Buckle up, it's going to be intense when Toronto and Montreal clash on Sunday

Toronto has been close to perfect on the penalty kill

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Sunday’s fourth of five regular- season PWHL matchups between Toronto and Montreal is unlikely to be the kind of game anyone will deem tame or docile.

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A physical game last Friday, when Montreal was dominated on the scoreboard and felt it didn’t match the aggressiveness of its hosts set the tone for a pushback game when the two square off this Sunday in a matinee affair at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

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And if Montreal is out to prove it cannot be pushed around, fully expect Toronto to push right back. A team that sets the tone physically and is tough to play against is the identity that is now firmly rooted in the Toronto DNA and only became more entrenched in who they are when it helped them climb out of an early hole and run off nine straight wins.

Expect, therefore, special teams to have a major say in the outcome on Sunday afternoon. And on that front, Toronto has an edge going into this one.

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No PWHL team has had the kind of penalty-killing success Toronto has had. It has been short-handed a total of 47 times and allowed just two goals against in those situations for a stellar 95.7% success rate. Factor in the two jailbreak goals the team has scored moments after being down a player and you can make the argument that overall, it has been perfect on the kill.

Montreal, on the other hand, has struggled when short-handed. Opposing power-plays have scored a league-high 11 goals against Montreal, which has been short-handed a league-high 59 times.

Toronto also has an edge over Montreal in power-play situations. Both teams have scored five times on the power play, but Montreal has had 13 more opportunities.

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Toronto head coach Troy Ryan admits his team’s 11.1% success rate with the player advantage has to get up to somewhere around 20% before he’s satisfied, but he doesn’t view either scenario in a vacuum.

In a game, all Ryan wants is for his team to win the overall special-teams battle, which he is getting that most nights, thanks to those gaudy penalty-kill numbers.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not focused on getting more out of his power play. So it wasn’t that surprising that towards the end of practice on Tuesday, Ryan and his five primary power-play specialists — Renata Fast, Natalie Spooner, Sarah Nurse, Hannah Miller and Blayre Turnbull — were huddled at one end of the ice talking things over.

“My conversation with them was for them to go over the goals they have scored this year (on the power play),” Ryan said. “Goals are scored around that blue paint. You have to get pucks there and, on power plays, you have to be comfortable getting pucks into that tough area and then have numbers there. A lot of times people think about what power-play goals look like but the truth is the majority of the time they are not that pretty.”

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Ryan’s message was as much as that you want all of those cross-ice passes with the defenders’ focus constantly being switched before you find that net-side open pass for the easy tip-in, as it was that most power play goals begin with a good shot on net and someone banging home the rebound.

Miller, for instance, has five goals this year, and four of them have been scored in exactly that manner. Spooner, the league-leader in goals with 12 has most of her success crashing the net.

It’s the willingness to go into those dirty areas and absorb the punishment that is going to move Toronto’s power play from a middle-of-the-pack group scoring at just more than 11%, to one that is closer to 20%.

“It’s easy to take your foot off the gas a little bit on the power play because you want that flank-to-flank play or you want some more highlight-reel type goals,” Ryan said. “But generally I believe (power-play goals) happen when you get a quick shot on net and then you get numbers in that area.”

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POULIN QUESTIONABLE

Sunday’s game takes on a much different look if Montreal forward Marie-Philip Poulin, widely considered the best player in women’s hockey, isn’t in uniform. Poulin was a scratch from Sunday’s loss to Ottawa after she was visibly limping at the end of Friday’s game in Toronto.

As much as a Poulin absence would bolster Toronto’s chances, Ryan wishes only consistent health for the game’s best player. “I hope she is OK,” he said. “I know she played right to the last shift of Friday’s game. She was on the faceoff for the short-handed goal we got. I don’t know any details but she didn’t just look herself (towards the end).

“I hope she is OK,” he repeated. “I really do, for many reasons, but even just for her as a person.”

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