how they could flip their schedule a little bit in April, so they didn’t have to be on the road as long. They asked to move one of their games up, and everything worked out, and the league approved it so they wouldn’t have to be on the road for six nights. She went on to emphasize how important playing at home has been for the team’s success as of late.
“For the players that weren’t going to go to World’s, are they allowed to use the team’s facilities during the break?”
Darwitz: “Yeah, we’re still operating, so we’ll have the next two days off, and then they’ll skate Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We’ll have a five-day break for Easter and for our players out of state to go home, and then we kind of have a schedule for the next two weeks where it’s a couple days on, a couple days off. The league still wants us to maintain training and not fully have this a free-for-all, and everyone all of the sudden, social media they’re in Cabo or Mexico or somewhere.
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We don’t want that…When this league came about and started in June or July, the World Championship and the international schedule was already created so this was just something we got to work through at the same time we’re going into five games left and playoffs. The league wants these players to be ready for that instead of dragging off the rust the first couple days back. So we’re operating as usual; we do have a couple days off here and there to get mentally and physically recharged and get the bumps and bruises heal, but other than that they will be in and out of St. Paul for the next couple weeks.”
“Anything the team or league can do to kind of maintain the momentum during the break to make sure people (for lack of a better way to put it) don’t forget about you, that the season will continue?”
Darwitz: “It’s a tough time of year; you have March Madness going on, so you can look at it either way, okay at least we’re not competing with that, or you can also look at it as here’s an opportunity for us to now do some things that we normally can’t do in the midst of playing three games in five days.
So can we get out and do some community service, could we get out and you know the hard part is we’re turning the leaf here of spring breaks and transitioning from community hockey to AAA. So it’s just honestly a really tough time of year; we’ve kind of ventured into a couple opportunities of what can we do as a staff thinking about how can we stay relevant, how can we stay in the community, and it’s a really tough time of year just because of the spring breaks and the changing of the seasons for hockey and just other sports…”
She went on to say she and a couple of other players had an event at the capital planned, plus she hoped the league had some ideas to keep things going as they push towards the postseason. The next question revolved around what Darwitz has seen from players like Taylor Heise and Grace Zumwinkle who’ve had to make the transition from college to pro hockey.
Darwitz: “The college players I believe are the ones who have benefited the most obviously with timing number one, they didn’t have to wait for a professional league and they’ve benefitted from it. However, they’re actually I think the most battle tested, if you look at our veteran players they’re used to playing a different season. They don’t have, you know, maybe they were going to Canada for a couple games coming back and training for three weeks. Our college players are tested as far as this type of schedule, they’re used to the demand of the WCHA (Western Collegiate Hockey Association) schedule or the NCAA schedule.
I think the adjustment is probably from the older players going, okay we’re back into a setting where we were like in college but that was oh five, six, seven, eight years ago for some of them. So I think you’re seeing players like Grace (Zumwinkle) and Heise jump right from college to here and have immediate success. I think they’ll both tell you they want their stats to be better absolutely, they’re competitors…”
She went on to say how Heise catches so much attention it allows her teammates to score goals and be open as well as being one of the faces of the franchise. They’ll be around for some time, and they love to volunteer in the community.
“Based on what you’ve seen from all the teams so far, what kind of a team is it going to take to be built to succeed in the playoffs in this league?”
Darwitz: “A team that’s healthy, I think you’re seeing Montréal; they’re without Marie-Philip Poulin the last couple games. I’m not sure if she’s in the lineup here this afternoon (March 23) but these high-end players are so valuable to your roster they completely change the whole dynamic of your roster so someone like Marie-Philip going out or Taylor Heise going out for five games for us. Did we weather the storm? Sure. Are we a different team with her in the lineup? Absolutely.
So I think number one is who is healthy, number two is who’s playing the best team game. I think what I like about our play right now is I think in the middle frame there, we were very much a dump-and-chase team. I think now we’re starting to control the puck a little bit better, and you’re seeing players manufacture goal-scoring opportunities. You’re seeing secondary scoring, Claire Butorac scores the other game for us, when you start to see the role players start to have a hand in the scoresheet that means your team is firing on all cylinders. When your D are scoring, when your D are getting primary assists, when your goalies can get shutouts, you can win a game and only get scored on one or two goals. I think that’s when you’re operating the best and that’s something we’ve done this last stretch here.”
She went on to discuss how their special teams have been struggling, and they need to improve in that area. With the postseason approaching, they can’t rely on just their five-on-five play to get them through.
“What have been any major surprises this year?”
Darwitz: “I can’t think of anything that’s jumped off the page about surprises in a bad way. Not that I’m surprised but I’m very, very gracious and thankful of the State of Hockey. I think we’ve had a tremendous outpour of support, a backing of people taking interest in our team and it’s been just goosebumps. So I don’t want to use the word surprise but it’s been better than I anticipated.”
PWHL Back Soon
Darwitz provided a lot of insight into the league, PWHL Minnesota, and the postseason. The Women’s World Championship has another week and a half before the players return to their respective teams, but it’ll go by quickly. Before we know it, the first-ever postseason for the PWHL will be underway, and hopefully, PWHL Minnesota can make it all the way.