LABONTÉ’S NEXT CAREER
Star goalie retires a champion
Charline Labonté was five the first time she put on goalie pads, and it did not start out well.
After watching the Montreal Canadiens’ Patrick Roy on television and playing in nets with the boys during road-hockey games in her hometown of Boisbriand, Labonté decided she wanted to be a goalie for real.
Her parents knew nothing about sports, but decided to sign her up to play hockey with the boys since there were no girls’ teams at the time.
“I had no idea how the equipment worked and neither did they,” Labonté recalled. “So I jumped on the ice and people were making fun of me and I didn’t know why.”
Labonté was wearing the goalie pads on the wrong legs.
“Everyone got a good laugh out of it,” she said.
For a shy little girl, the laughing might have been enough for her to never put the pads back on again. But after the pads were put on the proper legs, Labonté discovered the goal crease was a special place for her.
“I just remember being like in a bubble,” she said. “I was kind of untouchable. It was me and my crease. I was a very, very shy kid … almost socially awkward, I would say. But that was the place where I felt the safest.
“I knew people were watching me, but I had my mask on and I couldn’t see them. It’s always been my bubble … my comfort zone. When things didn’t go well in my life, I always had hockey to lean on … I always had my crease and I knew that when I was there I was always going to be OK.”
Labonté decided to burst that bubble Monday by announcing she is retiring from Les Canadiennes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League at age 34. The little girl who didn’t know which legs the pads went on leaves the game with four Olympic gold medals, three world championships, three Canadian university titles with the McGill Martlets and a Clarkson Cup championship last season with Les Canadiennes.
While Labonté is hanging up her pads, she will continue to be an inspiration for young girls with big hockey dreams.
As a little girl, Labonté didn’t have any women to look up to in hockey and said it wasn’t until she was at the peewee level that she first went up against another girl goalie from a different region playing on a boys’ team.
“We were both like: ‘Oh, my God ... there’s two of us,’ ” Labonté said. “You think you’re just a weirdo and the only one.”
Then along came Manon Rhéaume, who made history in 1992 by becoming the first woman to play in an NHL preseason game with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“Manon Rhéaume was a huge inspiration for me,” Labonté said. “She was the only model that I had that was actually real. I can dream of being Patrick Roy, but I knew very young that would never happen. But then when I saw Manon Rhéaume play for Tampa — even though it was just one game — people can say whatever they want about it, but she made it there. It was very inspiring for me to see that as a young girl. Maybe I’m not going to make it to the NHL, but she made it and maybe I can go far as well.”
Labonté has a Master of Sport Psychology degree from McGill, but has decided to follow a different path in her post-hockey career. She inherited a passion for food and cooking from her mother and recently earned a diploma from the Montreal School of Catering and Tourism Trades. She will now begin an internship in the kitchen at Les Demoiselles, a custom catering service in Rosemont.
“I’m taking a chance on that passion,” she said.
Labonté credits her parents, Pierre and Diane, for never pushing her in hockey. Pierre still works as a set designer for movies and TV shows, while Diane has retired as a costume designer. They both worked on the popular Quebec TV sitcom La petite vie.
“My parents are artists and don’t know anything about sports, but they’ve been my biggest supporters,” Labonté said. “They never pushed me, unlike many young kids that we see now, and I think it’s such a sad thing when parents try to live their dreams through their kids. My parents were always the quiet ones at the rink, staying away from the crowd, but always there to watch and support me. They always said the day you don’t want to play anymore, you just quit and that’s fine.”
That day came Monday. Labonté never got rich from hockey, barely getting enough money to survive from Olympic athlete funding. Now she’s retiring just as the CWHL will start paying players for the first time in its 11 seasons, with a $100,000 salary cap per team.
“You know I wasn’t there for the money,” Labonté said with a smile.
I always had my crease and I knew that when I was there I was always going to be OK.