TORONTO — Natalie Spooner scored twice and Toronto clinched first place in the inaugural season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League with a 4-1 win over Minnesota on Wednesday night.

Toronto (12-4-0-7) moved ahead of Montreal (10-3-5-5) in the standings with 44 points, while holding the tiebreaker in case of a tie by regular season’s end. Both teams have one game remaining before the post-season begins next week.

Earning first place means Toronto is able to choose between the third- or fourth-place team as their first playoff opponent.

Minnesota (8-4-3-8) lost its fourth straight since the season paused for the world championships. It enters its final game Saturday at New York needing one point to clinch a playoff spot.

Hannah Miller and Emma Maltais, with an empty-netter, also scored for Toronto, which extended its winning streak to three games. Kristen Campbell made 25 saves.

Spooner’s two goals extended her lead atop the league for points (25) and goals (18). Maltais also dished out two assists, taking the league lead with 15 on the season.

Michela Cava scored for Minnesota. Maddie Rooney stopped 19 shots.

It was the last of four regular-season matchups between the two sides, with Toronto taking the season series 2-1-0-1.

Cava opened the scoring 4:14 into the first period. Taylor Heise found Maggie Flaherty from behind the net, and Cava tipped in Flaherty’s point shot past Campbell.

Miller tied it on the power play at 10:16. Maltais, from the right faceoff circle, sent the puck to Sarah Nurse, who was near the back of the net and whizzed a pass into the slot for Miller who finished off the tic-tac-toe play.

Toronto picked things up in the second period.

Jocelyne Larocque had the door shut on her in front by Rooney, with Spooner missing another close chance and Nurse not being able to convert a nice pass in front from Miller.

Spooner put Toronto ahead 11:10 into the second period on the power play. Renata Fast sent in a point shot that Spooner got her stick on.

Spooner added to her goal total and Toronto’s lead 7:21 into the third period. She blocked Lee Stecklein’s point shot and immediately went on a breakaway, where she got Rooney to bite on a deke well enough to almost the leave the entire net open and scored.

Maltais scored into an empty net with 2:05 remaining while almost falling with two defenders on her heels.

Up next

Minnesota visits New York for their regular-season finale on Saturday.

Toronto hosts Ottawa for their regular-season finale on Sunday.

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The Timberwolves started their most important week of practice of the season Wednesday in Minneapolis, as they prep for a second-round playoff series against the defending champion Nuggets.

And their head coach wasn’t there.

Chris Finch was a little busy Wednesday, having surgery done to repair his ruptured patella tendon in his right knee.

“It feels a little weird, obviously,” Wolves center Rudy Gobert said of the coach’s absence.

Earlier: After collision with Mike Conley, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch suffers ruptured tendon.

Finch’s surgery went well Wednesday, and now Minnesota will wait to see how the coach recovers and feels over the coming days. The team plans to fly to Denver after Thursday’s practice. While assistant coach Micah Nori doesn’t know if Finch will be on that flight, the current plan is for the head coach to be in Denver for Game 1 on Saturday.

In what capacity remains to be seen.

“You’re always talking through hypotheticals, but not until we know exactly once he’s out of recovery what he can do,” Nori said. “As a worst-case scenario, if he can’t (be on the sidelines), the one thing he’s going to talk to us about doing is he’ll be there the pregame meeting obviously, and then most likely he’ll go watch in a suite and then maybe he’d come down for halftime with any thoughts.”

One thing Finch was adamantly against was sending messages to someone on the bench during the game to try to exert control from afar. He doesn’t believe that’s necessary with the experience and continuity on his staff. Finch has said before that Nori — who will patrol the sidelines assuming Finch is unable to — has head coaching characteristics.

Finch empowers all of his assistants throughout the season to take ownership of their specific departments.

But Minnesota will explore any possible avenue that gets Finch onto the bench whenever it’s physically feasible for him to do so.

“I think that’s what we’re trying to look at, all those different types of things to do. So we’ve even talked as much about moving (Timberwolves vice president of player health Gregg Farnam’s) seat, the trainer’s seat, out so he can extend and he still has a table there to extend his leg and everybody just slides down a seat,” Nori said. “So we’re looking at those different options. Obviously, the most important thing is making sure he’s safe. But secondly, if we can do it, if we can get Finchy down on that bench, we for sure will.”

Finch worked diligently with the staff on Tuesday to put together a plan for the week to prepare for Denver.

“What he was expecting, what he would think would need to be kind of the high points or the key points of what we needed to address and kind of laid out practices,” Nori said.

Minnesota’s week off before the Denver series closely mimics the time Minnesota had between its regular-season finale and its playoff series with Phoenix. In terms of preparation, the week was constructed similarly.

“We took two days, guys kind of got what they needed, so it helped with recovery,” Nori said. “(Wednesday) was more of a (player development day) and kind of individualized how they’re going to guard certain people or how we think they will based on the film, and then (Thursday) we’ll have a really good practice and get into more of the weeds of the game plan and then clean that up for Friday.”

Finch’s imprint is still on Minnesota. But the Wolves will still miss the coach, who, in Nori’s opinion, should’ve been the NBA Coach of the Year.

“He’s our leader,” Mike Conley said.

But Conley and Gobert expressed the players’ willingness to step up where needed. And everyone noted their full confidence in the coaching staff to put the Wolves in the best possible position to succeed.

“They’re basically saying the things you would expect out of those vets: ‘We got you. We’ll do this, we’ll do that,’” Nori said. “The players have been great. Like I told them in there, I said ‘Nothing’s going to change.’ It’s not like myself or anyone on staff is trying to come in here and say, ‘We did that, but let’s try this and do that.’ No, it’s more of the same, and I think that Finchy and my personalities are pretty similar. He’s obviously much wittier and smarter and all that, but at the end of the day, just trying to do what he was doing, and that’s all that the guys have talked about.”

Nori said Finch’s spirits are currently “remarkably high.”

“Typical Finchy fashion, he does not want to be the focus. He trusts all of us, he trusts the players,” Nori said. “He’s like, ‘You guys do yourselves. You’ve done enough.’ The players, at the end of the day, are going to be the ones who decide this series.”

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A St. Paul man admitted Wednesday to fatally shooting a man outside a University Avenue bar nearly five years ago.

Devante Lattrele Jennings, 29, was charged last year with two counts of second-degree murder in the May 2019 death of 33-year-old Michael Gray of St. Paul at the now-closed Johnny Baby’s at University Avenue and Chatsworth Street.

Devante Lattrele Jennings (Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Corrections)

Jennings, whose first name is also spelled Devonte in court records, was charged while incarcerated on a 2021 firearms conviction out of Ramsey County. He was released from custody this past December and booked into the Ramsey County Jail, where he has remained in lieu of $1 million bail.

Jennings’ case was scheduled to go before a jury in July. He struck a deal with the prosecution Wednesday and pleaded guilty to second-degree unintentional murder while committing a felony. In exchange for the plea, a second-degree intentional murder charge will be dismissed at sentencing, which is scheduled for July 17.

The plea document says that Jennings faces between just shy of 13 years and up to 15 years in prison under state guidelines.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police responded to reports of a shooting outside Johnny Baby’s about 2 a.m. on May 4, 2019, where they found Gray lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound to his head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators learned a Kia sedan with Wisconsin license plates was at the scene when the shooting occurred and traced it to a man identified in court documents by the initials TC, who knew the car’s owner. They also found a cigarette butt in the vehicle with Jennings’ DNA on it, the complaint says.

Jennings initially told investigators he had bought drugs from TC months earlier and smoked a cigarette in the front seat, but he denied being at Johnny Baby’s at the time of the shooting and told police he was at his brother’s house that night.

Surveillance footage captured outside Johnny Baby’s the night of the shooting shows Jennings, TC and a third man arriving at the bar in the Kia sedan about 1:30 a.m. The third man, identified in court documents as WB, got out of the car and walked into the bar, bumping into Gray on his way inside, the complaint says.

WB walked back out to the parking lot about 1:42 a.m. and remained there with Jennings and TC until about 2 a.m., when the three men got back into the vehicle.

The video shows that Gray approached the Kia and appeared to speak with Jennings, who was in the front passenger seat, before backing away and walking toward the back of the car. Jennings then leaned out of the front passenger window and shot Gray, the complaint says.

WB was killed in September 2019 near the St. Paul Saloon by friends of Gray, the complaint says.

In March 2023, while interviewing Jennings at the Moose Lake prison, investigators showed him still frames from Johnny Baby’s surveillance footage. They told Jennings they had identified him as the person in the footage.

“Jennings looked at the photos and sighed,” the complaint says. “Jennings did not deny he was the person in the photos. Jennings then said he would wait to talk to the investigator at the Ramsey County jail with an attorney.”

Johnny Baby’s, which had been the site of several shootings in recent years, closed in March 2020 and was renovated into a retail establishment.

In addition to the 2021 firearms offense, Jennings has three other convictions, all of which are misdemeanors: violating a harassment restraining order in 2021; aiding and abetting third-degree assault in 2016; and domestic assault in 2013.

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