Canada opens new chapter with revamped roster for girls’s worlds

Nine months after the world’s high girls’s hockey gamers met in Milan, we’re about to get one other dose of best-on-best competitors because the 2026 girls’s world championship will get underway in Denmark on Friday. 

The match is often held within the spring, however now will get November billing for the primary time. Placing the match simply forward of the upcoming PWHL season not solely jump-starts pleasure for a brand new professional marketing campaign and will get gamers in high kind quick, but it surely additionally ensures the season isn’t interrupted by a world break because it has been by the league’s first few seasons. 

That key date change is an attention-grabbing story in itself — how, if in any respect, would possibly the November match hard-launch the sport’s greatest into one other 12 months?

The gamers will certainly be prepared, and so will we. To assist put together you for the match, we’ve assembled some key dates and high storylines to observe forward of this 12 months’s girls’s worlds, with a give attention to Team Canada’s overhauled roster. 

The 2026 girls’s world championship runs from Nov. 6-16, with elimination video games starting Nov. 13. Round-robin play will see the match’s 10 competing nations divided into two teams, with top-ranked Team USA headlining Group A (which incorporates Czechia, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria) and Canada favoured to win Group B (which incorporates Finland, Sweden, Japan, and Denmark). 

Canada’s preliminary-round schedule is as follows (all instances ET):

Friday, Nov. 6: Sweden @ Canada, 9 a.m.
Sunday, Nov. 8: Canada @ Japan, 1 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 9: Denmark @ Canada, 1 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 11: Canada @ Finland, 9 a.m.

Friday, Nov. 13: Quarter-finals
Sunday, Nov. 15: Semi-finals
Monday, Nov. 16: Gold-medal closing

With Poulin nonetheless sidelined, Canada takes committee method to captaincy

For the primary time since her senior worldwide debut in 2009, Marie-Philip Poulin gained’t be suiting up for Team Canada on the girls’s worlds. Her absence is not any shock, because the 35-year-old is recovering from low season knee surgical procedure that can even see her sit out at the very least a part of the upcoming PWHL season. Poulin first injured her knee on the Milan Olympics, and later revealed she’d performed by a torn ACL and meniscus whereas serving to lead the Montreal Victoire to the Walter Cup this previous spring. She underwent surgical procedure in July. 

While there isn’t a scarcity of management on this roster, Poulin’s absence shall be felt each on the ice and within the dressing room. The largest query is that this: What does Team Canada seem like with out its fearless chief?

No single participant can substitute what Poulin brings to her nation’s squad — she’s “Captain Clutch” for a purpose, as everyone knows — and the identical may be mentioned for her management. Poulin has worn the captain’s “C” on her sweater for greater than a decade. In her place, veterans Laura Stacey and Renata Fast will co-captain the squad in Denmark whereas Kristin O’Neill will function alternate captain. 

As Hockey Canada defined within the captaincy announcement final month, Fast will don the “C” when Canada wears purple, and Stacey will achieve this when the crew wears white.

Chris Johnston of The Athletic reported that Team Canada and Team USA gained’t be carrying their common nationwide crew threads in Denmark, and can as an alternative hit the ice in IIHF-provided sweaters as a consequence of an ongoing industrial rights dispute. 

Hockey Canada offered an announcement on the matter Wednesday:

Canada opens new chapter with revamped roster and administration crew

Canada’s new look extends far past their uniforms, after all, as Poulin’s (short-term) absence is just not the one massive change on this world championship roster. Fellow veteran mainstays like Brianne Jenner, Jocelyne Larocque, Sarah Nurse, Natalie Spooner, Emerance Maschmeyer, Blayre Turnbull, and Claire Thompson are additionally not on this 12 months’s roster, owing to quite a lot of causes. (Nurse revealed she’s coping with a again harm; Turnbull introduced her first being pregnant again in June; Thompson lately retired from professional hockey to return to medical college.)

Watching Canada’s veteran-heavy squad in Milan felt like we have been witnessing the tip of a chapter. While the crew was one additional time winner away from claiming gold towards the Americans, Canada usually struggled to maintain tempo with their American foes. Team USA’s dominant performances all through the Olympic Games thrust a brand new wave of younger, quick expertise beneath the intense Olympic highlight, and had many questioning why Canada didn’t attempt to incorporate a little bit extra youth into their Olympic entry, with a lot expertise of their very own knocking on the door. 

There was at all times going to be at the very least a little bit little bit of turnover as one Olympic cycle got here to a detailed and one other four-year wind-up formally opened, however the post-Milan overhaul has been vital. It began within the spring when GM Gina Kingsbury and head coach Troy Ryan stepped down, and continued into the summer time and fall when Danièle Sauvageau and Kori Cheverie have been introduced as their respective replacements. 

Already, the early outcomes of these modifications may be discovered on the world championship roster revealed final month — a gaggle that welcomes seven new gamers making their senior worldwide debuts, with a very heavy dose of offence injected into the lineup. 

Forwards Caitlin Kraemer, Sara Manness, Rosalie Tremblay, Hayley McDonald, Sarah Wozniewicz, and Rebecca Leslie and defender Kendall Cooper have been all named to Canada’s senior nationwide crew for the primary time — however they aren’t the one recent faces right here. 

Chloe Primerano, who made her debut ultimately 12 months’s worlds however was (considerably surprisingly) a late minimize from the Olympic squad, isn’t a real rookie on this crew, however she is extensively thought-about the face of Canada’s subsequent wave of elite expertise. Goaltender Eve Gascon was additionally a part of Canada’s 2025 Worlds roster, however didn’t play. Primerano and Gascon are additionally two of six Team Canada gamers nonetheless in faculty. Defender Nicole Gosling was left off final 12 months’s world championship squad after showing in seven video games the 12 months prior, and is now again on the roster. Veteran ahead Jessie Eldridge has spent only one 12 months with Team Canada, again in 2021-22, and now will get one other shot to unleash her offensive skills on the world stage. 

Can Team USA preserve the highest spot?

The crew we noticed hit the ice in Milan in February was about as dominant a squad as we’ve even seen in girls’s hockey, they usually topped off an amazing Olympic efficiency with a gold medal to point out for it. 

The crew we’re about to see in Denmark will look lots acquainted — 20 gamers suiting up on the worlds have been on the roster in Milan. Like Team Canada, there are some notable absences. Veteran and former captain Kendall Coyne Schofield introduced forward of the roster reveal she’s pregnant together with her second youngster. Forward Britta Curl-Salemme is anticipating her first. Jesse Compher and Lacey Eden each return to the nationwide crew after being left off the Milan roster, whereas three gamers will debut on the senior stage: ahead Casey O’Brien, defender Emma Peschel, and goalie Callie Shanahan. There’s some familiarity among the many rookies — all three occur to be teammates on the PWHL’s New York Sirens. 

In addition to successful Olympic gold in February, Team USA additionally lands in Denmark as this match’s defending champs. The Americans edged Canada in additional time final 12 months in Czechia, after Canada did the identical to them in Utica the season prior. The final 4 years have seen the cross-border rivals take turns standing atop the ladies’s worlds podium. Defending their title this month would break that sample and clarify to their Canadian rivals that they gained’t surrender the highest spot simply. 

Will Czechia and Finland sq. off for bronze once more?

Czechia was on the centre of the ladies’s hockey world final 12 months because the nation hosted the ladies’s world championship for the primary time. It was a becoming highlight, contemplating the expansion of their nationwide program — Czechia gained its first-ever girls’s worlds medal in 2022 with a bronze victory, and adopted it up with one other the 12 months after. The nation contended for third in every of the previous two years, however each instances fell to Finland in a closing that led to a shootout in 2024 and in additional time in 2025. Can they get again on the rostrum this 12 months?

Neither crew made it previous the quarter-final on the Milan Olympics, with Finland falling to Switzerland and Sweden topping Czechia. Switzerland finally claimed bronze in additional time on the Games, additionally bumping up their worldwide rating within the course of. 

Despite not medalling in Milan, Czechia stays the third-ranked crew in IIHF pre-tournament rankings by a slim margin, adopted by Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden.