PWHL Toronto taking time to establish new, defining culture in training camp

General manager Gina Kingsbury says Toronto's Professional Women's Hockey League team will distinguish itself culturally and not be a mere "copy and paste" of the Canadian women's national team.

Kingsbury, who also serves as the GM of Canada's women's team, oversees a Toronto squad that features numerous national team members. The yet-to-be-named PWHL team, which is in its second week of training camp at the Ford Performance Centre, includes notable players such as Sarah Nurse, Natalie Spooner, Blayre Turnbull, Renata Fast and Jocelyne Larocque

"I think every time you have a new member in any kind of unit or team, the culture and the environment has to shift a bit if you actually include them into it," Kingsbury said at Wednesday's practice. "By no means are we copying and pasting what we've done at the national team level.

"Culture, it's a lot more than just what you see on the ice. I think this is the foundation to, hopefully, a team that's around for a century," Kingsbury added.

Alongside Canada coach Troy Ryan, who also helms the Toronto team, Kingsbury guided the national team to consecutive world titles in 2021 and 2022, as well as Olympic gold in Beijing in 2022. The Canadians fell to the U.S. in the 2023 worlds final in Brampton, Ont., in April.

While the familiarity helps, Ryan says putting the Toronto team together has more to do with choosing characters who can contribute to fostering the right environment and building a team identity.

"There's a difference in wanting good teammates and actually selecting people that you know are good teammates but also holding people accountable to being a good teammate," he said.

"If you generally have good people with good leadership characteristics and they hold each other