OTTAWA — The relief after the win was palpable among the Toronto leadership group.
A 4-2 victory over the Ottawa Charge was not just long overdue, it was owed — at least it felt that way for the women in the Sceptres uniform.
From head coach Troy Ryan to team captain Blayre Turnbull and alternate Renata Fast, the phrases “monkey off our back” or “we needed that” were dropped regularly in a handful of post game discussions with this reporter.
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But the common thread speaking with the three individuals that set the tone for this team was an overall pride in how the club handled a stretch of eight losses in nine games, when included the four that preceded the Ottawa game that saw Toronto roundly outplay their opponents, but each time be denied the deserved and, most believe, earned result they coveted.
This is a team that lost games as recently as Sunday on an overtime winner that was so clearly offside it very well could end up changing the way the league handles its reviews.
They set a league record for outshooting an opponent in another game, thoroughly dominating the action only to see a fluke goal late in the game put that one in the loss column.
Even Wednesday night, just when it looked like the Sceptres were finally going to be rewarded for outshooting and outplaying an opponent with a win — as is normally the case in sport — the ‘here we go again’ narrative began when a Fast clearing pass from the corner behind her own net somehow wound up bouncing into said net off the skate of goalie Kristen Campbell.
Ryan, who doesn’t give much credence to the idea of hockey gods or puck luck, was shaking his head at that one.
“I don’t know if ‘snakebit’ or whatever term you want to use ever really got said. We don’t talk about that stuff,” Ryan said of his team’s handling of things the past few weeks. “It’s more like you are doing the right things and it will come. Sometimes they come in bunches and sometimes they just don’t come and you just got to be OK with that.
“What happens, though, is usually when they’re not coming, you start changing what you are doing and you start looking for different types of offence.”
That didn’t happen with the Sceptres. The whole losing streak wasn’t bad luck or flukey goals, but for sure the four or five games that preceded Tuesday’s win were performances worthy of points and maybe wins, and Toronto had very little of either in that stretch.
That unfortunate run has put them at the bottom of the league standings with a full third of the scheduled already played. But Tuesday night felt like a shift.
“It’s character-building when you are in a rut like that and then you start playing well and you still can’t get out of it and it seems like nothing can go in,” Fast said after Tuesday’s win. “It’s been really cool to see how the group has stuck together and been so confident and positive with all the players and staff … We just knew it was going to click at some point. Even tonight it wasn’t easy. The bounces can suck but we stuck together and it was cool to see.”
Turnbull, who would score the game winner and earn first star status, stealing a rolling puck off the stick of Ottawa defender Ronja Savolainen and beating the almost-unbeatable Emerance Maschmeyer on a deke, admitted the frustration was building over the past handful of games.
“I think it’s natural to feel a bit of frustration after the way our last few games (coming into Ottawa) had gone,” Turnbull said. “I would say our last five games we have deserved to get points in all of them. So, when you’re not getting the wins or even getting it to overtime when you think you deserve to, it can get frustrating.
“But when you’re playing well, you know the tides will turn eventually and you just have to stick with it and stay confident and really believe that things will start to go your way if you continue to play the right way and that’s exactly what happened (in Ottawa),” Turnbull said.
The Sceptres went through a lengthy rough stretch a year ago, only to come out of it and reel off 11 consecutive wins to win the first-ever regular-season crown.
Ryan thinks this team might have come out of this funk even stronger than they did that rut a year ago.
“As a group we’re in a better spot than we were last year,” he said. “They haven’t veered one way or the other. They know they are playing well. Obviously it was frustrating. That goal that went in from behind the net tonight, there was a moment where they were just kind of like ‘Oh my God, is this going to happen again?
“But they stuck with it and nice that they got rewarded because you can only go to that well so many times when you are getting that bad feeling and you feel like the hockey gods that people talk about (are always going to be against you). But they just put it in perspective and found a way.”
Turnbull who was right in the middle of both struggles has a similar view to her head coach.
“It feels like our team is playing a more complete game than we played all of last season,” the captain said. “I think it’s something we should be really proud of and I think we only go up from here.”