CALGARY \u2014 Canadian women\u2019s hockey team leadership is in transition after a heartbreaking overtime loss to the United States in the Olympic Games final.<\/p>\n
Head coach Troy Ryan has indicated he likely won\u2019t return for a seventh season, so a new head coach would be behind Canada\u2019s bench at the women\u2019s world championship Nov. 6-16 in Herning and Esbjerg, Denmark.<\/p>\n
The U.S. beat Canada 2-1 in overtime in the Olympic final Feb. 19 in Milan, Italy, for an eighth straight victory over its hockey archrival.<\/p>\n
Ryan suggested he\u2019s uninclined to continue coaching the Canadian women\u2019s team when he told The Associated Press \u201cit\u2019s time for someone else to run with it and take it to new heights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey Canada\u2019s contracts with both Ryan and women\u2019s team general manager Gina Kingsbury expire this spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy contract is up at the end of June,\u201d Kingsbury said Monday in a message to The Canadian Press. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Hockey Canada feels like there is a role that I can help have an impact in, I would consider it. But the whole plan\/vision would have to make sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also understand if the new direction doesn\u2019t include me. I\u2019m open for discussion either way and will be our program\u2019s biggest supporter if I\u2019m not involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan is head coach and Kingsbury the GM of the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey\u2019s League\u2019s Toronto Sceptres.<\/p>\n
Conversations about the future with Ryan and Kingsbury \u201cwill be sooner than later,\u201d said Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada\u2019s senior vice-president of high performance and hockey operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all really fresh for everyone right now. In fairness, I haven\u2019t spoke to Troy or Gina yet about what the future holds,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s on my plan to do this week before I go back to the Paralympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI read the things that Troy said as well, but he and I haven\u2019t had that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a playing career that included a pair of Olympic gold medals, Kingsbury joined Hockey Canada in 2016 as a director of hockey operations, and took over the national women\u2019s program in 2018 when Melody Davidson stepped down.<\/p>\n
Kingsbury initially left Hockey Canada in 2023 when she was hired as the Sceptres\u2019 first GM. <\/p>\n
Kingsbury returned within weeks of her announced departure, however, to continue managing the women\u2019s team through the 2026 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy job is to put the best people in place. That would start with the general manager if that\u2019s Gina or otherwise, and then work closely with that individual to hire what would be the best coach,\u201d Salmond said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of where we end up with Gina and Troy, they\u2019ll both be involved in shaping the future. They\u2019ve got way too much experience and concern and care for the program to not have them involved in at least shaping and some ideas around what the future would look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s work to be done immediately in evaluating players in the second part of the PWHL season and the playoffs and then identifying what the next four years look like and particularly what the summer looks like in preparation for November.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2026 Olympic women\u2019s hockey tournament was the first after the arrival of the PWHL, which completely altered Canada\u2019s traditional preparation. All 23 women on Canada\u2019s Olympic roster play in the PWHL. <\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s women didn\u2019t centralize in Calgary for five to six months for training and games. They had three training camps before the start of the PWHL season in November.<\/p>\n
Ryan and Kingsbury were the first to hold top leadership roles with both a PWHL team and the national team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it the best interest to have a PWHL coach? Those are questions that need to be asked and things that we need to get opinions on from different people,\u201d Salmond said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not convinced either way, yet. That\u2019s going to take a take a little bit of time. Now there\u2019s more questions than there are answers, which is the right place to be today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Montreal Victoire head coach Kori Cheverie, Victoire assistant coach Caroline Ouellette and Syracuse University Orange coach Britni Smith were Ryan\u2019s assistant coaches at the Milan Cortina Games. <\/p>\n
Cheverie and Ouellette are top candidates to replace Ryan. Cheverie, 38, has served as his assistant on the Canadian team for six years. <\/p>\n
The 46-year-old Ouellette, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, has been a Canadian assistant coach six times since 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI value experience, for sure, international experience,\u201d Salmond said. \u201cCaro, Kori, they\u2019ve done a lot for our program. I would say right now they would have a leg up for sure, but we\u2019re committed to a thorough search.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the leadership of Kingsbury and Ryan, Canada\u2019s women won Olympic gold in 2022 and world championships in 2021, 2022 and 2024, and lost to the U.S. in the final of the 2026 Olympic Games, as well as the 2025 and 2023 world championships.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2026.<\/p>\n
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 Canadian women\u2019s hockey team leadership is in transition after a heartbreaking overtime loss to the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-510490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}