Toronto Sceptres make noise at PWHL draft, trade for top New York Sirens defender Ella Shelton

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OTTAWA — The Toronto Sceptres didn’t own the first-overall pick in the PWHL draft, but they certainly stole the thunder in Ottawa last night.

With Patty Kazmaier Award winner Casey O’Brien still on the board, the Sceptres turned the draft on its head early by trading the No. 3 pick in the draft to the New York Sirens for defender Ella Shelton.

New York also received Toronto’s fourth-round pick in the deal.

Then just as the draft was settling into a bit of a routine, the Sceptres shook things up again. Toronto dealt its starting goaltender, Kristen (Soupy) Campbell, of its first two seasons to Vancouver for the expansion club’s second- and third-round picks (16th and 23rd overall), while also giving up their own third-round pick (19th overall).

The move is a good one for both Campbell and the Sceptres. Campbell gets a fresh start in Vancouver alongside national squad teammate Emerance Maschmeyer. Campbell had a rocky finish to an up-and -down tenure with the Sceptres as she was on the bench for Toronto’s final game of the playoffs after tough Games 2 and 3 in the semifinal loss to Minnesota.

Campbell had a tonne of good moments in the Toronto net, but with the signing of former Montreal netminder Elaine Chuli and Raygan Kirk somehow avoiding being selected in the expansion draft, the writing was on the wall for Campbell’s future in Toronto.

The Sceptres free up some much-needed cap space as well by moving on from Campbell.

Shelton, meanwhile, has been one of the top defenders in the PWHL since the league began and even scored the first goal in league history against her new club.

She is very familiar to Toronto’s braintrust, having played a prominent role on Canada’s national women’s team where Sceptres GM Gina Kingsbury and head coach Troy Ryan held the same roles.

In a year in which defenders were flying around at the expansion draft, then again during free agency, building a reliable, consistent blue line has become a priority for teams.

The Sceptres lost a key defender in Megan Carter, last year’s second-rounder, when she went to Seattle in the expansion draft.

With no disrespect intended to Carter, who had a very solid first year in the league, Shelton is an unquestioned upgrade at this position for the Sceptres.

Like Renata Fast, who is expected to walk away with the league’s defender of the year honour at Wednesday’s awards, Shelton is a strong two-way defender as capable of jumping into the rush and providing offence as she is protecting her own end.

It gives Ryan plenty of options at the back end and the ability to count on offence from his blueline, much in the way the new Vancouver franchise has talked about since adding both Sophie Jaques and Claire Thompson from Minnesota in the expansion process.

With the trade, New York wound up with the top two projected forwards in the draft, taking Colgate standout Kristyna Kaltounkova of Czechia with the first-overall pick, allowing her to rejoin her old head coach Greg Fargo with the Sirens.

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Kaltounkova spent four years with Fargo at Colgate before he moved on to take over behind the Sirens bench last season.

New York GM Pascal Daoust took some heat for protecting his defence during the expansion process and in doing so exposing forward Alex Carpenter who was snapped up Seattle.

But in hoarding his defence, Daoust opened the door to a trade like the one he made with Toronto. It allowed him to add O’Brien to Kaltounkova and perhaps lessen the blow in losing both Carpenter and Jessie Eldridge in the expansion process.

The top defender off the board went to the Boston Fleet in U.S. national team and Clarkson standout Haley Winn.

Winn and Nicole Gosling were the backbone of that Clarkson team. Both defenders went within two picks of each other, with Gosling — a London, Ont., native and cousin of one-time Sceptre Julia Gosling — going fourth overall to the Montreal Victoire.

The draft hosts from Ottawa were next on the clock and, to the surprise of very few, they went with the best remaining defender available in Rory Guilday from Cornell.

Guilday has big shoes to fill with the departures of Ashton Bell and Aneta Tejralova who were casualties of the expansion process for the Charge.

mganter@postmedia.com