Management questions swirl around Canadian women’s hockey team

Canadian women’s hockey team management is in transition after a heartbreaking extra time loss to the USA within the Olympic Video games remaining.

Head coach Troy Ryan has indicated he doubtless will not return for a seventh season, so a brand new head coach could be behind Canada’s bench on the women’s world championship Nov. 6-16 in Herning and Esbjerg, Denmark.

The U.S. beat Canada 2-1 in extra time within the Olympic remaining Feb. 19 in Milan, Italy, for an eighth straight victory over its hockey archrival.

Ryan prompt he is uninclined to proceed teaching the Canadian women’s team when he instructed The Related Press “it’s time for another person to run with it and take it to new heights.”

Hockey Canada’s contracts with each Ryan and women’s team common supervisor Gina Kingsbury expire this spring.

“My contract is up on the finish of June,” Kingsbury stated Monday in a message to The Canadian Press. 

“If Hockey Canada seems like there’s a function that I can assist have an effect in, I’d think about it. However the entire plan/imaginative and prescient must make sense.

“I additionally perceive if the brand new course does not embody me. I am open for dialogue both means and might be our program’s largest supporter if I am not concerned.”

Ryan is head coach and Kingsbury the GM of the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey’s League’s Toronto Sceptres.

Conversations in regards to the future with Ryan and Kingsbury “might be earlier than later,” stated Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s senior vice-president of excessive efficiency and hockey operations.

“It is all actually contemporary for everybody proper now. In equity, I have not spoke to Troy or Gina but about what the future holds,” he continued. “That is on my plan to do that week earlier than I’m going again to the Paralympics.

“I learn the issues that Troy stated as nicely, however he and I have not had that dialog.”

After a enjoying profession that included a pair of Olympic gold medals, Kingsbury joined Hockey Canada in 2016 as a director of hockey operations, and took over the nationwide women’s program in 2018 when Melody Davidson stepped down.

Kingsbury initially left Hockey Canada in 2023 when she was employed because the Sceptres’ first GM. 

Kingsbury returned inside weeks of her introduced departure, nevertheless, to proceed managing the women’s team by means of the 2026 Olympic Video games.

“My job is to place one of the best folks in place. That will begin with the final supervisor if that is Gina or in any other case, after which work carefully with that particular person to rent what could be one of the best coach,” Salmond stated.

“No matter the place we find yourself with Gina and Troy, they will each be concerned in shaping the future. They have means an excessive amount of expertise and concern and look after this system to not have them concerned in at the very least shaping and a few concepts around what the future would appear like.

“There’s work to be completed instantly in evaluating gamers within the second a part of the PWHL season and the playoffs after which figuring out what the following 4 years appear like and significantly what the summer time seems to be like in preparation for November.”

The 2026 Olympic women’s hockey event was the primary after the arrival of the PWHL, which fully altered Canada’s conventional preparation. All 23 ladies on Canada’s Olympic roster play within the PWHL. 

Canada’s ladies did not centralize in Calgary for 5 to 6 months for coaching and video games. That they had three coaching camps earlier than the beginning of the PWHL season in November.

Ryan and Kingsbury had been the primary to carry prime management roles with each a PWHL team and the nationwide team.

“Is it one of the best curiosity to have a PWHL coach? These are questions that should be requested and issues that we have to get opinions on from totally different folks,” Salmond stated. 

“I am not satisfied both means, but. That is going to take a take just a little little bit of time. Now there’s extra questions than there are solutions, which is the best place to be right now.”

Montreal Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie, Victoire assistant coach Caroline Ouellette and Syracuse College Orange coach Britni Smith had been Ryan’s assistant coaches on the Milan Cortina Video games. 

Cheverie and Ouellette are prime candidates to interchange Ryan. Cheverie, 38, has served as his assistant on the Canadian team for six years. 

The 46-year-old Ouellette, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, has been a Canadian assistant coach six occasions since 2019.

“I worth expertise, for certain, worldwide expertise,” Salmond stated. “Caro, Kori, they’ve completed quite a bit for our program. I’d say proper now they’d have a leg up for certain, however we’re dedicated to a radical search.”

Beneath the management of Kingsbury and Ryan, Canada’s ladies received Olympic gold in 2022 and world championships in 2021, 2022 and 2024, and misplaced to the U.S. within the remaining of the 2026 Olympic Video games, in addition to the 2025 and 2023 world championships.