“Ikuzo!” as they’d say in Japan. Or how about “Pojd’me!” or “Útra fel!” in Czech or Hungarian.
The roster of Ottawa’s new Professional Women’s Hockey League team has such an array of international talent that defenseman Jincy Roese said one way to spur the bonding experience was having everyone learn how to say “Let’s go!” in various languages.
“Oh, my gosh, it’s so cool,” said Roese, a U.S. national team player from O’Fallon, Missouri. “A lot of us are foreigners. I don’t think anyone is local to Ottawa, even. But it’s cool to experience different cultures. … And we just have these conversation point to go off which has really helped foster a good team environment.”
The PWHL is awaiting rights clearances to unveil the nicknames of its original six franchises in kicking off its inaugural season starting Jan. 1. For now, perhaps Ottawa can go by “The Ambassadors.”
The team features the league’s most diverse roster with 11 Canadians, seven Americans, two Czechs, a German, Hungarian and Japan’s Akane Shiga.
Even coach Carla MacLeod has international connections. The former Canadian national team player also doubles as head coach of the fast-developing Czech Republic women’s national team, and was an assistant on Japan’s 2014 Olympic team.
“The vision of this league has always been one to be the best leagues in the world. In order to do that, you have to have the world involved,” MacLeod said. “For us, it was a no-brainer to go down that path.”
Most of the PWHL’s 139 rostered players hail from the sport’s two global powers, with 76 from Canada and 50 from the U.S. Next in line are five players from the Czech Republic and two from Sweden. Aside from Ottawa, teams also feature players from Finland, France, Austria and Switzerland. Ottawa, so far, is more the exception than the rule. And the challenge for the newly launched PWHL in becoming the world’s top pro women’s league will be expanding its international reach, much like the NHL did with the influx of Europeans in the late 1970s and Russians a decade later.
Ottawa general manager Michael Hirshfeld focused on attracting players outside of North America by taking into account the diverse population of Canada’s capital as a way to attract fans. Hirshfeld also understood how Ottawa isn’t a hotbed for developing players in comparison to Toronto, Minnesota, or Boston’s hub of women’s college programs.
“We always felt that we were going to be a little bit disadvantaged to those other teams because they have so many homegrown players,” Hirshfeld said. “And so our niche, we thought, was the European angle.”