Provided
Goaltender Erica Howe guards the net against Sweden in this year’s 4 Nation’s Cup.Ottawa will be represented at the women’s world hockey championships in Kamloops this week, with players from Kanata and Orleans on the Team Canada roster.
Jamie Lee Rattray, a 23-year-old forward from Kanata, and Erica Howe, a 23-year-old goalie from Orleans, were named to the team at the end of February.
“To play for your country is something special,” Rattray says. “Especially in a country that eats, sleeps and breathes hockey, I think we are going to feel that energy throughout the whole event. It’s going to be pretty surreal.”
At the 2015 women’s world championships in Malmö, Sweden, Rattray was the only player on Canada’s roster from the Ottawa area.
Typically the vast majority of Ontario players on the women’s team are from the Greater Toronto Area. It’s unusual, based on past rosters, for two players from Ottawa to be named to the national team.
“Incredibly honoured and excited to get the opportunity to represent Canada on home soil,” Tweeted Howe, who did not respond to interview requests from Centretown News, on the day the roster was announced.
Young girls playing hockey in Ottawa may be inspired when they see two players from their hometown on Canada’s national team, says Nalin Bhargava, president of the Ottawa Girls Hockey Association.
“Everyone wants to see, when they’re on a path, where it’s leading to,” says Bhargava, who has two daughters playing hockey in Ottawa. “Not everyone’s going to make the national team, but that dream – I’ve heard so many girls say they’d want to play for the women’s national team.”
The Ottawa Girls Hockey Association has 31 teams competing in both competitive and recreational leagues.
Bhargava says the organization draws many of its players from Centretown and teams regularly practice at the McNabb Recreation Centre rink at Percy Street and Gladstone Avenue.
The purpose of the Ottawa Girls Hockey Association, says Bhargava, is to put more girls on the ice. That starts with a fundamentals program for girls ages four to six, and stretches into high-calibre teams such as the Ottawa Lady 67s.
“Playing hockey in Ottawa was amazing,” Rattray says. “You can see how much of a hockey-rich city it is.”
In the 2014 Canadian Women’s Hockey League draft, Rattray was drafted sixth overall and Howe was 16th overall as the first goalie drafted. Both went to the Brampton Thunder, where they continued to play this season.
Although Ottawa no longer has a team in the CWHL – the Ottawa Senators, formerly known as Capital Canucks and Ottawa Raiders, was disbanded in 2010 – the city hosted the League’s Clarkson Cup championship at the Canadian Tire Centre earlier this month. The CWHL struck a two-year deal that will bring the Clarkson Cup back to the NHL arena again next year.
The women’s world cup of hockey was first recognized by the International Ice Hockey Federation in 1990, with the inaugural tournament played at Ottawa’s Civic Centre arena, now known as Lansdowne Park.
In the past five women’s world hockey championships, Canada has finished second to the U.S. in every tournament except in 2012, when they defeated the U.S. on home ice to take gold. Canada won gold in the first five consecutive world championships. In the tournament’s 25-year history, only Canada and the U.S. have faced off in the gold medal game.
The tournament returned to Canada on March 28 and continues until April 4 in Kamloops.