OLDS — This Friday’s exhibition game between the Olds Grizzlys and the Canadian national women’s hockey team is a chance for both squads to experiment a bit, coaches say.
The game takes place Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Sportsplex.
It’s one of four involving Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL) teams in partnership with Hockey Canada, as the women’s team prepares for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, which will be held Feb. 4-20, 2022 in Beijing, China.
The first one was held Oct. 18 versus the Drumheller Dragons. The others will take place Nov. 3 against the Camrose Kodiaks and Jan. 10, 2022 versus the Calgary Canucks.
Fans are encouraged to attend, but an AJHL news release notes that in order to do so, they’ll have to follow COVID-19 rules implemented by the AJHL.
Tickets for the game in Olds can be purchased from the Grizzlys in advance and on game day.
"It gives us an opportunity to help the national program prepare for the Olympics and we support all national programs, so it is a bit of an honour to be asked to play them, so we’re happy to do that, Olds Grizzlys assistant coach Pete deGraaf said during an interview.
"It’s an opportunity to see what Hockey Canada’s doing with their players right now and observe their systems and things they’re doing and get a first-hand look at what makes Team Canada successful.
"It also gives us a chance to work on our game as well,” he added. “It’s an exhibition game that doesn’t help in the standings so there’s possibly things we could work on that we wouldn’t normally work on this time of year.
He did not say precisely what those things would be, other than to say it’s a chance for the club to "tweak our systems, experiment a little bit with some things we’ve been wanting to implement into our game.”
The club is aware this is a high-profile game for the team.
“We generally roll four lines in most of our games, so we’d like to give all of our roster guys a chance to play in that game,” deGraaf said.
“It’s a game that they’ll remember playing in, especially when the teams in the Olympic Games, they can, you know, cheer them on and say ‘we helped them get there.’”
Troy Ryan, head coach of the Canadian national women’s hockey team, said one reason for playing AJHL teams is the proximity to Calgary, because their program is based in that city.
But perhaps an even bigger reason is the physical style that AJHL clubs tend to play.
“To us and what we’re trying to do to try to win a gold medal obviously at the Olympics, we just are coming off a world championship what the Junior age player and what the Junior A calibre of player does is it takes us out of our comfort zone,” Ryan said.
“It’s got nothing to do with just the hockey ability, but the size of these guys, the physicality of them. It makes it very challenging for our girls and for a few games throughout the year, we’re excited to expose them to that.”
Ryan said the game will be much the same as any other AJHL hockey game except his understanding is that while it will still be “physical,” no open-ice hits will be allowed.
He said the national team has pre-scouted the Grizzlys and obtained some video on them so they have an idea of what to expect.
In addition to the AJHL game against Dragons, the team has played a string of exhibition games against the U.S. national team and against junior teams in B.C.
Ryan said the atmosphere was electric.
It also gave the national team a chance to show young girls interested in playing hockey that there’s another level they can aspire to.
“So far our games we’ve played have been just an unbelievable atmosphere in the rinks that we’ve played in and it becomes a great thing for the junior teams as well as it is for us,” he said.
“It’s more of a pretty cool little celebration, to be honest. A lot of the young girls watching our girls competing and trying to battle and go against the guys. Yeah, it’s pretty exciting to watch, and awesome for the junior teams.”
