‘Ready to go’: Working with short runway, Tempo confident after expansion draft

TORONTO – Despite the challenges, Eli Horowitz said the Toronto Tempo front office was ready to put together a competitive roster for the team’s inaugural season.

The Tempo selected their first 11 players in the WNBA expansion draft — alongside the Portland Fire — on Friday. The draft was held just two weeks after the league and the players’ association reached a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement.

Toronto made guard Julie Allemand (from the Los Angeles Sparks) its first pick of the expansion draft after Portland took Bridget Carleton (from the Minnesota Lynx) of Chatham, Ont., with the first overall selection.

With the regular season set to begin May 8, and free agency and the draft still to come, the Tempo have a full to-do list. 

“Definitely a challenging process, but I think this is why WNBA experience has been at the forefront of what (general manager) Monica’s (Wright Rogers) really built here on the basketball operations and strategy team,” said Horowitz, the team’s assistant general manager. “So I think we tried to lean on that. 

“Obviously Monica’s time in this league, (head coach) Sandy (Brondello) and myself being in the league, we felt very confident that we know the global player pool of talent, not just in the WNBA, college and international. So we tried just to keep that top (of) mind as we waited and have confidence that whenever that day came, we would be ready to go.”

Wright Rogers echoed Horowitz’s statement, pointing to how adaptive WNBA players are.

“One thing about WNBA players is they’re very used to this sort of timeline,” she said. “A lot of them play in leagues outside of our league and overseas. And so I think the biggest thing we want them to feel is a big Canadian hug when they get here.”

The Tempo won a coin toss last week and elected to take the higher pick — sixth instead of seventh — in the WNBA draft on April 13. As a result, the Fire got to pick first overall in the expansion draft.

Toronto also selected Marina Mabrey (Connecticut Sun), Nikolina Milic (Connecticut Sun), María Conde (Golden State Valkyries), Kristy Wallace (Indiana Fever), Aaliyah Nye (Las Vegas Aces), Maria Kliundikova (Minnesota Lynx), Adja Kane (New York Liberty), Nyara Sabally (New York Liberty), Lexi Held (Phoenix Mercury) and Kitija Laksa (Phoenix Mercury).

“Obviously with the CBA, this is way later than we anticipated and we have a lot of work to do coming up,” Horowitz said. “But the 11 players selected today we’re just super excited about and we’re going to have a very competitive team.

The Tempo and Fire are the 14th and 15th teams in the WNBA. 

The last expansion franchise to join the league was the Golden State Valkyries in 2025. 

The Tempo have four picks in the upcoming draft (Nos. 6, 22, 26, 36), having acquired the 26th pick from the Chicago Sky in exchange for not selecting any of that team’s players on Friday.

Horowitz referred to this year’s draft as “very, very strong.” 

“I think there’s a lot of uncertainty at the very top, but we’ve really felt in that top six that we could get a cornerstone player for the Toronto Tempo,” he said. 

“And there’s not just one name in particular. There’s a group of names that we know one of them will be available with that No. 6 pick. So that was really at the top of our strategy overall.”

As for free agency, the league will see a whopping 123 players looking for new deals next week.

“Free agents are probably going to be the more significant players on each roster,” Wright Rogers said. “And so, we’ve already been at work, and we’ve identified the players that we really want to go after. 

“And we feel that with the results of this expansion draft that they see a clear message of who we want to be on the court from Day 1. And that can only help us as we approach those conversations.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 3, 2026.