RUBBER MATCH
Goal’s clear for Kingsbury’s Canadian program: steal back No. 1
During her time as a player on Canada’s national women’s hockey team, Gina Kingsbury, the newly minted general manager of the program, won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships. One of the only things she ever lost at an international tournament was her wallet.
Placing an order for pizza during the opening week of the 2006 Turin Olympics, Kingsbury was suddenly alerted to the fact that she’d been the victim of a pickpocketing. And the story goes that Kingsbury, rather than lament her bad luck, broke into a sprint, chased down the bandit, and — while her shoppingbag-laden mother trailed behind urging her daughter not to confront the criminal — somehow persuaded the man to return the stolen goods without incident.
“I’m certainly not brave at all, that’s the funny part. I’m scared of the dark,” Kingsbury was saying this week. “But I guess my instinct at that point was, ‘I need my wallet back,’ and that I needed to run and go get it.”
So goes Kingsbury’s current hockeyrelated challenge. Named the director of the women’s national program back in July, it’s now Kingsbury’s job to hunt down the stealthy entity that’s successfully seized Canada’s long-time seat as the sport’s pre-eminent power. While Canada has won four of the past five Olympic gold medals, and only lost the most recent final in a shootout in Pyeongchang, the truth is the United States has been the sport’s more consistently impressive outfit for a while now, winning seven of the past eight world championships. So no matter the result of this week’s three-game Rivalry Series between the duelling powers — the second of which, a 4-3 win by the Canadians, went Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena — fearlessness and acumen will be required.
“We’re currently really second best right now,” Kingsbury said in an interview this week.
“And the question is: What can we do to change that, to make sure we go back on top?”
That the 37-year-old Kingsbury got the job when she did was something of a surprise to her. Brought aboard in a player development role in 2015 by then-GM Melody Davidson, Kingsbury said she was prepared to live through the quadrennial that will end at the 2022 Beijing Olympics in a supporting role. Though Davidson, 55, had sometimes mused about moving on to a less demanding position, she acknowledged that her reputation as a tireless lifer might have led those around her to believe she’d never relinquish her grip on the program.
“I think for (Kingsbury) and a lot of people, they thought I was kidding — that I wouldn’t be able to walk away or do something different,” Davidson said. “But it was time. We have a tremendous alumni group … It was time to turn the helm over to some of them and get them running with it and owning it.”
Davidson, now a Hockey Canada scout, praised Kinsbury as a “savvy” and “tell it like it is” leader who’s “got what it takes” to succeed.
“I trust her completely,” Davidson said.
Kingsbury, who few up in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., said her points of emphasis, so far, have been twofold. For one, she said, she’s currently overseeing a review of the “environment” around the program.
“We’re making sure we’re creating the right environment around our athletes, around our staff, to make sure they can feel they’re growing, that they can make mistakes but they won’t necessarily be punished for that, and it’s how we react to that,” she said.
For another, she’s endorsed the idea of employing a fulltime coach, currently Perry Pearn, a longtime NHL assistant serving a one-year contract at the helm. The quadrennial leading up to Pyeongchang saw a rotating cast of bench bosses before Olympic head coach Laura Schuler took a leave of absence from her job at Dartmouth College to prepare for the Games.
“It wasn’t the reason we got the result we got. Certainly it was a lot to ask of (Schuler) to worry about her own (NCAA) program and to worry about our program,” Kingsbury said. “Moving forward, we thought it would be best if that person was fully with us … Having a full-time eye on our program in the hockey sense is certainly a huge step forward for us.”
In South Korea last year, Davidson shared a vision that Schuler, the first alumnus of the team to coach it at the Olympics, would be the first of many former players to run the bench. Kingsbury said that while the program would “love to have as many alumni involved as possible,” the priority is to employ the best candidate regardless of gender or playing experience. It’s Kingsbury’s time wearing the national sweater, mind you, that she says fuels the passion with which she’s approaching her new job. While she acknowledges she’s occasionally felt like “a fish out of water” — mostly when she’s been forced to learn about the not-so-glamourous administrative duties that come with the gig — she’s ultimately driven by her love of the national winter game.
“I get emotional thinking about competing and representing Canada, and representing our logo of Hockey Canada. To me, there’s so much pride that goes into that,” she said. “And if you can have so much pride in your work, in your job on a 9-to-5 basis, I think that’s very powerful.”
Almost as powerful as the urge to retrieve one’s wallet from a fleeing pickpocket in a northern Italian winter.
“We talk about that story all the time. That’s Gina, ‘You’re not going to get in my way if I want something,’ ” Davidson said with a laugh. “I think in that moment, there’s no way someone was taking her wallet. And I think that’s the great thing she brings here. She knows what the goal is. The goal is to get us back on top consistently, and nothing’s going to get in her way. She’s going to make phenomenal decisions for the program. And she’s not going to be swayed by personal agendas or anything else that takes her focus off of that.”