Normal supervisor Gina Kingsbury says Toronto’s Skilled Girls’s Hockey League group will distinguish itself culturally and never be a mere “copy and paste” of the Canadian ladies’s nationwide group.
Kingsbury, who additionally serves because the GM of Canada’s ladies’s group, oversees a Toronto squad that options quite a few nationwide group members. The yet-to-be-named PWHL group, which is in its second week of coaching camp on the Ford Efficiency Centre, contains notable gamers comparable to Sarah Nurse, Natalie Spooner, Blayre Turnbull, Renata Quick and Jocelyne Larocque
“I feel each time you’ve got a brand new member in any form of unit or group, the tradition and the atmosphere has to shift a bit in the event you really embody them into it,” Kingsbury mentioned at Wednesday’s observe. “Certainly not are we copying and pasting what we have achieved on the nationwide group stage.
“Tradition, it is much more than simply what you see on the ice. I feel that is the muse to, hopefully, a group that is round for a century,” Kingsbury added.
Alongside Canada coach Troy Ryan, who additionally helms the Toronto group, Kingsbury guided the nationwide group to consecutive world titles in 2021 and 2022, in addition to Olympic gold in Beijing in 2022. The Canadians fell to the U.S. within the 2023 worlds closing in Brampton, Ont., in April.
Whereas the familiarity helps, Ryan says placing the Toronto group collectively has extra to do with selecting characters who can contribute to fostering the correct atmosphere and constructing a group id.
“There is a distinction in wanting good teammates and truly choosing folks that you recognize are good teammates but in addition holding folks accountable to being teammate,” he mentioned.
“In case you typically have good folks with good management traits and so they maintain one another accountable to being good teammates, you typically have a fairly good atmosphere.”
Having the correct atmosphere, nonetheless, does not solely fall on the workers, in line with Ryan.
“We attempt to set slightly little bit of a tone and handle it [but players] are extra liable for the atmosphere that they create,” he mentioned.
“We simply have to offer them slightly little bit of a voice that when issues aren’t going effectively, they’re comfy sufficient to come back to speak to me or Gina or any of the opposite workers so we will repair it as an alternative of letting issues construct up.”
Constructing relationships
Whereas not each participant on the group is acquainted with each other, the gamers are making it some extent of emphasis to attach and construct relationships.
“I feel everytime you begin a brand new season, it is so vital to ascertain that connection and make these attain outs,” Nurse mentioned. “It is like the primary day of college, you do not know everybody in your class, proper, however you need to create connections, you need to get to know folks.
“Taking day out of cool-downs, across the ice to only chat with folks. It isn’t at all times enterprise, it isn’t at all times tremendous severe. We’re in a position to be gentle, have enjoyable and get to know one another.”
Ryan acknowledged that having a robust tradition results in profitable video games. Spooner, in the meantime, was fast to level out that they are nonetheless rivals on the finish of the day.
“Clearly once we come collectively as a group and we glance round that locker-room, I feel all of us have that perception that we might be that group,” Spooner mentioned. “We simply bought to place our items collectively and work exhausting this season.
“However I feel it might be superb to win the first-ever season, so that is what we will come to the rink daily and work for and we’ll give it our greatest on the finish.”
