How PWHL Ottawa was built from scratch in less than 80 days

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. Seventy-four days later, the team now has about 15 staff on the payroll, not including the 29 players who are at training camp this week.

"We want to be the best team in the league," the GM said.

"We want to provide our players with as many resources as we can to help them succeed and help them flourish. We're very conscientious about the team that we built behind the team."

On the ice, Hirshfeld has prioritized skill, grit and players who are good teammates.

When it came time for the draft, he was the only GM to use all of his first three picks on defenders, selecting Savannah Harmon, Ashton Bell and Jincy Roese, who have all logged time with their countries' national teams. He recognized the talent pool on defence was likely to empty faster than the pool of skilled forwards.

Hirshfeld's path to being a general manager of a professional hockey