PHF Playoffs 2022: Analyzing Every Team Vying for the Isobel Cup
The six Premier Hockey Federation teams are headed to the Sunshine State for the 2022 Isobel Cup Playoffs.
The AdventHealth Center Ice in Wesley Chapel, Florida, will host the PHF for a weekend filled with intense playoff hockey. Four teams—the Boston Pride, Buffalo Beauts, Metropolitan Riveters and Minnesota Whitecaps—will play Friday to meet the top two clubs in the semifinals.
The Connecticut Whale and Toronto Six received a bye to the semifinals and will await the winners of the two play-in games for Sunday’s semifinals. The Whale will play the lowest-remaining seed in the semis, while the Six get the higher-seeded team.
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The puck will drop on the 2022 Isobel Cup Final on Monday at 9:00 p.m. ET on ESPN2, a first for the Premier Hockey Federation.
Here is what you need to know about each of the six teams ahead of the puck drop in Florida.
Play-In Contenders
Play-In Game 1: (6) Buffalo Beauts vs. Boston Pride (3)
Game Time: Friday, 4 p.m. ET on ESPN+
Buffalo Beauts
Regular-season record: (6-14-0)
Key Players: Despite the team's struggles, goalie Carly Jackson has been a stalwart for Buffalo. She faced a PHF-high 504 shots this season and put up a respectable .903 save percentage and a 3.25 goals-against average.
Offensively, the Beauts rely on defender Dominique Kremer (six goals, five assists) and forward Autumn MacDougall (five goals, nine assists). The Beauts will also need to get big games from stars and co-captains Taylor Accursi (three goals, eight assists) and defender Marie-Jo Pelletier (five assists).
Despite the challenges on the ice, the Beauts love playing for each other.
“From the beginning, we've said that we want our team to be relentless," Buffalo head coach Rhea Coad said Tuesday night. “As far as the mantra that we're going with right now, we're just kind of playing with three keys, and it's energy, effort and commitment. Those three words are what we're rolling with.”
Boston Pride
Regular-season record: 10-5-5
Key Players: "Keep Calm and Trust in Jillian Dempsey" is what head coach Paul Mara’s hoodie read during Tuesday’s media call. The forward has been with the Pride since their first championship in the inaugural season in 2016 and helped the Pride win their second championship last year despite battling a shoulder injury.
Mara and the Pride are hoping Dempsey gets it going in the postseason after she posted 14 points in 20 games.
The Pride played and lost five straight overtime contests to end the regular season. It's not the way you want to finish a campaign, but this team has faced adversity before.
Prediction: Boston knows it hasn't tapped its full potential. The Pride are ready to invoke the energy of a particular quarterback to get back on track and advance to the semifinals.
“Everybody's excited for the opportunity to be in Tampa and, you know, the environment that they've created down there with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tom Brady, a New England guy, headed down there and taking care of business. We'd like to follow suit,” Dempsey said.
The Beauts will play a tight game against the Pride but ultimately fall to Boston.
Play-In Game 2: (5) Minnesota Whitecaps vs. (4) Metropolitan Riveters
Game Time: Friday, 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN+
Minnesota Whitecaps
Regular-season record: 6-13-1
Key Players: Captain Allie Thunstrom (18 goals, three assists in 20 games) led the PHF in goals. The former speedskater used her quickness and on-ice chemistry with linemate Jonna Curtis (nine goals, 15 assists) to record eight of her 18 goals in six games last month.
Audra Morrison (15 points) and Ashleigh Brykaliuk (14 points) join Thunstrom and Curtis as the top four scorers on the team.
The Whitecaps have relied on goaltending since their first season in the league in 2018-19, but two-time Isobel Cup champion goalie Amanda Leveille has been sidelined with an injury. It's unclear if she'll be able to participate in the postseason, so the onus shifts to the offense.
Morrison and head coach Ronda Engelhardt believe the Whitecaps have exorcised some of the demons that stifled them early on.
“At the beginning of the year, we were not scoring,” Morrison said. “I think our top scorer within eight games had four goals. And that's not a lot for eight games. Once the puck started going into the net, we started to see that once we use each other, and we want to see each other succeed, that's when the puck started going to the net.”
If they can return to a high-scoring team that won the Isobel Cup in 2018, they have a chance to win the evenly matched contest with the Riveters.
Metropolitan Riveters
Regular-season record: 7-12-1
Key Players: The Riveters have electric scorers Kendall Cornine (10 goals, six assists) and Madison Packer (12 goals, 11 assists). The return of Kiira Dosdall-Arena after giving birth to her daughter Josie has settled the blue line and special teams just in time for the postseason.
Brooke Wolejko has taken over as the team's starting goalie and will need to come up big against the Whitecaps if the Riveters hope to advance.
Prediction: The Riveters' goaltending and defense will hold off the Whitecaps long enough for Cornine to tally her first goal since February 26.
“The hardest thing to do is end the team season, and that's kind of the boat that everyone's in,” Packer said. “I expect Friday night to be a fast-paced game, and we're excited to kind of get that mini-series with Minnesota.”
The Top Two
Toronto Six
Regular-season record: 16-3-1
Key Players: Reigning league MVP Mikyla Grant-Mentis tallied 30 points (13 goals, 17 assists) and nearly grabbed the 2022 scoring title. The battle between MGM and Whale forward Kennedy Marchment came down to the final weekend series of the season. She scored a critical game-winning goal—her sixth deciding goal of the year—in overtime against the Whale in the regular season's penultimate game.
Starting goaltender Elaine Chuli has been stellar for Toronto all season and was in net for each of its 16 wins.
Connecticut Whale
Regular-season record: 15-3-2
Key Players: First overall pick Taylor Girard finished her pro debut with 24 points (11 goals, 13 assists) and was only behind linemate and PHF scoring champion Marchment in points for the Whale.
The top line for Connecticut accounts for 73 points, and eight different Whale players tallied double digits in scoring during the regular season.
Connecticut, a founding-four franchise since the league was first called the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), sits at the top of the standings.
They completed the most successful season in franchise history, including a 12-game winning streak. The Whale averaged 3.7 goals per game and tallied a plus-30 goal differential in their seventh campaign.
The franchise began to right the ship under head coach Colton Orr, who took over to start the 2019-20 season but remain the only Founding Four team without a title.
Prediction: Connecticut has been the most consistent team in the PHF this season. The story of the final Founding Four team to capture the Isobel Cup writes itself. That said, the Whale have no time for fairy tale storylines.
“The media does a nice job of always reminding us at the start of every season that we're the team that hasn't won it,” captain Shannon Turner said Tuesday night. “We don't have that external pressure that we need to perform. It's more just an internal desire from each player to be successful and be successful for the player beside them.”
The prevailing message in the Whale locker room as it reached and ultimately surpassed the most wins in franchise history is: We’re not done yet. Connecticut knows the game it wants to play, and more often than not, it's able to execute.
The 2022 Isobel Cup is the Whale's to lose.
The semifinals and final will be aired on ESPN2 and TSN in Canada. The full schedule is below:
Friday, March 25 – Preliminary Round
4:00 p.m. ET – Buffalo Beauts (6) vs Boston Pride (3) (ESPN+)
7:30 p.m. ET – Minnesota Whitecaps (5) vs Metropolitan Riveters (4) (ESPN+)
Sunday, March 27 – Semifinals
1:00 p.m. ET – Lowest Remaining Seed vs Connecticut Whale (1) (ESPN+)
4:30 p.m. ET – Highest Remaining Seed vs Toronto Six (2) (ESPN+)
Monday, March 28 – Final
8:30 p.m. ET – Pregame Show (ESPN+)
9:00 p.m. ET – Winner of Semifinal 1 vs Winner of Semifinal 2, Postgame Show (ESPN2)
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