CALGARY - Marie-Philip Poulin and Rebecca Johnston will signify Canada in Olympic girls’s hockey for a fourth time of their careers after profitable gold in each 2010 and 2014, and silver in 2018.
The 2 veterans had been among the many 23 girls named to Canada’s roster Tuesday for the Winter Video games in Beijing opening Feb. 4.
“It’s powerful, to be sincere, to place into phrases that emotion whenever you stroll into the opening ceremonies, and notice that you just’re there. You made it,” Poulin mentioned. “It’s an honour each time you put on that Maple Leaf.”
Three goaltenders, seven defenders and 13 forwards had been introduced nearly by Hockey Canada.
“The very best factor about this group proper now proper now could be we’re assured with the work that we’ve performed to this point, however we’re additionally keen with the work that’s nonetheless left to be performed to make us profitable in Beijing,” mentioned head coach Troy Ryan of Spryfield, N.S.
13 girls return from the staff that misplaced 3-2 in a shootout to the USA within the 2018 gold-medal sport in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Canada opens its bid to reclaim gold the day earlier than the opening ceremonies with a preliminary-round sport in opposition to Switzerland in Beijing’s Nationwide Indoor Stadium.
The gold-medal sport is Feb. 16.
Twenty-nine gamers centralized in Calgary in July to start Olympic preparation. Defender Meaghan Mikkelson and forwards Victoria Bach and Kristin O’Neill had been the ultimate cuts from the staff.
Defender Jamie Bourbonnais and forwards Jessie Eldridge and Julia Gosling had been launched Dec. 3.
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Mikkelson, a three-time Olympian and the oldest participant on the centralized roster at 37, didn’t play video games till mid-December.
A extreme knee harm sustained throughout a Skilled Girls’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation sport in Might required surgical procedure in June, and an extended rehabilitation restricted Mikkelson to simply 4 video games.
Defenders Erin Ambrose and Micah Zandee-Hart, who had been launched from the 2018 staff, had been named to the 2022 roster.
Kristin Campbell, Ann-Renée Desbiens and Emerance Maschmeyer are Canada’s goaltenders.
Ambrose, Zandee-Hart, Ashton Bell, Renata Quick, Jocelyne Larocque, Ella Shelton and Claire Thompson spherical out the defenders.
Emily Clark, Mélodie Daoust, Sarah Fillier, Brianne Jenner, Emma Maltais, Sarah Nurse, Jamie Lee Rattray, Jillian Saulnier, Natalie Spooner, Laura Stacey and Blayre Turnbull be a part of Poulin and Johnston at ahead.
Girls’s Olympic rosters are 23 gamers in comparison with the lads’s 25.
Larocque, Jenner, Daoust and Spooner will compete in a 3rd Olympic Video games. Fillier, the youngest at 21, is amongst 10 making their debuts.
Watching Canada battle for gold 4 years in the past in Pyeongchang fuelled Fillier.
“I keep in mind telling my relations ‘I wish to be representing Canada and carrying that jersey on the subsequent Olympics,’” she mentioned.
“One thing I did from watching 2018 is I’ve been writing ‘2022’ on the underside of my stick for 4 years. To lastly say you made that staff is basically particular.”
Canada edged the USA 3-2 in extra time Aug. 31 for its first girls’s world championship since 2012. That world championship was rescheduled and relocated to Calgary after Nova Scotia cancelled the April event.
Canada’s girls have performed a mixed 27 video games since July on this planet championship, and video games in opposition to the USA and Finland girls, male Junior A and under-17 groups and Skilled Girls’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation (PWHPA) gamers.
A nine-game Rivalry Sequence in opposition to the U.S. was curtailed to 6 video games, nonetheless, as a consequence of COVID-19 instances on the Canadian staff, which additionally delayed the Dec. 22 announcement of the Olympic roster to Tuesday.
Canada’s final sport was a 3-2 extra time win over the American girls Dec. 17 in St. Louis. The collection’ ultimate three video games, together with two scheduled to be performed in Alberta, had been known as off.
The Canadian girls have walled themselves off from the general public to keep away from extra infections, and be capable of board a aircraft Jan. 26 for Beijing, says director of hockey operations Gina Kingsbury.
“From now till then, we’re principally in a bubble,” Kingsbury mentioned. “We’re going to take each precaution that we probably can as a bunch to stay secure and to create the correct setting, not solely to be secure, but in addition to be at our greatest and put together.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Jan. 11, 2022.