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“There is no phrases to explain years of climbing and taking place and going sideways and climbing again up … and now every little thing is simply going to go increased,” says Danièle Sauvageau.
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There’s a brand new hockey workforce on the town and even when it’s not prone to push the Canadiens off the entrance web page simply but, it has already received over a great deal of hockey followers ici.
The primary dwelling recreation for the Montreal workforce within the new Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League is Saturday in opposition to Boston (3:30 p.m., CBC, Radio-Canada) on the beautifully-renovated Verdun Auditorium, and the 4,000 tickets accessible for the sport offered out in 50 minutes. In an interview Monday, basic supervisor Danièle Sauvageau stated ticket gross sales are going properly for the entire 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 workforce 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 ladies’s hockey workforce, successful gold in 5 of the final six winter video games. However in between Olympics, it’s been more durable to ascertain viable skilled ladies’s groups in Canada and the state of affairs has been even worse for the reason that collapse of the Canadian Ladies’s Hockey League in 2019.
The excellent news is the brand new ladies’s league seems extra financially viable than earlier ventures and the gamers are literally going to be making one thing resembling an honest wage. The primary three gamers signed to the Montreal workforce have been all members of the Canadian workforce that received gold on the Beijing Olympics in 2022: Marie-Philip Poulin (essentially 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 workforce ran by way of drills on the ice, simply one other hectic day for Sauvageau, who hasn’t stopped working since she was named GM in September.
Highway 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 in regards to the adrenalin rush of beginning up a brand new hockey workforce.
“I can’t even put it into phrases,” stated Sauvageau, who coached the Canadian ladies’s hockey workforce 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 every little thing is simply going to go increased.”
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 individuals within the stands. Montreal received that recreation 3-2 due to an additional time purpose 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 ladies’s hockey recreation. Montreal misplaced that recreation 3-0 to Minnesota.
However frankly the scores are form 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 assume) ‘Ought to I be doing one thing else?’ This explicit second, consider it or not, it’s the primary time I make a residing in hockey in any case these years. … What I’m residing 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 woman 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 really 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 in opposition to 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, ladies 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 able the place youthful ladies now developing (can see skilled feminine gamers).”
Bettez stated she didn’t develop up dreaming of this second simply because it was form of unimaginable.
“Once I was a child, no I didn’t count on that I might be an expert hockey participant,” stated Bettez. “However generally the very best factor occurs whenever you count on it the least. I feel it’s a privilege to get rewarded for the game that you simply love. I can’t look ahead to us to have the ability to rejoice and cheer a purpose right here. We’ve waited so lengthy for this second. The joy is there, for us but additionally for the followers as properly.”
bkelly@postmedia.com
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