Sceptres hope Spooner, Nurse return to pre-injury dominance

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The Toronto Sceptres have pretty much reached their goals for the PWHL regular season with one game remaining.

They have qualified for the playoffs and have home ice in the first round which will begin Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Coca Cola Coliseum against a still to be determined opponent.

The lone remaining goal would be a first overall finish for a second year in a row, and while they can still get that, they’re going to need a little help to pull it off.

By virtue of more regulation wins, the Sceptres can claim their second regular season crown with a regulation win over Ottawa on Saturday (Noon puck drop) at Coca Cola Coliseum and a New York regulation win over Montreal in New Jersey (2 p.m. start, also on Saturday).

The Sirens already are out of the playoff picture and have already clinched the first overall pick in this year’s draft, but they have shown no letup in their game.

But whether the Sceptres finish first or second won’t change the fact that they feel there is some unfinished business at hand following their first-round exit last year.

And in order to pull off what they failed to do a year ago, and win the Walter Cup, is going to take a full roster competing at its highest level.

The biggest difference from last season to this is that this year it doesn’t feel like the Sceptres have played their best hockey yet.

It’s hard to argue after an 11-game winning streak in Season 1 that some sort of high-water mark had already been achieved by the time the playoffs rolled around.

This time, they have two key players in Natalie Spooner and Sarah Nurse, two players who were central to that success a year ago, who have yet to get back to that level this season.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that at some point in these upcoming playoffs one or both don’t find that form or something close to that form again and provide a legitimate boost to a team preparing to take a run at the Walter Cup.

A torn ACL in her right knee in the playoffs last year ended Spooner’s season and factored in heavily in Toronto’s five-game semifinal loss to the eventual champions from Minnesota.

Spooner didn’t return to game action until Feb. 11 this year missing the first 16 games of the season.

That absence has cost Spooner not just the time to train and improve that the rest of the league had, but her timing and some of that swagger that saw her run away with the league’s MVP title in season one.

“If anybody could just come back to this level and play and just pick up where they left off (after a serious injury), would it say much about the level?” Sceptres head coach Troy Ryan pointed out.

“It’s not easy, right,” he said. “So, when you get almost a year away from the game or a substantial part of the season away from the game, you just can’t step back and pretend like nothing happened.

“While she was trying to rehab it wasn’t like everyone else just stayed home and sat on the couch,” Ryan said. “They got better. They improved. Their timing improved. They got used to the league.“

Nurse said coming back from the lower-body injury she suffered during Rivalry Series play Feb. 6 in Halifax with the league on an international break has and continues to test her patience even now.

Even having experienced a similar injury a few years ago, Nurse said the level of play she is trying to return to this time around is just so much better, and the game so much faster than what she previously came back to that this time around has been significantly harder to come back from.

And while she has seen individual progress each and every time she has stepped on the ice since returning on March 23, she candidly admits she’s still not yet all the way back.

“I don’t feel fully back to where I was so that’s disappointing,” Nurse acknowledged. “I know I have so much more to give and I want to keep going so I can be the best version of myself and peak really at the time right and what better time than the playoffs.”

Ryan has seen enough players go through what two of his stars are going through right now to know what it’s like.

“It’s frustrating for (Nurse and Spooner) when you know what you want to do and what you are trying to do and hoping to accomplish and have a certain high expectation of yourself and your performance and at times you are just not able to execute the things you are used to being able to execute,” Ryan said.

“Then all the extra thoughts that come with that can add to that as well,” he said. “As much as you have to manage and get through the injury, you have to manage and get through all the thoughts that creep into your game when you’re going through that.”

Ryan can’t predict when either player will be all the way back to the explosive dynamos both were before their respective injuries, but he does know that it’s different with every player and the only real remedy is time.

The good thing for the Sceptres is both are well into their returns. Nurse has six PWHL games and a world championship tournament under her belt since she got back on the ice. Spooner, whose absence from the ice was much longer, has 13 PWHL games and the same world championship tournament.

And both will be in uniform for their team’s regular season final vs. Ottawa on Saturday.

If even one of that duo gets back to close to her previous form in these playoffs, how much does that change the Sceptres’ chase for a Walter Cup?

mganter@postmedia.com