Tough roster decisions coming for Canadian women’s Olympic hockey team

The PWHL season doesn’t begin until Nov. 21, but the competition among the women looking to make the Canadian Olympic hockey team is already in full swing.

Two of three training blocks for the Canadian Olympic team are now in the books, after camp wrapped in Toronto at the end of last week.

The final training block begins at the end of this month in Montreal. It will be followed by just four games together as a team in the shortened Canada-U.S. Rivalry Series: two in the U.S. (in Cleveland on Nov. 6 and Buffalo, N.Y. on Nov. 8) and two in Edmonton (on Dec. 10 and 13).

“We’ve been pleasantly happy and surprised with how everyone has come to compete for a spot,” GM Gina Kingsbury told CBC Sports on Friday, after the Toronto camp ended. “I think we’ve got the right group here in place.”

Thirty players have been in camp but only 23 players will wear the maple leaf in Italy when the Winter Olympics begin in February. That leaves difficult decisions ahead for Kingsbury, head coach Troy Ryan and the rest of the staff.

More than half (17) of the players at Olympic camp are veterans who won Olympic gold in Beijing in 2022. The Canadian management must decide how much to balance veteran experience with up-and-coming players who are likely to lead this team into the 2030 Olympics and beyond.

One of those players is 19-year-old Caitlin Kraemer, who passed Marie-Philip Poulin to become the all-time leading scorer at the Canadian women’s under-18 level. 

The five-foot-nine University of Minnesota-Duluth forward looked strong against pro players on the ice at camp.

“It's just a great mix of a high level of skill, but she knows how to use her body well,” Ryan said at the beginning of the Toronto camp. “She's long, she's got good reach,