Fortino finally gets to play a hockey game at home
The last time she played a game at home? Not on her team’s home ice but actually at home in Ancaster? In the suburb where she still lives?
“Oh geez,” Laura Fortino says, sounding thoroughly stumped. “Oh my goodness. No idea.”
Never with Team Canada? No. Never with her pro team? Nope. Never some touring stop with her college side? Uh uh.
She quietly racks her brain for a few seconds before giving up.
“Probably boys hockey,” she finally guesses.
That was Grade 9 with the Hamilton Reps. So long ago that the organization now has a different name. She was 14 or 15 then. She’s now 27.
But things are about to change. Thursday night, Fortino and her Markham Thunder (with a lineup that includes Hamilton’s Kristen Barbara) will be playing the Shenzhen Kunlun Red Star Vanke Rays in a regular-season Canadian Women’s Hockey League game at Ancaster’s Morgan Firestone Arena.
Faceoff is 7:30. Tickets are $15 at the door.
All the kids in local camps at which she’s given her time, all the friends from her growing-up years, all her family will now be able to see her play a pro game, live.
“I’m excited they can see me play,” she says.
There’s more to it than just that, though.
The last time most people saw her on the ice was 245 days ago in the gold-medal game of the Winter Olympics. Some likely just assumed she’d returned to normal life since then and would be getting back to playing closer to 2022. Because that’s what elite women’s hockey does. Hibernates for a few years and then explodes every quadrennial. Not exactly.
She trained all summer with her CWHL team and with Team Canada in Calgary.
Five times a week she’s in the gym working out. Tuesday and Thursday she drives to Markham for practices with two more trips on the weekend for games. Once a week she’s into Toronto for skills sessions with the national team.
Next week she’s off to Saskatoon for the Four Nations Cup. Once that’s done she jumps on a plane to China for 10 days to play some games against the Vanke Rays, the CWHL team based in China, placed there to help grow the game around the world.
“It’s always busy,” she says. “Every day it’s something.”
Despite doing all this for a decidedly non-NHL salary — she’s starting teachers college in January — she says the work being done by her and other players is beginning to pay off.
Crowds are getting bigger at their games. During a road trip to Montreal last weekend, there was a terrific buzz in the place.
Every game draws plenty of young female players in their team sweaters.
Media exposure is going up. Some games are being shown on Sportsnet this year. Others are being live-streamed.
Fortino says she really wishes this had all been happening when she was a kid. She’d always dreamed of playing in the NHL. This gives young girls a hockey dream of their own. One that’s realistic and tangible.
“I was surrounded by boys growing up,” she says. “Now they have us.”
Her work growing the game doesn’t end with the final buzzer either. If you want to reach and inspire these kids, you have to come out of the dressing room after the game and stick around to take every picture and sign every autograph.
Which she does. Every time. As one of four Olympians on the Thunder — Jocelyne Larocque, Laura Stacey have been with Fortino on the Canadian side while Megan Bozek plays for the U.S. — she’s one of the mostfamiliar faces and most-familiar names. Which raises the expectations and demands on her even more.
The highest-scoring defenceman in the league (she has five points in four games, just two points out of the overall scoring lead) says she’s fine with that. Whatever it takes to keep the momentum moving forward.
Besides, she still loves it.
Her passion for the game hasn’t ebbed at all. Not even a disappointing loss in Pyeonchang can take the shine off.
She says she’s got at least two more Olympics in her. She’s got years of playing pro remaining. She believes she’s nowhere near her peak yet,
She’ll start teaching part-time eventually but only when she’s sure all the hockey has been squeezed out of her .
And when that happens, her students are going to think it’s pretty cool, right? To have a teacher who, by then, will have played in four Olympics and have at least one gold medal around her neck. Maybe more?
The daughter of two educators chuckles at the idea.
“If they know who I am at that point.”