Spooner shakes off rust and answers goal-scoring need for PWHL Toronto

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Natalie Spooner is finding her groove and that’s a very good thing for PWHL Toronto.

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It might also be a bad thing for the rest of the league, but that’s someone else’s problem.

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The veteran forward of Canada’s National Senior Women’s team has always been a goal scorer wherever she has played but even in the earliest days of the current season, she wasn’t quite there.

Of course there’s a very good reason for that.

Her son, Rory, is just over a year old now and bringing him into the world and motherhood meant stepping away from the game she loves for just a little while.

It certainly wasn’t long. Spooner was back representing Canada at the worlds hosted by Brampton just three and a half months after Rory was born, but there was still time off the ice both before and after that she normally wouldn’t have.

Spooner will tell you now she probably rushed that a little bit to get back for the worlds but such is the depth of her love for the game and the joy she gets in representing her country that she did it anyway.

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It was only a couple of months after that Spooner and the rest of the hockey world learned of the formation of the PWHL, the first truly professional women’s league pitting best-on-best from across the globe.

Spooner was drafted by Toronto with its fourth pick in the draft behind fellow national team defenceman Jocelyne Larocque, national team forward Emma Maltais and national team goalie Kristen Campbell.

The joys and responsibilities of motherhood kept her off the ice far longer than she would normally be away so when PWHL Toronto finally did take the ice again in November, Spooner wasn’t quite where she would normally be.

The long, fluid skating stride and the penchant for physical play were all still there but it wasn’t all back and Spooner knew it.

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“Just finding my game again,” she said of the early going. “I think the first few games back my head was spinning so just getting used to the speed again and little touches on the puck but I think being able to practice consistently with the players I get to play with has been amazing.

“I’m feeling pretty much like myself again which is nice.”

Troy Ryan has seen enough of the Spooner magic and her consistent ability to find ways to get the puck in the net that her leading the team in goals doesn’t come as much of a surprise to him.

“She is huge,” Ryan said speaking like someone stating the obvious. “She just always finds a way. I’ve said right from the start, a lot of people will talk about other players on our team. Spooner always finds ways even from my time with Hockey Canada with her, she just finds ways to score big goals.

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“She plays in those dirty areas,” Ryan continued. “She doesn’t mind getting to the net. She plays below the goal line. Generally good things happen when you are big, strong and athletic and don’t mind taking pucks to the net.”

Spooner, too, sounds like she knew it was just a matter of time.

“Every game I am just trying to get better,” she said. “I haven’t played that many games in two years so to try to just steal the momentum and see how the game goes has been something I had to get back into. But I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable out there again and being able to really take the puck and make things happen and I was obviously able to do that (Friday).”

Spooner is currently tied for second among PWHL goal scoring leaders, tied with Minnesota’s Grace Zumwinkle and one behind Montreal’s Marie-Philip Poulin who has six.

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All five of her goals have been meaningful in one way or the other.

She scored PWHL Toronto’s first ever goal, getting her team on its way to its first win in New York in the second game of the season.

She scored again in Game 4, avoiding a shutout in a 5-1 loss to Ottawa, then had the go-ahead goal in Game 6 in Montreal on their way to a shootout win.

The first of her two goals on Friday night was vintage Spooner as she used her speed and physicality to get past a New York defender and then right to the net sweeping right through New York keeper Corinne Schroeder’s crease with her powerful drive and then using a nifty backhand to finish off the play as the five-hole opened.

Her second marker of the night was basically using her size to maintain positioning just off the corner of the New York net as defenders tried to dislodge her. Eventually she jammed home her second of the night from that same spot.

Again, it feels like this is just the beginning for her.

mganter@postmedia.com

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