Natalie Spooner had April 2025 circled on her calendar.
The reigning PWHL MVP missed the start of this season as she recovered from low season knee surgical procedure, the product of an harm she sustained in the course of the Toronto Sceptres’s first-round playoff loss to Minnesota final spring.
However Spooner knew she wished to be again and as much as full pace in time to assist defend Canada’s title as world champions. The Canadians start play on Thursday within the Czech Republic, with Finland up first on the workforce’s schedule.
“I am glad I am right here,” Spooner stated in an interview with CBC Sports activities’s Hockey North.
“I am so excited to be right here, grateful to be right here and simply trying ahead to getting on that ice and representing my nation once more. It has been a lot enjoyable simply to be again with the ladies and this group. It is such a tremendous group.”
It caps off a whirlwind two years for Spooner, who not solely returned to play within the PWHL’s inaugural season a few yr after giving delivery to her son, Rory, however led the league in factors and objectives. She was additionally named the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation’s Feminine Participant of the 12 months.
Then, she resumed play in February after recovering from ACL surgical procedure. It did not take lengthy to return to her ordinary workplace: planted in entrance of the web, making life tough for PWHL goalies.
“We’re tremendously happy with the work she has invested in getting herself thus far,” Toronto GM Gina Kingsbury stated when Spooner rejoined the Sceptres’s lineup. “This has been an extended journey, and she or he has proven all through this course of simply how elite of an athlete she is.”
After greater than a decade on the world stage, 34-year-old Spooner nonetheless will get excited to see the Canadian locker room, adorned to really feel like house, and the ice the place her workforce will compete. This yr can be her eleventh world championship, and she or he’ll be competing alongside 5 teammates who can be having their first style of the senior nationwide workforce at worlds.
It takes her again to the nerves and anticipation she felt again in 2011, at her first worlds in Switzerland.
A yr later, she gained her first world championship in Vermont. After getting trounced by the Individuals 9-2 within the preliminary spherical, Spooner and captain Hayley Wickenheiser organized some workforce bonding within the type of a flash mob dance within the workforce meal room.
WATCH | Spooner previews Staff Canada on the ladies’s world championship on Hockey North:
The 34-year-old ahead discusses the brand new faces on Staff Canada and favorite world championship recollections in her profession.
When the Canadians met the Individuals once more within the remaining, the end result was a lot totally different: a 5-4 time beyond regulation championship win, due to a clinching purpose from Caroline Ouellette.
Spooner additionally thinks a few very totally different competitors inside a COVID bubble in Calgary in 2021. After two cancelled tournaments, months off the ice and plenty of time spent alone inside lodge rooms, the Canadians turned world champions for the primary time in additional than a decade.
Recommendation from a veteran
Through the years, her position on the nationwide workforce has developed. She went from taking part in on the fourth line as a rookie with Cherie Piper and Gillian Apps, to competing alongside Wickenheiser and Meghan Agosta at her first Olympics in 2014.
At these Video games in Russia, Wickenheiser instructed Spooner to not fear about what anybody else thinks, and to simply play her recreation. It is recommendation that is all the time caught together with her, and it is what she’d inform her teammates who will make their worlds debut later this week.
WATCH | Mic’d Up with Spooner:
Pay attention in to the most effective on-ice moments from Canadian ahead Natalie Spooner because the Toronto Sceptres defeat the Montreal Victoire 4-1.
That features 25-year-old Daryl Watts, who Spooner expects can have a huge effect on the Canadian offence, and 18-year-old Chloe Primerano, a defender whose recreation is already mature sufficient to play with the most effective of the most effective.
That is one factor that hasn’t modified over greater than a decade: her fashion of play. Spooner has all the time been arduous to play in opposition to.
“The great factor is I can type of adapt to wherever they see me and no matter they need me to do,” she stated. “I’ll be that participant who takes pucks to the web, is sweet internet entrance, which I believe is fairly adaptable to any line you place me on. I can do the identical job.”
Spooner and the remainder of Staff Canada will tackle Finland at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, adopted by Switzerland at 9 a.m. on Friday.
The Canadians will battle the United States at 1 p.m. on Sunday earlier than wrapping up the preliminary spherical in opposition to the Czech Republic on Monday at 1 p.m.
The gold-medal recreation is ready for April 20.
Different storylines to observe
• Finland will tackle Canada with out its finest defender and captain. Jenni Hiirikoski was left off the roster attributable to sickness. She performed practically 32 minutes in Finland’s bronze-medal win over the Czech Republic final yr.
• The Czechs will host the event for the primary time. One of the best feminine hockey gamers on the earth have gathered in České Budějovice, a small metropolis close to the nation’s southern border with Austria. The Czech workforce, led by Ottawa Cost head coach, Carla MacLeod, will look to capitalize on a powerful season by Cost ahead Tereza Vanišová. She’s tied with American Hilary Knight for second in PWHL purpose scoring (15 objectives), two behind league-leading Marie-Philip Poulin.
• Knight, the all-time main scorer at ladies’s worlds, is in the midst of a powerful comeback season after final yr’s injury-impacted PWHL marketing campaign with the Boston Fleet. She leads the PWHL in factors (28) and can look to avenge an time beyond regulation loss in final yr’s world championship to Canada.
• Knight is joined on the American roster by final yr’s world championship MVP, 21-year-old Laila Edwards. This time round, Edwards can be taking part in as a defender, as head coach John Wroblewski seems to make the most effective use of her shot. She’s contemporary off a nationwide championship with the Wisconsin Badgers and being named a top-three finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, which is given to the highest feminine participant in NCAA hockey.
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