After more than two weeks on the road, Vancouver Goldeneyes head coach Brian Idalski just wanted his players to feel normal again.
To go home, do laundry, and train on home ice.
“I don’t sleep well on the road, so that’s a thing,” Idalski told reporters after his team’s 5-1 loss to Boston on Tuesday. “Switching hotels from one to the next, and flights and connection flights and buses, it takes a toll. We’re still figuring out what that looks like and what that impact is.”
The loss, which came in front of 10,794 fans in a Takeover Tour game in Edmonton, was the Goldeneyes’ fourth regulation loss in five games.
Vancouver now sits seven points back of fourth-place Toronto in pursuit of the final playoff spot, with only four games left to play. Making things more difficult is that none of those games are against the teams that Vancouver needs to pass to make the playoffs.
Jessie Eldridge scored a pair of goals as the Boston Fleet defeated Vancouver Goldeneyes 5-1 Tuesday at the PWHL Takeover Tour stop in Edmonton.
Though neither have been mathematically eliminated, it feels likely that both Vancouver and the last-place Seattle Torrent will miss the postseason in the teams’ first season, despite stocking their rosters with talented players during the expansion process.
Idalski doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.
“We’re both struggling,” he said. “There’s something there. There’s something with the travel and us going back and forth that’s happening to our bodies. We need to learn how to manage that better.”
Geographic outliers
The Goldeneyes and Torrent are outliers in an eight-team league where five teams are based on the east coast. Minnesota is a bit closer, about a three and a half hour flight away from Vancouver.
Seattle is the closest team geographically, but the Goldeneyes won’t make their first visit to Climate Pledge Arena until April 18.
Add in the fact that PWHL players still fly commercial, and a Takeover Tour that sees every team play in cities where the PWHL doesn’t yet have a footprint, and road trips can become even longer.
Vancouver’s most recent trip began ahead of a March 24 game against Boston. Then, they travelled to Toronto, Montreal and Minnesota, before finishing things off with the game in Edmonton, which was considered a home game for the Goldeneyes.
They’ll play the final four regular-season games on the west coast.
“It’s been an exhausting trip, kind of physically and mentally,” captain Ashton Bell said. “But it’s always fun to go on the road. You get that team bonding away from the rink at hotels, on the buses, all that good stuff. We definitely took a lot of positives out of this road trip. But it definitely has a toll on your body. You start to feel it in your legs.”
That was evident particularly during the first two periods of Tuesday’s loss to Boston. The Goldeneyes struggled to win puck battles and their play felt disconnected. They allowed a ton of Fleet traffic in front of goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer, who was pulled with her family and friends in attendance in Edmonton.
The third period was better, but the Goldeneyes couldn’t climb out of a five-goal hole.
Road troubles
Trace things back to the beginning of the season, and it feels like things started to go wrong for the Goldeneyes after an injury to star forward Sarah Nurse.
After scoring the team’s first franchise goal in a win over Seattle in front of a home crowd, the team embarked on a three-game road trip without Nurse. She sustained an injury that kept her out of action for two months.
The team definitely missed Nurse on the ice, but also missed her leadership and presence off the ice, according to GM Cara Gardner Morey. Vancouver lost all three games on that first trip.
“We went on such a long road trip right off the bat and it was our first one and she wasn’t there,” Gardner Morey told CBC Sports in an interview ahead of Tuesday’s loss. “I think that had a huge impact where we could have used her just for culture and locker room and just a steady kind of presence.”
The Goldeneyes have won only three games on the road this season. The only team that’s been worse on the road is Seattle, which has only one road win.
On top of that, the team has seemed disjointed on the ice at times, and has struggled to consistently create offence. Vancouver has averaged the fewest shots per game (26.19) in the league, even after the return of Nurse and with two of the best offensive blueliners in the game (Claire Thompson and Sophie Jaques) leading the charge.
But Gardner Morey still sees positives, despite the team’s record. There’s been plenty of learning, both on and off the ice, for a team built from scratch less than a year ago.
Players like Izzy Daniel, now in her second season in the league, have learned what it takes to play in the PWHL over a full season.
“She just makes such smart plays and she’s so creative,” Gardner Morey said about Daniel, who she selected from Toronto in the expansion draft. “I knew she would be good, but in her second year, I didn’t know she would be able to have this big of an impact.”
The GM has also been surprised by just how quickly the team’s fan base has grown inside Pacific Coliseum, where spectators pack the arena on all days of the week.
Both Vancouver and Seattle have quickly achieved success off the ice when it comes to ticket and merchandise sales.
“I always worry as a GM, oh my God, the fans are going to boo us, we’re not winning,” Gardner Morey said. “But there’s none of that sentiment with our city and our fans. They’re just so supportive and they’re just excited every time we have a game. So we’re really excited to get home and play in front of them again.”
‘Playing for pride’
Travel could improve for Vancouver and Seattle next season if the league adds to its western footprint through expansion. Denver, Edmonton and Chicago have all had multiple stops on the league’s Takeover Tour.
Expansion will shake up Vancouver and every other team in the league, but the Goldeneyes seem likely to net a high draft pick from a draft class with several game-changing prospects at the top.
It means the Goldeneyes will have the chance to start fresh again next season. This time, they’ll have all the lessons learned from a difficult first year, and a hungry fan base already in place.
That’s why there’s plenty still to play for in Vancouver.
“It’s playing for pride, playing for our fans, playing for the city of Vancouver and and continuing just to get better every single day so that if we do make playoffs, we’re set up to have a good run or if we don’t, we’re set up to start next year on that high,” Gardner Morey said.
