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One of the games most promising young stars Gillian Apps was born on November 2, 1983 in Toronto, Ontario. You may recognize her surname as her grandfather Syl Apps was a three-time Stanley Cup Champion with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1940's. After two seasons with the Beatrice Aeros, Apps competed in her first World Championship tournament with Canada's National Team winning gold in 2004. A year later she would again represent her homeland at the World Championships and capture a silver medal. Adding to her international experience, Apps recorded 14 points (7 goals, 7 assists) in the 2006 Winter Olympics en route to a gold medal. In 2007 Apps captured her second World Championship gold and the following year added another silver medal to her trophy case. |
| Jennifer Botterill is a young, dynamic player who, along with Hayley Wickenhiser, has led Canada's National Women's Team. She has starred in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, including a seven-point performance at Torino. Botterill has played in seven World Championships - 99', 00', 01', 04', 05', 07', 08' leading the 2001 and 2004 tournaments in scoring and taking home the Top Forward and Most Valuable Player honours both years. An incredibly skilled passer, Jennifer owns the US College record (women and men) for scoring points in 80 consecutive games while playing for Harvard University. She won the 2000-01 and 2002-03 Patty Kazmaier Award given to the best NCAA female hockey player. |
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Karyn Bye was long considered the 'guts and glory' of the US Women's National Team. Her inspirational play and offensive skills paced the Americans to six silver World Championship medals and a gold and silver at the Winter Olympics. At the 1998 Nagano games, Bye was the American's leading goal producer with five in six games. She ranks third all time in World Championship scoring with 51 points in 30 games. Bye was also an accomplished collegiate player, scoring 164 points in 87 games at the University of New Hampshire. After graduating from UNH, she earned her graduate degree while playing two more years at Concordia University in Montreal. |
| Shirley Cameron was the first superstar of women's hockey of the modern era. She was a founding member of the Edmonton Chimos in 1972 and played at the highest level of competition for twenty years, playing in the first IIHF sanctioned Women's World Championships in 1990. With the Chimos, Cameron won 16 national championships and was considered by her peers to be the epitome of women's hockey. One year, she couldn't get time off work to appear in the Nationals, but phoned in sick and played anyway. When her picture appeared in the paper, her boss suspended her. She retired in 1992 to coach. Notably, the winner of the ten-game super series between Alberta's top two teams – the Chimos and the Calgary Oval X-Treme – wins a trophy named after her, the Cameron Cup. |
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As Canada's captain at the 2002 and 2006 Olympic Games, Cassie Campbell demonstrated her renowned confidence and charisma in leading her squad to gold both years. A career that witnessed her evolve from defense to scoring forward to checker, Cassie never wavered from her patented passion for the game. She first participated in the World Championships as part of Canada's 1994 team. Earning gold that year, the team duplicated the feat in 1997, '99, '00, '01 and 04'. Campbell retired from competitive hockey on August 30, 2006 and has since joined the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada program as a rinkside reporter. Two months after joining the program, Campbell became the first woman to do a colour commentary on a Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. She was filling in for Harry Neale who was snowed in at his Buffalo, NY home. |
| Natalie Darwitz has always been a scoring sensation. She proved it again in Salt Lake City, leading the tournament with seven goals. Natalie made her national team debut at age 15 and has since played in seven World Championships. Her hockey career began at the age of five, and by the time she was in the seventh grade, she was starring for her local high school team. That year, Natalie finished with 85 goals and 48 assists in just 25 games, competing with girls up to five years her senior. In her four years of high school hockey (including the two years while she was in grade seven and eight), Natalie finished with an incredible 312 goals and 175 assists for 487 points in just 102 games.
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If ever a hockey player possessed the Midas touch, it was Nancy Drolet. Twice she notched the gold-medal winner at the World Championships. In the 1997 final, Nancy scored three goals, including the game winner in overtime to beat the Americans, and again in 2000 Nancy scored the OT winner. In total, she was a member of Canada's championship teams in 1992, '94, '99, '00 and '01. Drolet also played on the Canadian team that won a silver medal behind the United States at the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano and represented her country at the Pacific Rim Championship in 1996. Her other accomplishments include a softball silver medal at the 1991 Pan-American Games and being named the Sports Federation of Canada's Junior Athlete of the Year in 1992. |
| Danielle Goyette regularly displayed her offensive dominance at international events. At the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, she led the tournament with seven assists and finished tied for first place in overall scoring with 10 points in Canada's gold medal effort. Four years earlier, at Nagano, Danielle led the tournament with eight goals and finished second in points with nine. A great skater with an accurate shot, Goyette topped Canada in scoring with 10 points (three goals and seven assists) at the 1992 World Championships and was an All-Star at the 1994 tournament when she again led Canada with nine goals and 12 points. Goyette is Canada's all-time scorer at the Worlds with 29 goals and 53 points and ranks second with 25 career points at the Olympics Games. She proudly carried Canada's flag at the opening ceremony for the 2006 Winter Olympics, a tournament in which she won her second gold medal. A year later, she added to her gold medal total when she captured the 2007 World Championships with Canada's National Team. She retired from pro hockey in January 2008 having tallied 113 goals and 105 assists in 171 games with the national team over eight world championships. |
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Queen's University (Kingston, ON) netminder Elizabeth Graham is credited with being the first goaltender to ever wear a mask for protection. The historic event took place in 1927, three years before NHLer Clint Benedict strapped on his leather mask. As reported in the Montreal Daily Star at the time, Graham "gave the fans a surprise when she stepped into the nets and then donned a fencing mask." Myth has it that Elizabeth's father pressured her into wearing the mask after she underwent extensive dental work. |
| Cammi Granato holds nearly every individual American record in women's hockey. She tops the all-time list in World Championship scoring with an astonishing 44 goals and 34 assists. Under her captaincy and leadership, Team USA has won Olympic gold in 1998, silver in 2002, and gold at the recent 2005 World Championship. The only American player to appear in every official Women's World Championship from 1990 through 2005, Granato has done more than any other player to popularize women's hockey in the United States. She has been named both the Best Forward and a member of the tournament All-Star Team at the Women's World Championships in 1992 and '97. Cammi is the sister of former NHLer Tony Granato. Cammi was announced in September 2007 as one of the four recipients of the 2007 Lester Patrick Trophy. Less than year later, Granato joined Geraldine Heaney and Angela James as the first women to be inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. |
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Arguably the best offensive blueliner in Canadian women's hockey history, Geraldine Heaney was a member of six World Championship-winning squads. In both 1992 and 1994 she was named the Best Defenseman at the Women's World Championship, an honour that she also garnered at the Pacific Rim Championships in 1996. Heaney collected six points (two goals and four assists) to rank fourth in scoring for Canada at the 1998 Winter Olympics and was instrumental in Canada's Olympic gold-medal victory in 2002. When she retired later that year, Heaney ranked second behind Cammi Granato in career assists at the Women's Worlds with 28. A fitness fanatic and an all-around athlete, Heaney is considered one of the top female in-line hockey players in the world. She also has a standing invitation to try out for Northern Ireland's national women's soccer team. In 2008 Heaney joined Cammi Granato and Angela James as the first women to be inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. |
| An offensively gifted forward, Jayna Hefford is a eight-time member of Canada's World Championship team and a six-time gold medalist (1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2007).
A former star for the University of Toronto, Hefford has played in three Olympic Games, capturing silver in Nagano in '98, scoring the gold medal game-winning goal in Salt Lake City in '02, and claiming the gold in Torino in '06. Recently, Hefford has been honing her skills playing for the National Women's Hockey Leauge's Brampton Thunder.
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When nine-year old Abby Hoffman decided she wanted to play hockey in her hometown, her parents discovered there were no leagues for girls in the Toronto area in the mid-1950s. The enterprising Hoffmans cut their daughter's hair and registered her as 'Ab Hoffman' in the only league available — a boys' league. Ab was selected for the Toronto Hockey League all-star team. But when Ab produced the required birth certificate, league conveners were shocked to discover Ab was really 'Abigail.' She was dismissed from the team and the story made international news. Abby Hoffman later took her competitive spirit to the track, representing Canada at Olympic tournaments in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976. Although Abby Hoffman contributed significantly to her hockey team on the ice, it was her contribution to breaking down barriers that added more to the growth of women's hockey in Canada. Abby Hoffman assisted the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in implementing a national women's championship, and today, representatives from each province vie for the Abby Hoffman Cup. |
Next : More Notable Women
History and Timeline | Notable Players Index | Notable Players: Apps - Hoffman
Notable Players: Holst - Rosenfeld | Notable Players: Ruggerio - Wilson
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