By Canadian Press

Canada’s prep for 2026 Olympic women’s hockey tournament radically revised

Apr 21, 2025 | 3:03 AM

ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICE — How Canada prepares to win another Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey is going to be dramatically different.

The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is now able to provide a lot of what Hockey Canada did, meaning women will not move to Calgary to spend half a year trying out for the 2026 team in Milan-Cortina, Italy.

What was known as “centralization” every four years was designed to push Canada’s women to their limits through daily training, practices and games while supported financially by Hockey Canada. Many players said they loved the rigour because it was the pro environment they didn’t otherwise have.

Canada’s women regularly played local male triple-A teams and also a few games against Junior A men’s teams in recent centralizations.

If Canada’s team that took silver at the women’s world championship Sunday in Ceske Budejovice, Czechia, is an indication, it’s Olympic edition will be PWHL heavy as 23 of 25 hailed from the league.

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Women’s world championship rosters expanded to 25 this year, but Olympic rosters will remain at only 23 players in 2026.

“The landscape has shifted in the women’s game that doesn’t allow us to centralize going into the Olympic Games,” said Canadian women’s team general manager Gina Kingsbury.

“Once the season starts, we’re all in different markets and it’s not the same as it has been in the past with centralization and all living in one city for six months before the Olympics.”

Centralization was mostly successful as Canada won five of seven Olympic gold medals since women’s hockey debuted in Nagano, Japan in 1998, and lost a sixth in a shootout with the U.S. in 2018.

Kingsbury is a centralization veteran herself of Canada’s Olympic titles in 2006 and 2010. She says the challenge now is to get prospective Olympic players together enough to defend that gold medal.

“We’re going to spend as much time as we possibly can with each other to do all the things that centralization has provided in the past, which is time well spent together, connections on and off the ice, building concepts, building the team, all of those things are really important,” she explained.

“We won’t be playing a ton of games. Traditionally, centralization was a season and we were trying to get in as many games as we could to be prepared for the Olympics. With this league that we have now, there will be ample opportunity to play games.”

Kingsbury is also the GM of the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres, while Canada’s coach Troy Ryan is also behind the bench of the Sceptres.

After the PWHL’s playoffs conclude this season, Hockey Canada will announce the women invited to try out for the 2026 team at four different camps starting late August, but with one caveat.

“It doesn’t mean we won’t go outside of that group if we need to,” Kingsbury said. “Let’s say someone has an incredible season in the PWHL ahead of February and is a better fit for us than someone that was in the training block. We can make that decision to name them to our Olympic roster.”

Kingsbury plans to bring players together for three training blocks before PWHL training camps start, and for another during an international break in the season, with Toronto, Montreal and Calgary likely locations.

She and Ryan will juggle a few priorities wearing their dual hats.

“It’s really, really important to balance the preparation for the Olympics, but also setting your athletes up for success to start their PWHL or the college seasons,” Ryan said.

“Got to be really mindful of that, because it’s really easy to go into those camps and be like all-in on just the preparation for the Olympics. If you don’t manage that time properly, you’ll start getting injuries to start the season.”

Canadian and Ottawa Charge forward Brianne Jenner is another centralization veteran of 2014, 2018 and 2022, which produced two gold medals and a silver medal.

“It was a great model before we had the PWHL,” the 33-year-old said. “Every country is going to be in the same boat, so it’s going to be who’s going to be able to navigate this landscape and set their players up and their team up and their staff up for the most success when it comes to February next year.

“There’s pros and cons. We always believe on our team that the more time we’re able to spend together, the better off we are. It’s a fine balance because we have full-time jobs now. There’s a silver lining to not moving away, in my case, with young kids.”

Two-time Olympian and Toronto Sceptres defender Renata Fast says she can accept a radical change in preparation for Milan-Cortina in order to be able to play hockey for a living.

“This is what we want at the end of the day. We have a league that we can play consistently in and obviously it makes the Olympics look very different,” Fast said.

“Centralization has served us very well in the past. We can draw on the experiences that we’ve had through centralization and still take those with us, but just with less time together.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2025.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press