Fleet blanked by Toronto, suffer first home loss of season

Not much gets past Aerin Frankel. But if opponents want a chance at beating the Fleet netminder, they have to force her off-balance.

Toronto’s Daryl Watts cracked that code Tuesday night, making a nifty move across the crease to beat Frankel in the third period. Blayre Turnbull added an empty-netter as the Sceptres handed the Fleet a 2-0 loss — Boston’s first home loss of the season — in front of a sellout crowd of 6,095 at Agganis Arena.

With 11 minutes to play, Watts collected the puck at the blue line and made a move across the net, opening up a five-hole opportunity as Frankel tried to go from post to post. Watts buried her eighth of the year to give Toronto the lead, and the Sceptres held on to win their second straight and move into a playoff spot.

“It’s so hard to beat her, I feel like you’ve got to try to make her move a little bit,” Watts, the former Boston College star, said. “She’s a phenomenal goalie, so I’ll take a goal however I can get against her.”

Frankel kept the Fleet in it when the Sceptres turned on the pressure late, making 28 saves. But she was outdueled by her Canadian counterpart Raygan Kirk, who made 26 stops to post her second consecutive shutout.

The Fleet fell to 9-5-2-4, staying on 39 points while in first place in the PWHL standings, and Toronto moved to 8-1-5-8 (31 points), jumping over Ottawa into fourth.

It was the first game since the Fleet acquired forward Jessie Eldridge from Seattle in exchange for Theresa Schafzahl. Eldridge had a “whirlwind” day, arriving in Boston in the morning and joining the starting lineup without having skated with the team.

“I actually kind of enjoyed it,” said Eldridge, a third-year PWHL veteran. “I ripped the bandaid right off. Just go play hockey, at the end of the day.”

The Fleet added Eldridge, a proven scorer, in hopes of generating more offense to take some of the pressure off Frankel. Eldridge played on a line with Alina Müller and Ella Huber to form one of Boston’s most productive groupings of the night.

Eldridge, who made a few appearances as a net-front presence on the power play, finished with one shot in 20:36 of ice time and at minus-2..

“Already you can tell that she’s going to boost our offense for sure,” Fleet coach Kris Sparre said.

As has been the case all season, the Fleet relied heavily on defenders Haley Winn and Megan Keller, who have led the league in ice time throughout. Each played at least 27 minutes against the Sceptres The next-closest defender, Daniela Pejsova, played 18 minutes.

With just 10 games left in the regular season and the Fleet holding onto first place, how much ice time is too much for that pair? Winn said there’s no such thing, but Sparre had a different take.

“Tonight was too much,” Sparre said. “We can do a better job of managing their ice time, for sure. But they’re two elite players that just want it. They want the ice time. They want to be out there in those big moments.

“It’s hard to keep them off when you see how excited they are to get on the ice.”

Boston’s penalty kill, which allowed an uncharacteristic two goals in Sunday’s overtime win over Montreal, faced two tests in the first period and one in the second, and held Toronto to just three shots on those opportunities.

Things got particularly chippy just past the midway point of the second period, and officials had to break up a scrum in front of Kirk’s net on two consecutive possessions, eventually calling matching roughing penalties to Huber and Ella Shelton with 10:30 remaining in the frame.

That was the first of two sets of matching roughing penalties, and players exchanged pleasantries after the whistle throughout the night — perhaps to be expected as the regular season reaches its final stretch.

“You’ve got two teams out there that are scratching and clawing,” Sparre said. “It’s the time of the season. … It’s only going to get harder from here.”