Zandee-Hart an emerging leader for Team Canada

It is no secret that the Canadian national women’s hockey team’s dressing room is full of well-established leaders.

From captain Marie-Philip Poulin to veterans like Brianne Jenner, Jocelyne Larocque and Blayre Turnbull, the team does not lack leadership.

Although she hasn’t been a national team regular for very long, 25-year-old defenceman Micah Zandee-Hart has already emerged as a unique and important voice on a star-studded roster.

Playing at her first Olympic Games in Beijing in February, Zandee-Hart averaged 17:08 of ice time and had four assists in seven games to help her team win gold. The Saanichton, B.C., product holds the distinction as the first B.C.-born player to play for the women’s national team at the Olympics and win gold.

Zandee-Hart doesn’t wear a letter for the national team, but in the eyes of the people around her, she’s an emerging leader.

“She has a really good sense of the dressing room,” said Jenner of Zandee-Hart. “She has a finger on the pulse of the team. She just knows what to say at the right time. She was probably one of the most prominent voices for us at the Olympics, just in the dressing room.”

The national team began a tradition last year of having one player address the rest of the team before each game, in the form of a speech, a song, or a dance. In Zandee-Hart’s case, she was one of only a few players who was chosen twice to speak during the Olympics, and she wrote a story as her pre-game address for both occasions.

“The story itself was definitely for our team, and it was about our team and our journey,” said Zandee-Hart. “I just wanted to be a little bit creative with it. Writing is kind of my way of getting my point across.

“The funny thing is a lot of stuff in that story was