Renata Fast’s 22 points shared the league lead among defenders, earning her the 2025 Defender of the Year Award. This season, she will be joined on the blue line by Ella Shelton, a 2024 Defender of the Year Finalist and the highest-scoring defender in PWHL history.
Trading for defenders is nothing new for the Toronto Sceptres with the team never shy to take every opportunity to improve its roster.
Last season, the team welcomed Savannah Harmon from Ottawa and Anna Kjellbin from Montréal. Then, their biggest move came during the 2025 PWHL Draft, announced moments before GM Gina Kingsbury was scheduled to make the third overall selection. That pick, used by the Sirens to select Casey O’Brien, was sent to New York with Shelton acquired in return.
Already with one of the game’s top blue liners in Fast, the Sceptres may have just secured the strongest defensive pairing in the PWHL. Fast is coming off an elite award-winning season: beyond simply her point total that featured a rearguard record 16 assists, she led the league with 63 hits and led all PWHL skaters in time on ice at 739:45 and an average of 24:39 per game.
Shelton made the most of a season cut short by six games with a lower-body injury, still managing to deliver eight goals and 16 points. Her goal total led all PWHL defenders for the second straight season, besting her own league record in the process. She will fit in nicely on a Sceptres squad loaded with other Team Canada mainstays in Fast, forwards Natalie Spooner, Blayre Turnbull and Emma Maltais, and Head Coach Troy Ryan - a group that won Olympic gold together in 2022.
Between Shelton’s 37 career points and Fast’s 35, the Sceptres now have the two highest scoring defenders in PWHL history. In a league that features other standout defensive pairings like Vancouver’s Sophie Jaques and Claire Thompson - both 2025 Defender of the Year Finalists - Fast and Shelton make for an exceptionally formidable duo.
Toronto has finished in first and second place, respectively, through the league’s first two seasons but are still chasing their first playoff series win. Season One team scoring was led by Spooner’s MVP efforts, followed by Second Team All-Star Daryl Watts in Season Two. Even on a roster riddled with that experience, talent and pedigree up front, don’t be surprised if the Sceptres become the first team in league history to be led offensively by a defender in Season Three. But which one could it be?
