Ottawa Charge players are reporting to TD Place for the opening of training camp Tuesday. The second season of the PWHL is just around the corner. What was the most important lesson you learned in the first PWHL season?
When I look back at Season One, the biggest discovery was the pace of the league and how to manage it. You get to recognize that you don’t get to practice like you do at the University level or at the International level. There are also more variables to it going into Season Two, I recognize that there isn’t a rhythm, and that IS the rhythm.
What element is making you most excited about the second year?
The knowledge that we have gained. It’s been so useful during the off-season, and we certainly know that we will learn a lot more in Season Two. It’s not lost on me that there is a lot that we still don’t know, but that’s going to be our reality.
Last year, this team missed the playoffs by the smallest margin. What did the Charge do in the off-season to improve?
What made this league so great in Season One was its competitiveness. For us, when you look at the overtime points we left on the table, you know that the opportunities were there. The silver lining in these moments of disappointment and adversity is that you look in the mirror, probably quicker than usual. As an organization, from Mike (Hirshfeld, GM) through our coaching staff and everyone that is part of the Ottawa Charge, all of us are hungry to get better. We’ve invested a lot in fine tuning our structure and our process to make sure we’re aligned across the board. We’ve been building this organization on the fly. A lot of it will boil down to communication. Last year, it could have gone either way. It’s not just one detail. We could have been in the playoffs. The fact that we weren’t is going to allow us to be better for it. Adversity is a good thing. There were moments last year where I kept on thinking about the 2014 Sochi Olympics when the Americans hit the post on an empty net and Canada came storming back and ultimately ends up winning the gold medal. That’s sports! As excited as you are about the fun stuff, you must embrace the tough stuff, because that’s how to grow and get better.
There are only 29 players at training camp. What are the battles that we should be looking for?
It’s across the board. We want to increase the level of competition. We've got to become tougher to play against. We gave up too many goals last year. We want to make sure we become the team that we say that we are. We want to show it. It’s going to be an element of competition in training camp. It’s one thing to bring the compete. It’s another one to embrace the compete. That’s a harder thing sometimes. You have a teammate going at you hard and you’re like « what the heck »? You have to recognize that is what’s going to elevate us in the moments in games. The competition is going to be strong. The whole league got better. There will be competition at every position and there will be competition every single day. Not just in training camp. Compete is not just the physical competition. It’s the mental competition. It’s the line to get better.
What is the identity you are trying to build with the Ottawa Charge?
We want to be the group that the fans are excited to rally behind. We want to have a relentless style of play. There is an honesty to how we play. There is a respect that you can see. Whether it’s towards the officials or anything else, we’re just going to play our game and not be distracted by the other factors. We find our fans connect with that. "The Charge is in the building!" If we can take their energy and bring it onto the ice and bounce that energy back to them, then we’ll have a Charge in the building that will be second to none!
