How Laura Stacey is using road hockey to give back to the 2 cities that have shaped her career

In the summer of 2018, Laura Stacey had an Olympic silver medal to her name, and little sense of what might be next for her.

Two years after she'd graduated from Dartmouth College, Stacey had just won the Clarkson Cup, the top prize of the now-defunct Canadian Women's Hockey League, with the Markham Thunder.

But pro women's hockey didn't pay the bills back then, and Stacey's spot on the national team was far from guaranteed.

"I remember my parents asking me early on when I graduated [in 2016], how long are you going to do this for?" the Montreal Victoire forward recalled.

It was at her parents' house one day, after a neighbourhood road hockey game on Stacey's 24th birthday, when her now-brother-in-law asked her: why don't you do this? By "this," he meant organize a road hockey tournament.

Stacey, who's from Kleinburg, Ont., north of Toronto, put together a tournament that August with the help of her pro teammates.

Since then, it's grown into an annual event, called Sticks In For Charity, and a registered charitable organization, the LS7 Foundation, that has raised nearly $200,000. The money has gone toward helping children access sports and arts programming, among other causes.

WATCH | Stacey talks about how her Sticks In For Charity fundraiser has grown:

Laura Stacey on why she loves Montreal and wants to give back

"The reason we started this was just to simply get kids and people and neighbours in that community out on the street, off their phones, off their computers," Stacey said in an interview with CBC Sports.

"That worked in that day. But how could we continue on that path of allowing kids, people, individuals the chance to play? And so that's kind of where it all came from."

As the PWHL and women's hockey