A new era has arrived for the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team

See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source 

It’s a new era for elite women’s hockey in Canada.

The Team Canada roster for the coming IIHF Women’s World Championship in Denmark signals a changing of the guard, with seven senior team rookies earning spots amid the absence of several longtime veteran leaders.

General manager Daniele Sauvageau said the team needs to give the younger talent an opportunity to develop at the international level.

“It’s the first year of the quad and this is what we wanted to do and this is what we also told the players,” she said.

The changes are a stark contrast to the previous time the Canadian women took the ice, at the Milano-Cortina Winter Games.

Then, the veteran-heavy ensemble came runner up to the U.S., settling for silver in an overtime loss. While that loss garnered widespread attention because of its Olympic stage, it was just one of many to the Americans in the preceding years — Canada has come up short in each of the past eight games between the two hockey powerhouses.

Following the Olympics, Hockey Canada announced significant changes to the front office and coaching staff with program mainstays Troy Ryan and Gina Kingsbury departing, to be replaced by Kori Cheverie as coach and Sauvageau as the top decision-maker.

“We do believe that as we’re preparing for the World Championship this year, we’re also in a position to build to 2030,” Sauvageau said.

Which veterans have been left off the roster?

Only 13 players who took the ice in Milan earlier this year will return to the roster and, of that group, just one veteran wore a letter last season.

Notable veterans missing from the lineup include Marie-Philip Poulin, who is recovering from knee surgery, Blayre Turnbull, who announced her pregnancy earlier this year, Sarah Nurse, who is recovering from a back injury, Claire Thompson, who has retired to attend medical school, and Emerence Maschmeyer, who did not attend the team’s recent training camp.

Brianne Jenner and Jocelyne Laroque, who both served as alternate captains for Team Canada, did attend the camp, but were not named to the final roster.

Sauvageau emphasized that while Poulin is out for an undetermined amount of time, she is still very much part of the program. She attended a Thanksgiving dinner with the team during a recent training camp in Quebec City.

“Obviously when it comes down to talking to players, having calls, Marie is there to serve. It’s hard for her, hard for us not having her around but she’s still the captain of Team Canada,” Sauvageau said.

Longtime NHL coach Bruce Cassidy is serving as a special advisor to the team. At the recent Team Canada training camp, he was on the ice with players, on the bench during games and at the evaluation table while staff were making roster decisions.

“He has a radar that is coming from the NHL, he’s been around the game,” Sauvageau said.

Who are the standout new players?

The revamped roster includes four active NCAA athletes including 19-year-old Chloe Primerano and 20-year-old Caitlin Kraemer, who were both invited to join the Edmonton Oilers development camp this summer.

“It kind of reminded me of my first skate with the senior women’s team — just another level,” Kraemer said during the camp.

The two were also part of last season’s squad for the annual Rivalry Series.

“It’s a huge honour every time I get this opportunity,” Primerano told Postmedia at the time. “It’s something I can never take for granted because it’s a huge opportunity and something really special to represent your country.”

She described the rivalry between the two countries as “competitive” and “intense.”

“No one wants to lose in Canada vs. USA. It’s historically been a lot of gold medal games and world championships. It’s just so competitive. No friends out there,” she said.

The roster also features 18-year-old Rosalie Tremblay, 18-year-old Hayley McDonald, 19-year-old Sara Manness and 23-year-old Eve Gascon.

“They earned their place to have an opportunity to show what they could do at an international level,” Sauvageau said.

She described, for example, how Tremblay impressed coaching staff by maintaining her identity amidst the more senior players.

“When she first walked into the meal room and she realized where she was, it was another level,” Sauvageau said.

She said that Tremblay not only showed massive improvement within the last year, but also during the training camp.

“Right from the beginning she was able to come in and show. She was very open with asking questions, she was herself. We asked the players to bring their best, she was very at ease with that. Now it’s a question of what we’ll see from her at a higher level.”

Why is Canada focusing on developing a young core?

With pressure mounting to improve the record against the U.S., Sauvageau is creating a new identity on the ice for Canada.

“We wanted to have a clear identity, meaning playing a certain way. To play fast, to play connected, to play forward,” she said.

She said this was communicated as a “non-negotiable” to players at the training camp in Quebec City.

The Canadian front office might be taking a page out of the American book. Four years ago, after losing to Canada in the gold-medal final of the Beijing Winter Games, the Americans overhauled their national team, installing coach John Wroblewski behind the bench and adding a core of youngsters to the lineup.

“It was a storm coming out of the last Olympic cycle … it was me showing up with a blank slate. I had no bias toward older players, I had no bias toward younger players,” Wroblewski said after sweeping last season’s Rivalry Series.

He described the conviction he felt while watching then-18-year-old Tessa Janecke compete for a spot at the first training camp prior to worlds in 2022.

“All things considered, without me being biased to older players, I’m looking at the younger ones saying, ‘the younger ones have got to go,’” he said.

Throughout the next four years, the U.S. continued to develop athletes such as Laila Edwards, Abbey Murphy and Joy Dunne, who have contributed meaningfully to the Americans’ currently unbeatable status.

Will moving the world championship earlier in the season impact the quality of play?

The roster isn’t the only major change at this season’s world championship, the tournament has also been moved from its typical April spot on the calendar to Nov. 6-16, to better accommodate the PWHL schedule.

“There’s pros and cons and we saw it at the camp,” said Sauvageau, who served as general manager of the Montreal Victoire since the league’s inception in 2023, earning a championship title last year with the squad.

“The first game that some players played, even veterans, it was the beginning of the season,” she said.

She explained that was part of the reason Team Canada held a longer training camp closer to the start of the tournament than normal.

On the other hand, she said the disruption of having the tournament in the middle of the PWHL season wasn’t ideal either.

“The players are right into the season, they’re coming into the world championship, some teams closer to the playoffs some not, then they’re coming back to a team where their teammates needed to wait almost three weeks continuing to train together,” she said.

She said they’ve already learned some tweaks they’ll make to training next year.

“Obviously their preparation in the summer will have to be slightly different in order to offer their best hockey right at the beginning,” she said.

What’s expected from this new roster?

While Canada has taken steps toward building a younger, faster team, the U.S. is four years ahead of that curve, with a youthful core full of offensive firepower coming off an Olympic gold-medal win.

The Americans have outscored Canada 37-12 in the past eight matchups. At the 2026 Olympic Games they sailed through the tournament, outsourcing opponents 33-2 for a staggering +31 goal differential.

One of those two goals against was scored by Canadian Kristin O’Neill in the gold-medal final. She’s trying to take the positives out of that experience heading into this season.

“Obviously we had some trouble against the United States that season. So with that context, looking at that game, I think we played so well and I think we did walk away from that game being really proud of ourselves,” O’Neill said.

“If we hadn’t have felt good about the actual game that we showed on the ice it would have left a saltier taste but ultimately just so proud leaving that game,” she said.

Canada will face the U.S. for the first time since the 2026 Winter Games on Oct. 28 in Windsor, Ont., in the first of two pre-tournament matchups. The two teams will meet once more before heading to Denmark on Oct. 30 in Plymouth, Mass.

For Sauvageau the goal is simple: “At the end of the day, we don’t want to be scored on and we want to score a lot of goals.”

1. 

   Ontario
2. 

   Ontario
3. 

   World
4. 

   World
5. 

   Toronto & GTA