How the PWHL juiced scoring and excitement in Year 2

During Women's History Month in March, theScore is publishing stories that illustrate how women in sports lead, inspire change, and navigate their careers.

TORONTO - When a penalty is called in PWHL games, the referees swerve in opposite directions. One escorts the culprit to the box. Their partner skates to the benches to be a human roadblock and prevent the shorthanded squad from making a line change.

The sequence traps fatigued skaters in the defensive zone, the same as after an icing, but with the added hitch of being down a player. A new rule forces inexperienced or positionally imbalanced penalty killers - whichever group was on the ice for the penalized team - to win a faceoff and clear the puck before they can hustle to the bench. It's their only getaway route.

The innovation, aptly termed the "No Escape Rule," has helped boost scoring in the league's second year.

Sellout crowds that embraced the women's pro product in 2024 weren't treated to much offense. Dominant goaltenders stifled shooters. Power plays sputtered. Following an excess of shutouts - there were seven in 13 playoff games before the Minnesota Frost raised the Walter Cup - the league's hockey operations department brainstormed levers it could pull.

In the second regular season, the average PWHL game is producing 0.3 more goals. Teams are on pace to bag four or five extra goals over the duration of the expanded 30-game schedule.

The difference is slight, but it's conspicuous and meaningful in a tight league with four available playoff berths.

"To even get space and chances - let alone putting pucks in - is super difficult. Everyone went home last offseason knowing how hard goals were to come by, and how many games come down to one goal or a couple of inches," Ottawa Charge forward Emily Clark said. "Being able to put a couple extra away a year is the difference between making the playoffs or not."

Throughout the season, theScore spoke to standout scorers and head coaches to gain insight into what's juicing offense.

Explanations abound. Coaches suggest improved shot selection has led to more scoring. Greater familiarity between teammates who were thrown together in Year 1 elevated the comfort and confidence of players. The talent pool grew when dynamic rookies, including New York Sirens point-a-game forward Sarah Fillier, debuted out of college and shot up lineup charts.

Artificial advantages help, too. The no escape rule tilts the ice at the outset of every power play. Defense wins championships and goalie duels provide scintillating drama, but the decibel level at games peaks when the goal horn blares.

"We have to find ways to increase offense in the women's game - there's no doubt about that," Toronto Sceptres defender and power-play quarterback Renata Fast said. "The more goals, that's fan entertainment. We all love to score more goals. Our goalies are so good, so if there's any way that we can try to provide more offense for our game, it's awesome."

Quirks of the PWHL rulebook, like awarding three points for a regulation win, differentiate the women's game from the century-old NHL. The young league's concerted effort to be experimental originated with the jailbreak rule. Shorthanded goals end power plays, rewarding penalty killers who doggedly pursue, carry, and bury the puck rather than dump it 200 feet.

The no escape rule is similarly radical. It alters the configuration of special teams. It turns the first faceoff of each kill into an event.

"I don't know the percentages. I'm not really an analytics girl. But if you look across the league, there's a lot of quality scoring chances that happen off of that first shift," said Frost forward Taylor Heise, the PWHL's inaugural No. 1 overall draft pick and first postseason MVP.

"It's a big deal to win that faceoff. You could be a wing (who's forced to take the draw) if the center's in the box. That's a really big faceoff, and it creates a little bit of controversy and the need to figure this out quick. As an offense, against a group that's been out there for a long time, you're like: 'Yeah, this is my time to go.'"

Rippling twine

PWHL skaters are smart and speedy, and the rules empower them to throw crunching hits. But there are few snipers who can rifle a shot from a standstill past the glove hands of the league's athletic, positionally sound goalies.

"A clean shot's not going to beat them," Sirens forward Jessie Eldridge said.

The six starting netminders - the cream of an exclusive crop - backstop Canada and the United States on the world stage. Save percentages in the first PWHL postseason ranged from .931 to .962. There were three 50-save masterpieces in the two-round playoffs, and multiple scoreless marathons were finally settled in double overtime.

Elite women's teams always wage close battles. Over the years, six dramatic Canada-U.S. Olympic finals have produced a high score of 3-2. A short schedule with major stakes, be it in tournaments or the PWHL, heightens defensive attentiveness and the importance of subtleties like stick positioning.

"In an 82-game season, your habits can go out the door in one game and it allows for more offense to happen," Fast said. "But then you watch the playoffs in the NHL. It becomes such tightly matched games because everyone's habits and defensive details are on par. We still need to work on the women's side on connecting passes to be able to capitalize on Grade-A chances, and things like that. But I do think that with fewer games, we're able to play so much stronger defensively on a consistent basis."

The no escape rule is a useful countermeasure. Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s top hockey operations executive, said it was invented to jolt power plays and bring the league-wide PP scoring rate closer to the NHL standard of 21%.

Rather than fret about bobbling the puck and conceding a jailbreak goal - there have been eight this season, down from 13 in 2024 in a comparable number of games - power plays get to pressure tired, makeshift PK units. About 45% of this season's PP goals were scored before the shorthanded team could change lines, per the PWHL.

The Sceptres' league-high 11 no escape goals and 31.9% overall success rate helped raise the current league average to 19.2%. There are no egregious underperformers like last year's Frost or Boston Fleet, who both finished below 10% in the regular season and combined to go 0-for-20 in the Walter Cup Final.

Special teams strategy has shifted. Power plays hunt and exploit the opponent's vulnerabilities. They can funnel the puck on the first shift toward killers who are ill-equipped for the role, like a forward covering for a penalized defender.

"You want to attack where that player is, because they're probably not going to be comfortable," Fast said. "What happens on a PP is as soon as a shot goes, it becomes chaos. If it produces a rebound, it breaks down the PK a little bit. Our mentality is usually to get a shot quickly so that you break down the PK, recover the puck, and then everyone's a little out of position."

On the defensive side, the rule democratized penalty killing. Every skater - not just a team's preferred specialists - needs to be coolheaded and prepared to defend a zone.

"It's imperative that if a D takes a penalty, we select which of the forwards is going to act like a D, and then we've got to get a clear to get a second D on the ice," said Frost head coach Ken Klee, the retired NHL defenseman. "(The rule has) cost us a couple of times where we haven't gotten clears because, maybe, we have players who haven't killed that much in their time for us. We need them to know how to clear and know how to kill. To me, it's an interesting twist."

Overall, PWHL goalies are facing 27.3 shots per night, down from 28.8 in the first season. Their lower combined shutout count (seven, down from last year's total of 11) reflects an upswing in offensive efficiency.

Instead of lobbing pucks into midsections, teams are passing laterally, blocking the goalie's sightline, and teeing up dangerous chances. Shooters listen to tips from goaltending coaches like Pierre Groulx in Ottawa and Gordon Woodhall in New York, who pore over game film from around the league.

"You don't always think of them as an offensive resource. But Gord, who we have here, he's awesome at studying other goalies as much as ours and figuring out ways we can beat them," Eldridge said. "He sees it from the opposite eyes. It's trying to pick his brain about that and trying to find the little ways that we can expose something from the other team."

Collective efforts spark offensive eruptions. Clark and seven Ottawa teammates had multi-point games in a record-setting 8-3 rout of Minnesota on Feb. 13. The run-and-gun Frost flushed that loss and proceeded to surge into the league scoring lead.

Great college scorers like Fillier and Jennifer Gardiner - Marie-Philip Poulin's rookie linemate with the first-place Montreal Victoire - figured out how to make an impact at a faster, savvier, more physical level.

"You often hear people saying that it's more of a pro game. There are more screens. There are more tips. There are more flash screens. There's more traffic. Among the best players in the world - men's and women's - the shooters find open space, and the people who have good hand-eye and are willing to take a beating go to the net," said Troy Ryan, head coach of the Sceptres and Canada's national team.

"The good players in the game understand where they're most successful. (In a best-on-best) league, the players need to do more than just rely on their individual skills. They have to use those individual skills within some team concepts, and those people are having success."

At times, brilliant flourishes have led to highlight tallies.

Eyes bulged when Poulin lunged from her knees to snap a shot from the faceoff circle inside the far post. Montreal's Abby Boreen dangled a retreating Fast, and Fillier brushed off a check to saucer a perfect feed to Sirens linemate Alex Carpenter. Alina Muller netted jailbreak goals for Boston by fighting through Fillier's bear hug and waltzing past Charge lockdown defender Jocelyne Larocque.

Greasier goals are generated around the blue paint. Fleet head coach Courtney Kessel is seeing more backdoor passes, shots off the goalie's far pad, crashing and banging, and converted rebounds this season.

"It might not be a pretty goal, but if it goes in the back of the net, it counts," Kessel said.

"Scoring goals, it's a skill. It's work ethic. It's wanting it more than the team on the other side," Victoire coach Kori Cheverie said. "The team that takes pride in winning the offensive netfront is going to be the team that scores more. The team willing to stand in front of the goalie is going to be the team that scores more. Putting more shots on net. Getting shots through. Being hungry to find rebounds. I could go on."

How stars leveled up

In 2024, elation about the PWHL's launch helped a succession of teams smash national and global attendance records. Montreal-Toronto grudge matches sold out the Bell Centre and Scotiabank Arena. Everything was new in the historic first year, including the composition of all six franchises, whose players had a short runway to gel.

The top of lineups barely changed ahead of the second season. Just two of five players who switched teams in free agency - forwards Daryl Watts and Rebecca Leslie - ranked in the top 40 in PWHL Year 1 scoring. Sensing where a linemate is about to skate leads to crisp passing, a brisk pace, and a stronger product.

"We've gotten to know each other better as players. There's a lot more chemistry on the roster,” Frost defender Sophie Jaques said. "A lot of teams are able to build off their success from last season and find the back of the net more."

Once forced to work day jobs, women's hockey pros now earn a salary and devote complete focus to the craft.

Rookies, mid-level veterans, and established stars all benefit from consistent practice time, coaching, and access to team resources, Hefford pointed out on a recent media call. Many of the PWHL's high scorers - including Eldridge, Fast, Jaques, Boston's Hilary Knight, Minnesota's Kendall Coyne Schofield, and Toronto's Hannah Miller - have significantly more points than they did in the first season.

"Even the top players in the world are better because of the training they've had over the past year," Hefford said.

Personal epiphanies spurred individual gains. Being in the league for well over a year reassured Heise, a 24-year-old power center, that she has time, space, and the trust of teammates to skate with the puck and make plays.

"Realizing that you can play in this league - that you're fast enough, you're good enough, you can skate, you can shoot - (it boosts) the confidence factor of having more creativity with your linemates," Heise said. "I feel like last year was a lot of firsts. A lot of the things we focused on as a league were not hockey based. Now, this year, a lot more is on show based on hockey skills. That's super cool. That's something I try to strive for: showing off the skills we have, because that's obviously why we're here."

Fast realized age doesn't need to stunt a player's evolution. The Sceptres and Canada stalwart, who leads the PWHL in assists and total ice time, reimagined her identity at 30 years old. Fast's breakaway winner against the Frost with four seconds left in overtime showcased her fluid skating and newfound zeal to jump into the rush, which her coach encouraged.

"For years, I guess I put myself in a box of the type of player I could be, which was a shutdown defensive player," Fast said. "It's been fun to see what I can do offensively. It's a mentality and being OK, sometimes, with taking more risks to produce and finding that balance. It's helped that Troy's been pushing me to do it. I've been curious to see how that side of my game can progress."

Squandered chances haunted Clark during the Charge's inaugural season. Ottawa finished with the same regulation record as Boston and Minnesota, the eventual championship combatants, but lost three more overtime games to miss the playoffs by that many points. Clark sought to change her outlook, reckoning that hit posts and miraculous saves can either demoralize or motivate a shooter.

"Last year, I would dwell on missed opportunities. If your team loses by a goal and you had a chance or two, it's hard not to let that keep you up at night," Clark said. "This year, obviously I'm not thrilled if I miss an opportunity, but it's having a different mindset of, 'It's good that you're getting in those spots.' With every missed opportunity, you're closer to it going in."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.