“What did you guys do to that thing?” Tessa Bonhomme asked members of PWHL Minnesota about the Walter Cup during her opening remarks at the PWHL Awards on Tuesday afternoon, June 11, a day after the PWHL Draft. She went on to joke that the Cup had marks on it that she knew weren’t there before and may never come out, but that’s okay. It got quite the laugh before they started handing out the awards with Bonhomme as host.
PWHL Minnesota may have won the Walter Cup, but PWHL Toronto took home the most hardware with their leading scorer, Natalie Spooner, who got around the ceremony on bedazzled crutches that went right with her outfit. We’ll take a look at each of the main award winners, and of course, that has to start with Spooner since she won the most.
Spooner Takes Home 3 Awards
Spooner finished the season with the most goals (20) and the most points (27) in 24 games, just ahead of her teammate Sarah Nurse. She dominated the scene and found ways to score goals left and right. She looked to do the same in the postseason until her season was cut short due to an injury.
Those stats and her all-around play earned her the Billie Jean King MVP Award, Forward of the Year Award, and finally she was a part of the First All-Star Team. While she did great things this season, it’ll be fun to see what she can do in the future when she’s healthy again.
“I haven’t had too much time to sit back; it’s been a whirlwind really of a season but I think if I think back like even a year ago, I would never had thought I would be in this position, standing here having played a professional season, having won awards, having led the league in goals and points you know let alone was I going to be coming back to play postpartum, how was my body going to react to that, there was so many unknowns in my journey….” Spooner said in regards to winning her awards and what it means after the first season.
PWHL Toronto Coach Ryan Wins
Keeping with the PWHL Toronto theme, after Spooner, the team’s head coach, Troy Ryan, was named Coach of the Year. He led the team all season through the rough start and got them on an incredible winning pace that had many believing the Cup was theirs for the taking had PWHL Minnesota not gotten in the way.
After starting out the season 1-4, he found a style that worked for them, and they finished the season 13-7 with four overtime wins as well. It was quite an incredible turnaround, earning him the honor of Coach of the Year.
“I mean, obviously it’s an honor and a privilege to be recognized, but it’s just one of those awards that you know it’s a team award, you know our coaching staff, our support staff have done a great job to put our organization in a position to get an award like that and obviously if your players perform well you get some recognition for it. Just fun to get the opportunity to coach this group,” said Coach Ryan about receiving the award.
PWHL Montréal’s Ambrose Recognized
PWHL Montréal’s Erin Ambrose made it difficult on every opposing team to score goals as she’s the strongest defenseman in the league and her winning Defender of the Year really shows how talented she is. However, it wasn’t only defense for her either, she was able to contribute offensively which made her even more valuable.
She scored four goals and assisted on 14 others for 18 points in 24 games played. She was also dangerous on the power play as six of her assists were when her team was a player up. Executive Director of the PWHL Brian Burke who’s a friend of Ambrose was able to present her with the award.
“I actually sent a message to my cousin tonight and my sister; I’ve known Brian for a lot of years and have gotten to know Brian through a lot of different You Can Play activities and at Pride parades and what Brian is doing for our league, what Brian is doing for us as players and what Brian does for people in the LGBTQ+ community, I think that means more to me than any award, anything like this so to have Brian say it and when he said it meant a lot to him I kind of got a little bit excited that he was maybe going to say my name so it was an honor…” said Ambrose about Burke presenting the award.
PWHL Toronto Wins Again
While Spooner took most of the attention, Kristen “Soupy,” Campbell won the Goaltender of the Year Award in a very tight race. She had 16 wins with three shutouts and just six losses for a save percentage of .927 and in 22 games played she allowed only 43 goals against.
She stuck through the tough parts of the season and kept her head up. This included the postseason when she made impressive stops throughout the first round and kept pushing until the end.
“I mean it’s an honor to win this award, there’s so many great goaltenders in this league and I think that was shown throughout the year in all the low-scoring games and all the goalie battles that there was. I’m just really grateful and thankful for all my teammates in Toronto who also made this possible,” said Campbell about what it meant to win this award with so many strong goaltenders.
PWHL Minnesota Scores the Rookie
Grace Zumwinkle has been steadily making a name for herself all season and it started when she scored the first hat trick in the PWHL which was also PWHL Minnesota’s first home game of the season. She continued to score goals and put up some big shots throughout the season that earned her the attention to be nominated and win Rookie of the Year.
She scored a team-leading 19 points, including 11 goals and eight assists, in 24 games played. She also worked to contribute defensively, including blocking as many shots as she could.
“You look back at the season as a whole, and you are heading into it, you’re like what is there to expect, I mean, you hear all these great things, and it’s like until I’m actually playing in it that’s when it kind of became a reality, and as a team, we started off on a strong note and then coming back after the international break we hit a tough seven-game patch there and I think heading into the playoffs it made us that much stronger and bonded as a group and ultimately helped us in the end,” said Zumwinkle on her recap of the season.
PWHL Montréal’s Murphy Gets Noticed
The final award in this list involves community involvement and is titled the Hockey For All Award that was presented by Scotiabank and it went to PWHL Montréal’s Maureen Murphy who seems to be doing it all despite having little time for much outside of her current world. She’s in law school, does volunteering and played a full season of professional hockey that involved training and practicing.
According to the PWHL in their intro speech for Murphy, she studied about 600 hours this semester for her law degree and also committed 200 hours to volunteering. Her volunteering was spent with her dog, Bean, going to Geriatric hospitals and visiting long-term patients there, something that touched the hearts of many, including myself. She’s truly a selfless person, and the hockey world could use more players like her.
Related: PWHL Montréal’s 2024 Draft Results and a Long-Awaited Signing
“Honestly, it’s really not that bad; we have a great schedule in Montréal we practice from like 8-1 or 2, and then I’ll go home, grab Bean, we’ll go to the hospital anywhere from an hour, and a half to two hours, depends how long bingo is going that day and then I have class Tuesdays and Thursdays sometimes depending on the semester just Tuesdays or Thursdays but those classes are from 5:30-8:30, and the program is designed for people that are full-time professionals so everybody else in my program has a 9-5, so I honestly think they have it a lot harder they’re working 9-5 then getting right on Zoom at 5:30 to go into 3 hours of class and a lot of them have families and young children so I don’t really know how they do it,” said Murphy about her busy schedule.
PWHL Full of Great Players
Looking at these awards and seeing that every player who was nominated is deserving really says a lot about the talent of this league. Spooner, of course, is at the top of everyone’s minds, but seeing all the other names, it’s great to see the talent so spread out among the teams and the teams being so competitive against each other. Each player talked more about their team, helping them win the award over their individual efforts. This is just the first season. It will be exciting to see where this league goes and who wins these awards next season.
