Cup 'Pride'

Last weekend at Warrior Ice Arena in Boston, defender Kaleigh Fratkin collected the puck to the right of the Boston Pride goal with three seconds left in the 2021 National Women's Hockey League championship game. She banked the puck off the boards and up the ice to kill the clock. The next time fans see Fratkin on camera, she is surrounded by her teammates as they celebrate a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Whitecaps to win the 2021 Isobel Cup Final.

The March 27 win marked the first time Boston won the Isobel Cup since the inaugural 2015-16 season, becoming the only franchise in the NWHL to repeat as champions. The NWHL started with four teams and now features six teams: Boston, Buffalo Beauts, Connecticut Whale, Metropolitan (New York) Riveters, Minnesota Whitecaps (who played Boston in the 2021 title game) and Toronto Six. Buffalo appeared in four Isobel Cup finals 2016 to 2019, winning in 2017.
"I've been in this since day one and really had no idea on day one what this was gonna look like down the line," said Fratkin during a phone interview Tuesday. Six seasons, three teams, two different leagues and two COVID-19 pauses later, the Burnaby, BC, native will have her name on the only remaining women's pro hockey trophy in North America.

The 2021 NWHL championship is Fratkin's second professional title and her first since winning the Clarkson Cup in 2015 with the Boston Blades of the defunct Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL). She joined the CWHL after a stellar four years at Boston University, then later played her first two NWHL seasons with the Connecticut Whale (2015-16) and New York (now Metropolitan) Riveters (2016-17). She has played for the Pride the last four seasons.
The Isobel Cup is named after Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, daughter of Frederick Stanley, Governor General of Canada and namesake for the NHL's storied trophy. Gathorne-Hardy is credited helping persuade her father to popularize ice hockey and played the sport herself as a teenager in the late 1800s.
The 2021 Isobel Cup Final was a rematch of sorts. Boston and Minnesota were slated to compete in the 2020 Final, which was at first postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later cancelled with no 2020 champion to be determined. Last March 12, the NWHL joined the NBA and NHL in
suspending all league activities
. The Isobel Cup Final was scheduled to drop the puck the next day. The abrupt end was difficult to navigate for players.

"How do we handle something like this?" said Fratkin. "How do you get the closure that you need in order to start preparing for the following season? Because traditionally speaking, you finish your season one way or the other -- with a loss or win -- and then you take a little bit of a break, step away from the game and then you come back and start training and prepping for next season to start all over again. We didn't have that."
It was difficult for staff as well. What would next season look like? Would there be a next season? Could the Boston Pride recreate their dominant performance when the NWHL returned? The sour taste of what was to be -- until it wasn't -- defined the Boston Pride, including the rookies.
"They knew what their returners -- people here since day one with the Boston Pride like [captain] Jillian Dempsey, lost. And they wanted it just as bad for them as they wanted it for themselves," Pride general manager Karilyn Pilch said Monday night.

Perhaps they wanted it too badly. With only seven games before the Isobel Cup Playoffs, the Boston Pride -- a team that lost 6 games in the previous two seasons -- was 1-4 headed into their final three games of the abridged 2021 season held in Lake Placid, NY. Under normal circumstances, losing four games of the first five is no cause for concern. But with only five regular season games before a pre-playoff round robin, every game in Lake Placid counted.
"Putting us into the bubble where really that off-ice interaction was so limited because of COVID protocols was almost a disadvantage for us," said Pilch. "I never actually thought about how being so close could be a disadvantage."
The Pride were in fifth place in a six-team league when the Metropolitan Riveters dropped out due to double-digit positive tests for COVID-19. The Pride now needed to win a best-of-three series against the Buffalo Beauts to earn a spot in the 2021 Isobel Cup Playoffs.

Boston swept the series, then the league once again postponed the season with a Feb. 3 statement: "The NWHL and the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) have agreed, due to new positive COVID-19 tests and the resulting safety concerns for the players, their respective staff and the community that the remainder of the 2021 NWHL Season in Lake Placid has been suspended."
As the league figured out how and when to restart, members of the Pride including Fratkin and head coach Paul Mara recovered from COVID-19. Eventually the team returned to practice and prepared for the second leg of what they called their "revenge tour."
Fratkin and other veterans again needed to navigate getting their team prepared to compete for a championship. The message ahead of the playoffs was clear: we're not content with losing.
"A lot of returners stepped up and said, 'This isn't good enough. We're moving in this direction," said Fratkin. "If people are bored, like you're on board and if you're not on board … the bus is moving,'' Fratkin said. "That's really the type of character you need on your team in order to win championships. I think that was the turning point for us."

The Pride defeated No. 1 seed Toronto Six 6-2 in the opening Isobel Cup semifinal to advance to the final against Minnesota on Boston's home ice. It was a fitting end to the journey that started two seasons ago and one Fratkin hopes will be a sign of future prosperity for the league. Media reports have the league
expanding to Montreal next season
. The NWHL has yet to confirm such plans.
Originally from the Vancouver area, hockey has kept Fratkin on the U.S. East Coast for the past 11 years and most recently due to strict border control and quarantine requirements in Canada amid the pandemic. Fratkin no doubt will find time to celebrate the Isobel Cup win with family and friends soon, as the Pride defender and teammates enjoyed the past week's victory tour, which included media appearances and attending a Bruins game this week with the Cup.
Fratkin has played her own role in stoking momentum for women's pro hockey. In 2009, she became the first teen girl to compete in the British Columbia U16 Major League when she joined the Vancouver NW Giants. Fratkin remembers playing Seattle-based teams often during her time with the Giants.
"They love hockey in that market," Fratkin said. "I also remember growing up, all of our youth hockey games we played against the different Seattle teams. We spent a lot of time there."