Troy Ryan to coach Canadian women’s hockey team for four more years

HERNING, Denmark –

Troy Ryan will coach the Canadian ladies’s hockey workforce on the subsequent Winter Olympic Video games.

The 50-year-old from Spryfield, N.S., and Hockey Canada have agreed to an unprecedented four-year extension, which retains Ryan behind Canada’s bench till Milan and Cortina, Italy, in 2026.

Ryan navigated Canada to each an Olympic gold medal in Beijing in February and a world championship in 2021 after taking on halfway via the 2019-20 season for Perry Pearn.

“We wish to play for him. We wish to do this additional mile for him,” Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin instructed The Canadian Press. “When a coach has that pulse of the workforce, I believe it is fairly particular.

“We’re fortunate that he is again with us for a future now.”

Ryan and the Canadian ladies opened the 2022 world championship Thursday towards Finland in Herning, Denmark.

Ryan’s extension makes him the longest-tenured head coach of a nationwide ladies’s workforce.

Melody Davidson coached Canada a number of occasions from 1997 to 2010 — and to Olympic gold in each 2006 and 2010 — however not constantly as others rotated via the job throughout that span.

Canada reclaimed Olympic gold in Beijing after dropping in a shootout to the US in 2018, and captured its first world title in almost a decade final yr in Calgary underneath Ryan.

He spent his first full season on the helm on Zoom calls with gamers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic worn out worldwide competitors and halted coaching camps.

“What he has been in a position to do with this workforce within the span of two years, two of the years being the pandemic, however one among them being actually digital calls, a season that was very disruptive for him, to have the ability to flip that group round, to have the ability to carry out in addition to we did on the Olympic Video games is extraordinarily spectacular,” stated Hockey Canada director of hockey operations Gina Kingsbury.

“That shift in the best way we play has actually developed within the final couple years and the widespread denominator could be him.”

Since taking on his submit, Ryan’s file as a head coach is 27-2-2 in worldwide ladies’s hockey, together with 12-2-2 versus archrival U.S.

He believes his prolonged mandate offers stability for the nationwide program.

“I am attempting to construct one thing that’s even higher than it already is,” Ryan stated. “I believe it offers all people some consistency from Gina Kingsbury proper down via the employees and the athletes.

“When a coach is having communication with an athlete, they know I will observe via as a result of I will be that person who’s going to be right here.”

Canada’s gamers give Ryan the stamp of approval on a number of fronts, not the least of which is permission to make errors within the title of making offence, whereas additionally adhering to his programs.

“I really feel like I may be myself. I am by no means afraid to make errors,’ stated defender and three-time Olympian Jocelyne Larocque,

“I actually assume up to now, we performed to not lose, and then you definately’re simply not taking these dangers that must occur with a view to achieve success.

“This surroundings encourages creativity, it encourages individuals being themselves and encourages individuals taking calculated dangers.

“Not operating round like a hen with its head lower off, however taking part in inside a construction, however there’s a lot freedom to be artistic.”

As common supervisor of the nationwide workforce on the time, Davidson introduced Ryan on board as an assistant coach to Laura Schuler for the 2017 world championship and 2018 Olympic Video games.

“I do know for me personally, he is truthfully been instrumental in serving to me make the Olympic workforce in 2018,” ahead Sarah Nurse stated.

“As gamers, we get in our personal heads. He has a novel approach of calming us down and connecting with every of us as people.”

One other world championship simply six months after February’s Olympic ultimate — the primary ladies’s championship held in an Olympic yr — plus this month’s 142-player summer time camp in Calgary that doubled as his choice camp gave Ryan a head begin on the subsequent Olympic quadrennial.

Kingsbury stated Ryan agreed to an extension shortly after the Winter Video games in Beijing.

Kingsbury and Canadian gamers have expressed concern in regards to the monetary way forward for their program in mild of the federal authorities freezing Hockey Canada’s funding.

Canada’s governing physique of hockey plunged into turmoil in Could when allegations of sexual assault towards members of the 2018 junior males’s workforce turned public.

Ryan will coach Canada in a seven-game Rivalry Sequence with the U.S. this winter, in addition to the 2023 world championship in Canada in a location but to be named.

The U.S. will host the 2024 world championship.

Hockey Canada historically centralizes the ladies for six months in Calgary for coaching and video games earlier than a Winter Olympics.

But when national-team gamers, the vast majority of whom are members of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation (PWHA), get the professional league they need by then, centralization in 2025-26 might look completely different, Kingsbury stated.

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Aug. 25, 2022.