Hockey immortality for Goyette
Road that led to Hall of Fame induction began here in Calgary for women’s star
Danielle Goyette has been in all kinds of pressure-packed situations, playing for gold medals and world supremacy.
But Monday night might be the one that takes the cake.
“When you go to an induction, you have to do a speech,” sighed Goyette, looking slightly petrified. “I think that’s the worst thing. A speech in front (of people) is stressful. But if that’s the stress I have to go through to get into the Hall of Fame, I’ll take it.”
Goyette, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and seven-time world champion as a member of the Canadian women’s hockey team, is one of seven individuals being inducted into the nation’s Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. She joins players Dave Andreychuk, Paul Kariya, Mark Recchi and Teemu Selanne, and builders Clare Drake and Jeremy Jacobs.
“It’s such a great honour,” said Goyette, who is 51 now. “These are people I looked up to when I was young when I was playing hockey. We didn’t have role models in women’s hockey. So for me to be right beside them, it’s impossible to believe. I’ll believe it when I see my picture there. I’m going to be immortalized forever!”
When Goyette — currently head coach of the University of Calgary women’s team — first got wind of this honour, it caught her completely off-guard.
“I got the call from Lanny McDonald. I didn’t even think about that,” she recalled. “I know we played some fundraisers together so I was thinking he was calling me to do another fundraiser event. I said ‘Hey Lanny, how ya doing?’ He gave me the news and I said ‘Are you joking? Are you sure it’s not a joke?’ He said ‘No, it’s not.’”
It’s a hockey career that began in Quebec, as the native of St-Nazaire began playing on an organized team when she was 15, which is the reason she wore the number 15 on her jersey. By 1991, she had earned a spot on Canada’s national squad and early on that was fraught with challenges.
“When I was on the national team, from ’91 to ’96, I couldn’t talk to my teammates because I couldn’t speak English,” she noted. “I talked to only three or four. The rest I played with them, but I couldn’t talk to them.
“One time, I was sharing a room with Cassie Campbell at the world championship in Lake Placid in ’94. Her bus was leaving earlier than mine. She forgot something on the bed and I couldn’t tell her. I wasn’t confident enough to run after her.
“In ’96, when we found out the Olympics were going to be in ’98 for the first time, I said, OK, if I want to make the team, I need to speak English. I moved to Calgary for five months and I’ve been here for 21 years.”
She admitted that she wouldn’t have ventured west, however, had her mother not passed away in 1996.
“They were everything to me,” she said of her parents. “That’s when I realized that life’s too short. Follow your dream when it’s there. That’s the reason I moved to Calgary. They were my role models. They had two jobs, they had eight children.
“One of the people who helped me in Calgary in the training was (Olympic speedskater) Sylvie Daigle,” she said. “She said if you want to go to the Olympics, you need to train full-time so she gave me a program. She’d been around the block and I knew how dedicated she was to her sport. She started training me, as well as in the mental part of the game, the psychological part. She was one of the biggest influences in my career, the one who pushed me to do what I had to do. I don’t think I would have made it without her.”
Goyette sees any female player’s induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame as significant for others in her sport.
“Yes, the males are the stronger athletes, but the women who have been there opened so many doors,” she explained. “When you look at the game and compare from 1998 to 2017, it’s like day and night. The speed of the game, the strength of the players. It’s such a big difference and it’s going to be even bigger in 2027.”
Now as a coach and mentor to young women getting into the game at a serious level, she realizes her role is changing in an exciting way.
“As a coach, you influence more people in one year than a regular person will in their full life,” she noted.
“You can guide them in the right direction. Trust me, if you learn the right lessons now, it’ll help you in life. If I can help shape them right now to be relentless, just use it in the right way. It’ll give so much to you.”
We didn’t have role models in women’s hockey. So for me to be right beside them, it’s impossible to believe.