After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Montreal – playing five years with the Carabins and winning a U SPORTS national title in 2016 – and then a specialized graduate diploma (DESS) in sports management from HEC Montreal, the defenceman joined the Canadiennes de Montréal of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) in 2017.

She spent only one season with the Canadiennes, calling it a career at the age of 26 to become a coach.

“It was more or less by chance,” says Beaulieu, the national winner of the BFL Female Coach of the Year in the Competitive category. “I started [coaching] when I was 16. From then until my year with the Canadiennes, I was a summer coach at the AAA level. I was a private coach for both boys and girls, but I never really thought about coaching a full season. I was so overwhelmed with what I was doing as an athlete that I never thought there would be a next step.”

Beaulieu, 30, got a full-time job as a player development assistant with Hockey Quebec, but to do so, she had to give up her on-ice career. The benefits, though, were obvious.

“My work at Hockey Quebec gave me the opportunity to learn more about development,” says the Stoneham, Que., native. “Someone from the Richelieu region approached me because he really wanted to manage a team with a woman. I don’t know how he found me or what contact it was, but it was the father of a player I had met, and he said that he really wanted to run the [Cégep André-Laurendeau] team with me. I told him I wanted to be an assistant, but nothing more. Then I found out that I liked it more than I thought I would.”

The following year, Beaulieu became the head coach of the Remparts du Richelieu U18 AAA team in addition to continuing her position as assistant coach with Cégep André-Laurendeau.

“I wasn’t surprised that I liked coaching, but that I liked it so much. [I liked that] you do it all year long, on weekends, in the evenings... I wanted to do it more than two months a year,” she says.

Beaulieu really enjoys teaching the kids. The fact her players have not yet peaked allows her to maximize the role she plays in their development.

“Those players still have fun in everything they do,” she says. “They really appreciate the investment you make and the time you take for them. That’s something I really like about this age group. They are passionate and still have plenty of goals to achieve at the college or national levels. It’s an age group that is full of goals and potential.”

Still, it’s very important to have fun on the ice at that age. While Beaulieu is well aware of this, she also believes that it is possible to have fun and push yourself at the same time.

“I want the girls to like to surpass themselves while knowing that it’s always necessary to have fun," explains Beaulieu, who served as defence coach with the Titans du Cégep Limoilou last season. “It’s possible to have fun while working 100% all the time. If you go out on the ice every day and you love what you do, you will improve. At the end of the year, those girls come to me for more feedback, to watch more videos. It’s a teachable mentality and the girls want to get more. In the end, it works!”

It’s clear the young coach is passionate about her sport, whether she was on the ice or behind the bench.

But nowhere is that passion more evident than when she is able to share it with others.

“I’m very proud when I see a player’s passion grow over the course of the year," Beaulieu says. “She already loved hockey, but she didn’t realize how much she loved it for details that she probably wasn’t aware of at first. As time goes on, as she practices things, she asks for even more feedback and information. I’m very proud of being able to pass it on; it’s my greatest accomplishment even if it’s not really mine. It takes an athlete who is willing to do it to make it there, but it’s something I really enjoy doing.”

After coaching at the college and U18 AAA levels, Beaulieu does not intend to stop there. Even if there is no rush, she is starting to think about the next steps she could take.

“Obviously, I want to get as high as I can, but I think there are steps to take before that,” she says. Right now, I am in Limoilou and I am really proud of what I am doing. Maybe my next step would be to join Team Quebec at the provincial level. That’s the next step I want to take, but I’m not setting any limits. We’ll see where it takes me.”

That’s Sarah Hilworth.

One of the top coaches in Canadian university hockey, Hilworth led the University of New Brunswick (UNB) women’s team to the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) championship in 2021-22, less than five years after UNB’s women’s hockey program was reinstated into AUS.

For her work, Hilworth was named the national winner of the 2022 BFL Female Coach of the Year Award in the High Performance category. The honour comes on the heels of Hilworth being named AUS Coach of the Year.

“I was floored, I couldn’t even believe it,” the Vancouver native says of the BFL CANADA award. “I was honoured just to be nominated and when they told me I was the recipient … it’s hard to accept something where I know there are so many people involved that, truly, this goes out to them.

“It’s nice to represent something that we have created here in Fredericton that is so special to me and so many people. I’m very proud of everything that our organization has done. I don’t think that I can take full credit because there are so many people who have helped me get to where we are.”

Hockey fans will know the Hilworth name from her playing days. She was a top contributor with the University of Alberta during her five years playing for that program, registering 100 points in her 100-game career. The decorated career came to an abrupt end during Hilworth’s fifth season when she blocked a shot, the puck shattering her knee cap.

There’s no doubt Hilworth was disappointed, as the elite athlete had contracts lined up with plans to head to Europe to play professionally. But she didn’t have too much time to dwell on that as the coaching bug took over.

The transition from player to coach was a pretty natural one, given Hilworth’s passion and knowledge of the game.

“To think back, that kid from inner-city Vancouver, growing up and adoring the sport … I look back and I was always an athlete but I always think I was a coach first. I was the only person in my class playing hockey and only girl playing sports,” says Hilworth. “I remember getting in trouble from my teachers in Grade 3 because I would be drawing up drills in my book and doing up little sign-up sheets and I would be teaching the girls in my class how to play basketball or soccer or any kind of sport. I needed people to play with and I would have these little clinics set up. That’s kind of how my mind was when I was little. It just translated into high school and I started helping coach teams there too.

“I just love it. I love helping people and seeing people enjoy being athletic, whether it’s hockey, baseball, soccer or whatever. The power of sport is pretty incredible.”

She credits Howie Draper for her move into the university coaching ranks. Draper, the long-time University of Alberta head coach who recently led Canada’s National Women’s Under-18 Team to gold at the 2022 IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship, was Hilworth’s head coach from 2008-13.

Hilworth jokes that Draper may have felt bad for her but, in reality, Draper could see the passion and knowledge Hilworth had. He offered her a chance to be an assistant coach on his staff, a role Hilworth held for two seasons before taking a head coaching position at Olds College in Alberta. Hilworth left Olds after two seasons for the opportunity to lead the UNB program.

Today, Hilworth says she’s living the dream. Hockey has given her the opportunity to see the country and the world, has been the reason she went from one coast to another and is pretty much the reason for every aspect of her life.

“It’s given me everything. I’ve never not been an athlete. I’ve never not loved the game,” she says. “It’s something that has given me discipline, taught me hard work, given me goals; some of the best times of my life, some of the worst times of my life. It’s given me my family, my friends. The people that I’ve met along the way are some of the most incredible people. My student-athletes, they’re all family to me. There are so many personal things the game has taught me but the family and people that I’ve met along the way are the people I love and enjoy and I’m so grateful and truly … I’m so blessed.”

Hilworth is thrilled at the investment that UNB has made into its women’s hockey program. She thinks the state of the game is at an all-time high and points to the incredible talent displayed during the recent U18 women’s worlds. Ever the advocate, though, Hilworth says there’s more to be done.

“I would like to see more women in our game. There are a lot of incredible women in our game already and coaching, and a lot of them that I look up to,” she says. “We need to continue to see that investment made into women coaching women. I want to see more equality in terms of how ice is being allocated in female programs versus male programs and how communities are rallying behind their young female hockey players. That’s still something that is missing in our game.”

Like so many other great ideas in 2020, the genesis of the Women in Sport Speaker Series came from finding ways to pass the time at home during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While some Canadians binge-watched their favourite shows or read a good book, Amy de Bree set about to use her newfound free time in a more fulfilling way.

“I spent a lot of time watching webinar series and just really trying to find a way to use the time to better myself, both as an individual and as a leader and as a coach,” she says. “And what I noticed was that as I watched all of these webinars, the female voices were really missing.

“I knew that there were some amazing women doing some great things in coaching and in really all aspects of sport from the research side to the business side. And so I wanted to give an opportunity for these women to actually have a voice.”

De Bree is herself one of those amazing women doing some great things in coaching. In addition to her teaching position at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in Vancouver, she is video coordinator for the women’s hockey team at the University of British Columbia, and coaches in the Vancouver Thunderbirds Minor Hockey Association and Vancouver Female Ice Hockey Association.

Add in her time with the B.C. Hockey provincial program, which has included roles as assistant coach at the 2019 National Women’s Under-18 Championship and as head coach at the 2017 National Aboriginal Hockey Championships, along with a handful of provincial camps, and de Bree spends an awful lot of time behind the bench.

“I truly enjoy the game,” she says of why she coaches. “I enjoy approaching the game from different ways. But even more than that, I really just enjoy working with kids. I enjoy helping them reach their potential, whatever that avenue may be. As a teacher, I get to do that every day. And as a coach, we get a different angle to that.”

With her passion and her experience, it was little surprise – except to de Bree herself, who says she was shocked to get a call from Team Canada legend Cassie Campbell-Pascall – that she was selected as the B.C. winner of the BFL Female Coach of the Year Award in the high performance category.

While the national recognition was great, it was the $1,000 monetary prize that pushed de Bree to make her seminar idea a reality and move on to the next step – putting together a list of speakers.

She went to work reaching out to her contacts in the sports world, working connections in some cases and just relying on blind ambition in others.

“A lot of vulnerability, and just sending out emails to women and saying, ‘Hey, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. We would love if you would participate.’ It was just a great experience of women helping women and bringing together some amazing voices.”

In the end, de Bree gathered 18 women across 10 different presentations for the Women in Sport Speaker Series, which ran virtually from July 20-24. The line-up included a Q&A with National Women’s Team alumna Vicky Sunohara, and sessions on being a Black female coach, consent culture, the advancement of women in coaching and loving your body as a female athlete, among others.

All of the Women in Sport Speaker Series seminars are available on the official website. 

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and the push has already begun towards the 2021 series.

“It was fantastic to hear from the other women who tuned in and watched, and even the different men,” de Bree says. “One of our top referees in the area, he watched all of the talks and it was fantastic to see the different people engaging and kind of thinking through topics and just expanding their way of thinking.”

De Bree is working closely with Shiayli Toni, a fifth-year forward on the UBC women’s team who led the Championing Consent Culture webinar, to push forward and keep the conversation going.

A call went out in late August through social media, and nominations are being accepted for women who are making a difference in sports. Every month, one deserving woman will be celebrated on Twitter and Instagram.

For de Bree, the return of autumn means a return to the rink, albeit in a new-look hockey world thanks to the pandemic. While she navigates her way through another season behind the bench, she has a little bit of advice for girls and women who want to follow her path.

“One of the biggest hurdles that women have in getting into coaching is the time commitment. It can be really tough. And as women, when we come out of college or we come out of the end of our [playing] careers, we're still trying to financially set ourselves up. So find a role where you can start to get your feet wet and then build out that commitment. As soon as you make your name for yourself, you start to be able to find those roles where you do get financially compensated, so it makes it a lot easier to balance the work and life, and still be able to coach and give back to the game.”

The focus for Stéphanie Grenier has always been on getting more girls involved in hockey.

The mother of three has worn multiple hats for the Association hockey féminin vallée de Gatineau (AHFVG), including coach, registrar and recruiter, and her efforts earned her the BFL Female Coach of the Year Award (Community) for Quebec.

“It was a big surprise to me. I didn’t know that my association nominated me and put my name forward for the award,” says Grenier. “I was happy that my work was recognized over the years.”

The 40-year-old didn’t play the game growing up, got on the ice in her adult years and was quick to get involved when she signed up two of her daughters to play with the AHFVG.

She didn’t view herself as a “real hockey player,” but after being asked to help with her then four-year-old daughter’s team, Grenier has never stopped working with teams across the association.

“With the kids being so young they needed more coaches on the ice to help, and since I played hockey here and there, I decided to jump in and help,” she said. “The person in charge was happy to have women on the ice to set an example for the younger girls.”

Two years later, Grenier took over the Initiation (now Timbits U7) program for the AHFVG. For the past seven years she has been an assistant coach with her middle daughter’s team, supports her oldest daughter’s team, and is the head coach for her youngest daughter’s team.

Phew. That’s a lot of hockey.

On her nomination form, Sonia Bertrand, president of the AHFVG, said that Grenier is a positive role model for young girls. As the registrar and recruiter, she works hard to attract as many players as possible to promote and grow the game in Gatineau.

“I hope through the next few years, we can get more women involved with hockey. It is nice for the girls to have women on the ice with them and to have examples of hockey players in their community,” Grenier says. “It will give them a sense that they too can play university hockey or coach later in life.”

Not only does Grenier dedicate a lot of her time in recruiting girls to join the AHFVG, but she also actively looks for mothers to get involved with coaching their young daughters.

“When I learn that a mom used to play hockey when she was younger, I always try to get them involved,” she says. “I feel like some women don’t think they are good enough or whatever, but as soon as they get involved, they remember how much they enjoy being on the ice and usually stay involved.”

According to Bertrand, Grenier’s cheerfulness, energy and dedication represent all the qualities a coach must possess to help athletes progress along the path of life.

Even in the middle of a challenging season with few wins, Grenier was focused on the long-term development and little wins of each player.

“I love to see the improvements of the girls throughout the season,” she says. “I love to see them starting out and almost not being able to skate, and then at the end of the season, they make a stop – it is just so great to see,” she said. “I love being involved and seeing the girls smiling and them seeing what they are capable of doing.”

Life is busy at the rink for Grenier and her three daughters, but she wants to help grow the game in Gatineau.

“It is fun watching these girls come out of their shells as they play. It is great to see them make friends and keep playing year after year,” she says. “Hopefully, we can continue to grow our association.”

Callie Langmead’s passion for coaching comes from personal experience.

Growing up in Flatrock, N.L., Langmead played hockey with the boys because there wasn’t a girls’ team. Over the past 12 years, she has helped coach various Northeast Eagles Minor Hockey Association (NEMHA) teams out of Torbay, N.L.

Three years ago, Langmead, along with fellow coach Bill Everson and NEMHA female director Harold Kelly, created an all-girls program within the association, and they haven��t looked back.

“When I played, I had to go to a different organization to play girls hockey,” says Langmead. “There weren’t enough girls in our area, but we have grown since then.”

The women’s hockey program started with a U15 team and two U12 teams; today, it includes four in U9, three in U12, and one each in U15 and U20.

“It is great to see how much girls’ hockey has grown in our area since we started the program just three years ago,” she says.

Her leadership in the program and guidance behind the bench helped Langmead win the BFL Female Coach of the Year Award (Community) for Newfoundland and Labrador.

“It was so cool to be recognized. I didn’t expect it,” Langmead says. “I coach because I love it. It was so nice to see that people appreciate all the effort and work I’ve put in.”

Langmead hopes to inspire the players she coaches through her own experiences and dedication to the game. She left the East Coast in high school to play prep-school hockey at Balmoral Hall in Winnipeg before returning home for university.

“The girls know I went away for hockey, and I want to show them that there are opportunities for them to play hockey off the island,” she says. “I just want to give back to the girls I coach. My coaches impacted me growing up and not just my game, and I hope I am doing that for them.”

Everson nominated Langmead for the award and said it was “heartwarming” to see her win.

“I get to see the work and dedication she puts into the game,” he says. “[The players] all love Callie. I don’t know how to explain it – they are all drawn to her. When she speaks, they all listen.”

It was fitting for Langmead to win the award, Everson says, since he and Kelly had been thinking of ways to recognize her for all she has done for the NEMHA.

“We’ve been talking the last couple of years on recognizing Callie because of the time she commits to minor hockey, especially the girls. We’ve been trying to think of what we could do for her, and when this came up, it just made sense.”

Langmead’s joy for the game started early as she watched her dad play, but it wasn’t until she was 10 years old that she laced up her own skates and began to play after a friend signed up to play.

“I didn’t even know that girls could play hockey at that age,” she says. “I love that it is becoming normal that girls who are three or four are jumping on the ice, and they belong.”

That sense of belonging and opportunity is what drives Langmead to continue to coach at the grassroots level, so that younger girls feel welcome and connected to the sport.

“Girls should have that equal opportunity that the boys have,” she says. “If you want to play, you can play on an all-girls team, and you can get on the ice when you are young. It is great to see these girls get the opportunity that I didn’t have growing up.”

Langmead shares the same mentality when it comes to having women behind the bench.

“I want to show the girls that not only can they play, but they can grow up and coach too if they want to,” she says. “Being a female coach, especially to teenagers, I can relate to them better. I want them to realize they have the same knowledge and expertise to play and coach.”

Langmead is finishing her master’s degree in clinical epidemiology and starting medical school in August. Still, she hopes to continue coaching with the NEMHA and in addition to teaching power skating at Xtreme Hockey.

“As long as I stay on the ice, I will be happy.”

Home is where the heart is for Katie-Lynn Cummiskey, and it’s why she gives back to Pownal Minor Hockey.

It’s also a big reason why the 24-year-old took home the BFL Female Coach of the Year Award (Community) for Prince Edward Island.

“I was shocked,” says Cummiskey. “This will motivate me to continue to coach.”

Cummiskey has been coaching since she was 15. Last season she was behind the bench as head coach of the female Bantam A (now U15) Pownal Red Devils, as well as assisting with the NHL/NHLPA First Shift program.

“My dad was a big influence on me and thought it was a good thing to give back to the community,” she says. “Once I stepped on the ice the first time as a coach, I knew it was something that I wanted to continue.”

Cummiskey played hockey throughout her childhood with Pownal Minor Hockey and joined the women’s team at Holland College as she studied to become a kinesiologist.

She stepped away from coaching as school demanded more from her but was able to stay involved through the First Shift program, which ensures a positive experience for new-to-hockey families at a reduced cost.

Every player receives head-to-toe Bauer equipment and learns the basics in a fun on-ice environment.

“I thought it was a great initiative in getting kids into hockey,” says Cummiskey. “This program helps teach kids the fundamentals. With many coaches on the ice, none of the kids feel left out.”

Cummiskey has coached with the program for the past five years, and it is the excitement of the kids that keeps bringing her back.

“I get too competitive and lose touch with that initial feeling of why I love the game, but seeing their joy of learning a new skill and how their faces light up when they learn the sport is special,” she says.

Cory Barlow is a mentorship coach with Pownal Minor Hockey and nominated Cummiskey for the BFL award.

“She was the first person that came to mind when I saw the nomination application,” he says. “Katie-Lynn can pick a kid out of a crowd and make it so that they enjoy the game.”

An empathic approach is how Cummiskey connects with younger athletes. Barlow shared an example from the First Shift program when a child with a learning disability wanted to try the program but was uneasy about getting on the ice.

“I asked Katie-Lynn to work her magic, and within 10 minutes, this player was on the ice with the biggest smile,” Barlow says.

Cummiskey believes that sports are for everyone, and in this particular example, she didn’t want the little girl to miss out.

“My uncle was legally blind, and he missed out on a lot of things growing up, so it was personal for me,” she says. “A lot of times, kids can be excluded from activities. It [was] important to make sure this child was included and enjoying themselves.”

Cummiskey didn’t have a woman as a coach until she was in Bantam, and it made a world of difference to her to have a fellow female behind the bench.

“[Female] personalities match up a little better. They approach the game differently, especially in the teenage years,” says Cummiskey. “I do feel that when it comes to girls' sports, it is important to have a female – even if they aren’t a head coach – to talk to on the bench.”

CALGARY, Alta. – Hockey Canada, in partnership with Samsung, unveiled Thursday the Hockey Canada Drill Hub, which gives coaches the ability to download hundreds of drills and construct practice plans.

Coaches can look for drills by using the search function, or by selecting from one of 16 categories. Drills can be combined into practice plans, and those plans can be shared through email, and through social media.

To create practice plans, coaches must register for a free Hockey Canada Drill Hub account at www.hockeycanada.ca/drillhub, PDF diagrams and descriptions are available without an account.

“This is a fantastic tool that will not only help develop the skills of young Canadian players, but help coaches share information from coast to coast to coast,” said Paul Carson, vice-president of membership development with Hockey Canada. “We’re excited to team with Samsung to continue to grow our development programs, and introduce what we believe is going to be an invaluable resource for coaches.”

“The drill hub is a tremendous tool which helps fuel the Canadian passion and skill set development for hockey players, coaches and parents alike,” said Mark Childs, chief marketing officer with Samsung Canada. “The drill hub ensures learning and coaching is informative, interactive and, most importantly, mobile device accessible. The way the game is taught has evolved over the past 100 years, and Samsung is proud to partner with Hockey Canada to help ensure Canada remains a leader in player development.”

The Hockey Canada Drill Hub includes drill that focus on skating, defence, puck control, shooting, scoring, passing, individual skills, individual tactics, team tactics, checking, small-area games, all ages, Peewee and up, Atom and below, warm-up and goaltending.

For more information on Hockey Canada and its development programs, please visit www.hockeycanada.ca, or follow along via social media at www.facebook.com/hockeycanada and www.twitter.com/hockeycanada.

On the ice, Canada’s National Women’s Under-18 Team completed a three-game sweep of the United States in its summer series for the first time since 2007, but behind the bench, the coaching staff was making a little history.

Head coach Courtney Birchard-Kessel and assistants Stefanie McKeough and Tara Watchorn became the first all-women coaching staff in the history of Canada’s women’s U18 program. The result against the Americans was terrific, but the impact the series will have on growing women’s hockey goes beyond the ice.

“We’re in such a good time for women in coaching positions,” says Watchorn. “With pioneers like Hayley Wickenheiser and Caroline Ouellette, it’s great to see that women are starting to get in on the coaching side now and there’s a path to making coaching a career, which was really tough before. It’s really cool to see that transition where a wave of players who have already had a hockey career now able to move into coaching.”

To add to the accomplishment, all three members of the coaching staff are alumnae of National Women’s Program, having shared the ice together at camps and events over the last decade and a half, including a golden experience with Canada’s National Women’s Development Team at the 2011 MLP Cup, the only time the three wore the Maple Leaf together.

Combined, the three played 183 international games; Birchard-Kessel appeared in three IIHF Women’s World Championships, winning gold in 2012, Watchorn was an Olympic gold medallist in 2014 and played at three women’s worlds, and McKeough was part of the Canadian contingent at the 2009 IIHF World Women’s U18 Championship.

So coming back to the national program and having a reunion of sorts behind the bench meant a little bit extra for the trio.

“Between the three of us, our paths have crossed so many times throughout our own playing careers, and we have a lot of shared experiences and values we learned along the way,” Watchorn says. “For the under-18 age group, they’re so young and for a lot of them, it’s their first high-performance environment. So, for us to be able to understand and anticipate those stressors and telling them to focus on just being present, enjoying the time with teammates and making them better, you’re always going to play better.”

Watchorn has always wanted to be a coach. Even during a successful playing career that included Olympics, women’s worlds and hoisting the Clarkson Cup with the CWHL’s Boston Blades of the CWHL in 2015, Watchorn knew she wanted to pass on the positive experiences she’s had in the game.

“I am so fortunate to be part of cultures and teams that truly changed my life,” says the Newcastle, Ont., native, who is the first-ever head coach of the women’s program at Stonehill College, “so my hope is to create that environment and culture for other young women who can come through and be inspired [and] challenged, and become leaders and people who impact the world.”

Although coaching isn’t always the plan for players, hockey sometimes finds a way back. After hanging up her skates after a five-year college career at the University of Wisconsin (which included an NCAA national title in 2011), McKeough thought coaching was one of the last things she would be doing with her free time.

But the game eventually took her to Sweden, where she was able to get a taste of coaching and was bitten by the bug. To this day, McKeough admits it continues to surprise her every time she walks into the rink as a full-time coach.

“Hockey players are humans first,” the Carlsbad Springs, Ont., product says. “I learned through coaching that we have to help the person before helping the hockey player, and being able to be there for somebody is something that motivates me when I show up at the rink every day.”

As an assistant coach with the University of Ottawa, McKeough gets to work and learn from veteran U SPORTS coaches like Vicky Sunohara (Toronto), Rachel Flanagan (Guelph) and Gee-Gees bench boss Chelsea Grills. They’ve been able to set examples for McKeough previously as a player and now as a coach.

“Vicky was actually one of my coaches at my first U18 camp and Rachel was an assistant coach during one of my years on the under-22 team, so now that I get to work with them, I’ve been able to gain a more deeper respect for what they do as coaches.

“By having those ’If you see it, you can be it‘ situations, I’ve been able to continue to build those relationships with other coaches and the players.”

The growth and visibility of women in coaching and leadership positions continues to grow. Just this summer, Hockey Canada alumna Jessica Campbell was hired as an assistant coach by the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds, longtime national team defenceman Laura Fortino took on the same role with the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs, and 2022 Olympic gold medallists Marie-Philip Poulin and Rebecca Johnston took on player development roles with the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames, respectively.

“Diversity in leadership is so valuable,” Watchorn says. “For people to bring different backgrounds, and to be able to relate to the players, it’s just so important. If you see it, you can be it.”

My first introduction with the women’s game was many years ago when I was playing hockey at the University of New Brunswick in the mid-1990s. They didn’t have a women’s varsity team, but they had a club team, and every once in a while, the team needed extra support with coaching. So, for a brief time while I was playing, I jumped on the ice to help.

After that, I started to build my own coaching career on the men’s side. I was actually in Calgary working at Hockey Canada’s under-17 camp and I received a call from Darren Sutherland at Hockey Nova Scotia. He said they had to make a last-minute coaching change for their Canada Winter Games women’s hockey team, and called me first to see if I had anyone I would recommend. I think I gave them three names, but two weren’t available and one wasn’t interested, so they called me back and just asked me if I would be interested. I jumped at the opportunity and I coached at that Canada Winter Games in 2015.

The following year, that group of women I coached at the Canada Winter Games got together and wrote a letter to Hockey Nova Scotia to recommend me or nominate me for a coaching award, and I ended up winning that award. It’s kind of a cheesy part of the story, but they were playing on my heartstrings a little bit and I got hooked to women’s hockey right away.

One of the biggest reasons why I love coaching in women’s hockey is the passion they have for the game. The other part is just the high-performance side of it—when you’re coaching these women, they are true professionals. They invest almost all their time in their craft. But it really comes down to their passion. The passion they have for the game, the passion they have to play for their country and the passion they have for each other really separates them from anybody else that I’ve ever coached. They are just a special group of athletes.

I honestly feel spoiled all the time working with Canada’s National Women’s Team. Every day is fun working with these players and staff. I think the biggest thing driving me as a coach is I still think this group has room to grow. I think we’ve taken huge strides in the right direction. We’re a better team now than we have been in the past. They genuinely care about each other’s success, and they share in those successes. I just still think there’s room to improve, and if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be doing my job.

Some of the best parts about coaching this team are things no one would ever see. Like when you have a video session with an athlete and you bridge a gap with them and you can see them excel in that area on the ice. It’s just that little look you get when they come off the ice after they’ve accomplished something that you’ve discussed with them. Those moments to me are the real special ones. The wins and all that, that’s obviously fun, but a lot of the times they’re more of a relief than they are a high moment. It’s the little moments along the way.

I remember one special moment at the Olympics in Beijing. Because of COVID-19, the athletes had to put the medals around each other’s necks. That was just so unique and special. You look at each one while they’re doing it, and you just have a story in your head for each of those people. Maybe it’s an obstacle they had to overcome to be in that situation. Several of them had been released from the team prior to world championships, and they did what they could to get back into the mix. So, I remember just almost checking out mentally during that five-minute span of the medal ceremony and just reflecting on some of the cool stories that each person had to overcome to get to that moment. To see them getting an Olympic gold medal around their necks from one of their teammates was a pretty cool experience.

Mike Johnston coached me at the University of New Brunswick. He’s actually Rebecca Johnston’s uncle, which is funny. When I first started coaching, he told me no matter what I do in hockey, always have your province’s back. A lot of people, when they first get that opportunity in U18 or junior hockey, they forget about their provincial program. I looked up to him so much when I was younger, so I always made sure that no matter what job I had in the game, if Hockey Nova Scotia ever reached out to me, I’d be there to volunteer and to help. If I had went along my route of coaching in junior hockey or university hockey, I never would have had the experiences that ended up benefitting me the most with this job. The best experiences I had with my provincial Member were participating in short-term events, working with the best players and coaches, and gaining more high-performance experience.

Another good piece of advice I got a long time ago was simple—meet people where they’re at, even at the national team level. There are athletes coming in that are four-time Olympians, then there are some that are just hoping to get centralized or make a world championship team. As a coach, it’s so important to understand the different dynamics, and the dynamics in the women’s game tend to be much different than in the men’s game.

When I first started coaching, one of the typical questions people asked me was the difference between coaching men and coaching women. I think a lot of people make a mistake in trying to put an umbrella over their group. I always thought good coaches coach their athletes as individuals. Take the time to get to know your athletes and know what goals they have and what they want to achieve. Right now, we are trying to build our program to win a gold medal at the 2026 Olympic Games. In order to get there, I think we need to really take care of a lot of the individual stories that are involved on our team. That will be a bit more of my focus in these first few years of the quad as we get ready for 2026.