“There is not any phrases to explain years of climbing and taking place and going sideways and climbing again up … and now all the pieces is simply going to go greater,” says Danièle Sauvageau.
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There’s a brand new hockey staff on the town and even when it’s not prone to push the Canadiens off the entrance web page simply but, it has already gained over a great deal of hockey followers ici.
The primary dwelling recreation for the Montreal staff within the new Skilled Girls’s Hockey League is Saturday towards Boston (3:30 p.m., CBC, Radio-Canada) on the beautifully-renovated Verdun Auditorium, and the 4,000 tickets obtainable for the sport offered out in 50 minutes. In an interview Monday, basic supervisor Danièle Sauvageau stated ticket gross sales are going properly for all the dwelling video games on this inaugural season, together with the 4 video games on the 10,000-capacity Place Bell in Laval.
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The creation of the league and the arrival of the brand new staff in Montreal is nice information for hockey followers and nice information for the world of girls’s hockey. Canada has had unbelievable success on the Olympics with its girls’s hockey staff, profitable gold in 5 of the final six winter video games. However in between Olympics, it’s been tougher to determine viable skilled girls’s groups in Canada and the scenario has been even worse for the reason that collapse of the Canadian Girls’s Hockey League in 2019.
The excellent news is the brand new girls’s league seems extra financially viable than earlier ventures and the gamers are literally going to be making one thing resembling a good wage. The primary three gamers signed to the Montreal staff have been all members of the Canadian staff that gained gold on the Beijing Olympics in 2022: Marie-Philip Poulin (probably the most well-known feminine hockey participant in Canada proper now), Laura Stacey, and Ann-Renée Desbiens.
Sauvageau was working between conferences Monday on the Verdun Auditorium as a handful of gamers from the staff ran by drills on the ice, simply one other hectic day for Sauvageau, who hasn’t stopped working since she was named GM in September.
Street to the Cup
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Just a few hours later, she managed to catch her breath lengthy sufficient to speak on the telephone concerning the adrenalin rush of beginning up a brand new hockey staff.
“I can’t even put it into phrases,” stated Sauvageau, who coached the Canadian girls’s hockey staff to gold on the 2002 winter Olympics in Utah. “Reaching the highest of the mountain. There’s no phrases to explain years of climbing and taking place and going sideways and climbing again up … and now all the pieces is simply going to go greater.”
Sauvageau admits the gross sales are higher than anybody ever imagined. Montreal’s first-ever recreation, Jan. 2 at TD Place in Ottawa, had 8,318 folks within the stands. Montreal gained that recreation 3-2 due to an additional time objective from Ann-Sophie Bettez. There have been 13,316 followers on the Xcel Power Heart in St. Paul, Minnesota Saturday for Montreal’s second recreation, an all-time document for an expert girls’s hockey recreation. Montreal misplaced that recreation 3-0 to Minnesota.
However frankly the scores are type of irrelevant at this level.
“For me it’s magical,” stated Sauvageau. “That is the place the phrase ‘perseverance’ is available in. At instances in my life, (I’d suppose) ‘Ought to I be doing one thing else?’ This specific second, consider it or not, it’s the primary time I make a dwelling in hockey in spite of everything these years. … What I’m dwelling now, it made each second value it.”
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Speaking to a few of the gamers as they got here off the ice on the Verdun Auditorium on Monday, they sounded simply as pumped as their basic supervisor.
“That is big,” stated Montreal goaltender Marlène Boissonnault. “That is the place (the place) each lady dreamed to play someday and for everybody to play who has that pro-level standing. It’s one thing distinctive that hasn’t been made but. So we’re simply actually excited.”
Added ahead Alexandra Poznikoff: “It’s a dream come true. All these years you’ve at all times watched the NHL and thought ‘Nicely that may be so cool,’ and after that first puck dropped in Toronto towards New York, you’re like ‘OK it’s right here lastly.’ It’s a surreal second for lots of us and I do know we’re going to carry on to that for a very long time.”
Rising up, women would see the fellows within the NHL on TV however there wouldn’t be any comparable feminine function fashions for them as high-profile professional hockey gamers.
“You at all times had hope however you by no means noticed it, you noticed the NHL,” stated Madison Bizal, who performs defence for Montreal. “So it’s actually cool to have us ready the place youthful women now developing (can see skilled feminine gamers).”
Bettez stated she didn’t develop up dreaming of this second simply because it was type of unimaginable.
“Once I was a child, no I didn’t anticipate that I’d be an expert hockey participant,” stated Bettez. “However typically one of the best factor occurs once you anticipate it the least. I believe it’s a privilege to get rewarded for the game that you simply love. I can’t look forward to us to have the ability to have fun and cheer a objective right here. We’ve waited so lengthy for this second. The joy is there, for us but in addition for the followers as properly.”
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