When players came to the rink in Ottawa for the second day of Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) training camp on Thursday, they got to spend much of the day talking about how to build their team culture.
That included working with the team's mental performance coach, Brenley Shapiro. Having a sports psychologist on staff is common in a league like the NHL, but hasn't been commonplace in the world of women's hockey, where the list of staff has traditionally been razor thin.
It's one way Ottawa general manager Mike Hirshfeld is trying to make his team stand out from the pack of six, as he builds a team from scratch in a world where all his competitors share the same owner and resources.
Each team got a budget to hire staff, and how they've chosen to spend that money differs across the league. Hirshfeld was the team's first employee when his hiring was announced in September.