PWHL Minnesota falls 4-0 at Toronto in franchise’s first playoff game

As the No. 1 seed in the inaugural Professional Women's Hockey League playoffs, Toronto chose No. 4 seed Minnesota as its opening-round opponent.

With a 4-0 loss Wednesday night at Coca-Cola Coliseum in Game 1 of the best-of-five series, PWHL Minnesota is in danger of becoming the last in, first out of the Walter Cup chase.

Fledgling Minnesota did nothing to pull out of the five consecutive losses to end the regular season, a slump making Minnesota unable to clinch a playoff berth on its own.

Toronto drew an announced crowd of 8,473 fans. And Coca-Cola Coliseum will be the site of Game 2 Friday. The series moves to Xcel Energy Center for Game 3 on Monday, and a potential Game 4 would be at Xcel on Wednesday. Toronto would host Game 5 on Friday, May 17, if necessary.

Nothing from Wednesday's playoff opener suggested a fourth or fifth game would be necessary. It was all Toronto from the jump and it carried right through until the end.

Natalie Spooner, the PWHL leading scorer with 20 regular-season goals, netted the league's historic first playoff goal at 9:47 of the opening period. Teammate Emma Maltais buried a power-play chance only 55 seconds into period two. Later in the period, Blayre Turnbull redirected a puck off her skate and into the Minnesota net for a 3-0 lead at 15:05. Turnbull added her team's fourth goal with less than one minute remaining.

Minnesota outshot Toronto PWHL 26-19, but Toronto goaltender Kristen Campbell stopped all shots faced in the game.

Logistics problems hampered Minnesota's preparation efforts. The league makes all the travel arrangements, and players flew with coach Ken Klee directly to Toronto on Monday morning. The team's equipment came on another flight and, several delays later, did not arrive until 11 p.m. As a result, Minnesota missed a practice opportunity.

"It makes no sense," Klee told local reporters after Wednesday morning's skate. "You can't ask a team to travel in six hours and then they can't even get all on the same flight. … We need to operate as a top-class league. We need to make sure that's in order."

The Star Tribune did not send the writer of this article to the game. This was written using a broadcast, interviews and other material.