Road to Olympics for Canadian women's hockey team begins late August in Calgary

The Canadian women's hockey team will begin its quest to defend its Olympic title with three training camps throughout the country this summer and fall.

It will be the first time that Hockey Canada must work around the PWHL as it builds the roster that will head to Milan Cortina in February.

Players won't be participating in what has long been called centralization, a months-long process that saw Olympic hopefuls move to Calgary for several months and train full time in the pursuit of a roster spot.

This time around, 30 players identified by Hockey Canada will start the road to Olympic selection on Aug. 26 in Calgary. They'll attend a three-day, off-ice orientation camp with players invited to train for the men's and Para hockey programs, followed by training from Aug. 30 to Sept. 12.

After two weeks off, another training block will begin in Toronto at the end of September.

The third training block is set for the end of October in Montreal, and will wrap up with two Rivalry Series games against the United States in Cleveland (Nov. 6) and Buffalo (Nov. 8). PWHL training camps are expected to begin in November.

Two more Rivalry Series games are scheduled for December. Those games will be in Canada, but the locations and dates haven't been announced yet.

It's a training program that Hockey Canada has been working on since the PWHL was created in late 2023, altering the landscape of professional women's hockey.

WATCH | Hockey North: Projecting Canada's 2026 Olympic women's hockey roster:

Building that plan has been a balancing act, as they prepare athletes for what could be their heaviest workload to date this upcoming season. In addition to the Rivalry Series and the Olympics, PWHL players will play at least 30 regular-season games, not including potential playoff games.

"We need them to be healthy in the PWHL, so managing what that looks like and managing also volumes and loads, it's a pretty complex matter that has a lot of experts weighing in on what we can do, what it should look like to maximize our athletes," the Canadian team's general manager, Gina Kingsbury, said in an interview with CBC Sports.

Those four Rivalry Series games against the U.S. are likely to be the only games the Canadian national team will play together prior to the Olympics, as players focus on their PWHL seasons.

With time together feeling a bit more rushed since the advent of the PWHL, Kingsbury hopes to use the national team training blocks to focus on her team's on-ice identity.

"We're a very close-knit tight team, but we want to continue to dive a little bit deeper into those relationships," she said.

"We've got some newer players coming in. We've got to make sure that they feel that connection, and we want to make sure we're staying fresh in the relationships we have, that we're going to be as unified and connected as we possibly can be for February."

Canada will open its Olympic tournament on Feb. 5 against Finland. The gold-medal game is set for Feb. 19.

The Canadians own five Olympic gold medals, including the most recent title in 2022. The Americans won in 2018 and 1998.

The training camp roster is led by captain Marie-Philip Poulin (Montreal Victoire), who is aiming to earn her fourth Olympic gold medal.

She is one of 17 players from the gold-medal winning 2022 team to be invited to camp.

Several players are competing to make their first Olympic team, such as Vancouver defender Sophie Jaques, Toronto Sceptres forward Daryl Watts, and NCAA standouts Chloe Primerano, Caitlin Kraemer and Ève Gascon.

Gascon is one of four goaltenders invited to the camp, joining Ann-Renée Desbiens (Montreal Victoire) and Emerance Maschmeyer (PWHL Vancouver), who won gold in 2022, and newcomer Kayle Osborne (New York Sirens).

The biggest battle is likely to be on defence, where young players like Primerano, Jaques and Montreal's Nicole Gosling are competing with veterans like Jocelyne Larocque (Ottawa Charge) and Micah Zandee-Hart (New York Sirens) for a spot.

It's also a sign of how the PWHL is changing the way national teams are selected. Jaques, a two-time Walter Cup winner, has played so well in the PWHL that she's forced her way into the Canadian team's picture. So has 28-year-old Montreal Victoire defender Kati Tabin, who has never played a game with the national team.

"That's the real benefit of the PWHL for some players," the Canadian team's head coach, Troy Ryan, said in an interview. "If you're just getting together for a September camp or the odd Rivalry Series, you may not get to showcase yourself as much as you can now."

While 30 players have been identified for now, Kingsbury said that Hockey Canada could name someone outside of that group, should someone stand out during the PWHL season.

"We'll continue to evaluate the entire athlete pool with Canada to make sure that in the end, we're making the best decision for our country and ensuring that we have athletes that are healthy, ready and are peaking at the right time for February," Kingsbury said.

Most recently, the Canadians lost 4-3 to the Americans in the final at the world championship in the Czech Republic. Like most games between the cross-border rivals, the game went to overtime.

Ryan felt that game could have gone either way, like so many Canada-U.S. matches. But he was pleased the team, which he felt started slow, got better as the tournament went on.

"We tried some things, different line combinations to see how people would work with each other," Ryan said. "We tried to tap into some of the chemistry being built in the PWHL. When I look back, sometimes you can get caught up in the win and loss of it all. I think the athletes continued to build."

Joining Ryan on the Olympic team's coaching staff as assistants are Kori Cheverie (head coach, Montreal Victoire), Caroline Ouellette (associate head coach, Concordia University women's hockey) and Britni Smith (head coach, Syracuse University). Brad Kirkwood, who coaches alongside Ryan with the PWHL's Toronto Sceptres, will be the team's goaltending consultant.

For years, building a team through centralization, where players would spend months together, helped the Canadian team gel both on and off the ice.

Leading up to the 2022 Games, that was amplified by COVID restrictions. Even at the Games in Beijing, players and staff only had each other to lean on, with family and friends unable to attend.

Now, Hockey Canada will have to use these training blocks to do much of the team building.

"Although you have a lot of players and staff that have been together, the dynamics of a team change drastically with someone leaving or someone starting for the first time," Ryan said.

"One thing that veteran or experienced teams really have to be aware of is that just because you know the majority, it doesn't mean you know everybody and it doesn't mean everybody is as comfortable. They haven't gone through the experiences that the core has gone through."

The other part of the puzzle is navigating training plans that players might receive from their PWHL teams, where the player may play a different role than they will on the national team.

With the PWHL, Hockey Canada is no longer the sole source of development for the country's best players.

"A big part of our training block is to set them up for success in the PWHL, and then ultimately we benefit from that with the short turnaround to the Olympics," Ryan said.

Goaltender:

• Ève Gascon (Terrebonne, Que./University of Minnesota Duluth, NCAA)
• Ann-Renée Desbiens (Clermont, Que./Montreal Victoire)
• Emerance Maschmeyer (Bruderheim, Alta./PWHL Vancouver)
• Kayle Osborne (Ottawa/New York Sirens)

Defence:

• Sophie Jaques (Toronto/PWHL Vancouver)
• Jocelyne Larocque (Ste. Anne, Man./Ottawa Charge)
• Chloe Primerano (North Vancouver, B.C./University of Minnesota, NCAA)
• Kati Tabin (Winnipeg/Montreal Victoire)
• Renata Fast (Burlington, Ont./Toronto Sceptres)
• Ella Shelton (Ingersoll, Ont./Toronto Sceptres)
• Erin Ambrose (Keswick, Ont./Montreal Victoire)
• Micah Zandee-Hart (Saanichton, B.C./New York Sirens)
• Claire Thompson (Toronto/PWHL Vancouver)
• Nicole Gosling (London, Ont./Montreal Victoire)

Forward:

• Laura Stacey (Kleinburg, Ont./Montreal Victoire)
• Caitlin Kraemer (Waterloo, Ont./University of Minnesota Duluth, NCAA)
• Sarah Fillier (Georgetown, Ont./New York Sirens)
• Brianne Jenner (Oakville, Ont./Ottawa Charge)
• Sarah Nurse (Hamilton, Ont./PWHL Vancouver)
• Natalie Spooner (Scarborough, Ont./Toronto Sceptres)
• Emily Clark (Saskatoon/Ottawa Charge)
• Emma Maltais (Burlington, Ont./Toronto Sceptres)
• Marie-Philip Poulin (Beauceville, Que./Montreal Victoire)
• Hannah Miller (North Vancouver, B.C./PWHL Vancouver) *pending eligibility from the International Ice Hockey Federation
• Blayre Turnbull (Stellarton, N.S./Toronto Sceptres)
• Kristin O'Neill (Oakville, Ont./New York Sirens)
• Julia Gosling (London, Ont./PWHL Seattle)
• Danielle Serdachny (Edmonton/PWHL Seattle)
• Jennifer Gardiner (Surrey, B.C./PWHL Vancouver)
• Daryl Watts (Toronto/Toronto Sceptres)