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| Erika Holst was the offensive catalyst for Sweden at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, helping lead her country to a surprise bronze medal finish with five points in five games. This marked the second Olympics in which Erika led her team in scoring. Four year later, at the Torino Games in 2006, Holst propelled Sweden to the silver medal, upsetting the United States in the semi finals.
A power forward and veteran of nine Women's World Championships, Erika has also excelled at the collegiate level, playing for the University of Minnesota-Duluth where she helped the Bulldogs capture the inaugural NCCA women's championship in 2001 as well as the 2002 and 2003 championships.
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Guo Hong, dubbed "The Great Wall of China", has been one of the elite netminders in women's hockey over the past decade. Hong has proved to be the great equalizer for China in international play, often fending off as many as 50 shots a game. She finished the 2002 Olympics with a very respectable 88.79 save percentage, while leading the tournament in saves and shots against. Her best game came at the 1996 Pacific Rim Tournament where she stopped 38 of 39 Team Canada shots in a 1-0 loss. Hong is a eight-time member of China's World Championship team. |
| Angela James is a legendary name among Canadian women's hockey. The decision to leave her off the roster of the 1998 Olympic Team was as controversial as the decision to leave Mark Messier off the men's team that year. James had been a member of Canada's gold medal teams at each of the previous four Women's World Championships. She was Canada's leading scorer with eleven goals at the 1990 Women's World Championship and was an All-Star forward in 1992. James had also been a top Canadian scoring threat at the 1994 and 1997 World Championships and represented her country at the Pacific Rim Championship in 1996. Since her retirement, James has become a sport coordinator for Seneca College. In 2008, James joined Geraldine Heaney and Cammi Granato as the first women to be inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. |
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High-scoring Katie King has excelled at every level of women's hockey. She graduated from Brown University in 1997 with a remarkable 123 goals and 83 assists in just 100 games before moving onto the US National Women's Team. At six World Championships, King has registered 36 points in 30 games, including a tournament-high seven goals in 2001, and was part of the 2005 gold medal winning team. Noted for her determination and excellent play at both ends of the rink, Katie also ranks first all time amongst Americans in Olympic scoring with 23 points. She has won gold (Nagano), silver (Salt Lake City) and bronze (Torino) during her stellar Olympic career. |
| Goalkeeper Kim Martin is expected to backstop Sweden's National Women's Team for many years to come. Born in 1986, she recorded a sparkling 1.67 goals-against average as a ninth grader at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Her .939 save percentage ranked second at the Games and her stellar play in the bronze medal game against Finland was the main reason why Sweden captured the bronze. She continued her magic in Torino, by being named top goaltender at those Olympic Winter Games in helping Sweden claim its first silver medal in women's Olympic hockey. Martin made her international debut in November 2000 at the Four Nations Cup, seeing action in one game, a 2-2 tie against Finland. This turned out to be the only game Sweden wouldn't lose in the tournament. A seven-time member of Sweden's World Championship team, Martin's first season of organized hockey was at the age of 10, and she didn't surrender a goal during the entire 17-game schedule. |
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Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion began playing hockey in the late 1920s in Port Daniel on the Gaspe coast of Quebec. With her two older sisters playing defense, Hazel took her spot as a lightning quick centre on a team in a ladies' league. After moving to Montreal, McCallion turned 'professional,' earning $5 a game to play for Kik Cola, one of three teams in a ladies' league there. Since first being elected as mayor of Mississauga in 1978, Hazel McCallion has been able to spread her influence into other hockey-related areas, including sitting on the board of the Ontario Women's Hockey League, obtaining icetime for girls' hockey and helping Mississauga build the Hershey Centre. In 1998, Hazel McCallion assisted a group headed by hockey personality Don Cherry secure a franchise for the Mississauga IceDogs in the Ontario Hockey League. |
| Finland's speedy forward Riikka Nieminen is arguably the best female hockey player ever to emerge from Europe. She led two World Championships (1994 and '97) in scoring and was the top point producer at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games. Nieminen ranks seventh all-time in World Championship scoring with 41 points. She has also proved to be one of Finland's most versatile female athletes. Aside from her on-ice exploits, Riikka is a three-time Finnish Baseball Player of the Year. |
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Jenny Potter has quickly become one of the best known members of the U.S. National Team. After growing up in a quiet suburban Minneapolis neighborhood, Potter, at the age of 19, reached her goal of earning a spot of the U.S. Olympic Team. As the second-youngest member of the team Potter earned a gold medal in the inaugural women's Olympic hockey tournament in Naganio, Japan in 1998. A year later she would lead the U.S World Championship team with 12 points in five games before returning to the Olympics to earn a silver medal in 2002. Four years later Potter again represented her homeland on the Olympic stage earning a bronze medal. In 2007 and 2008 she again represented her homeland at the World Championships, capturing a silver and gold medal respectively. |
| By her 24th birthday, Cherie Piper had become one of Team Canada's seasoned veterans whose undeniable talent and experience made her one of the team leaders. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Piper joined the National team in 2001. After capturing a gold medal in the 2002 Olympics, Piper was offered a hockey scholarship to Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. As a freshman with Dartmouth, she tallied 17 goals and 15 assists for 32 points in only 26 games. Piper returned to represent her homeland in 2004 winning her first World Championship Gold. Two years later, Piper tallied 7 goals in the 2006 Olympics en route to yet another gold medal for Canada's Nation Team. She added to her gold rush in 2007 when she captured her second World Championship title. |
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Hilda Ranscombe is one of hockey's immortals. Possessed with dazzling speed, she was considered by many the equal of most boy players, some of whom went on to play in the NHL as men. She led the Preston Rivulettes throughout the 1930s, a baseball team that formed a hockey team and lost just two of 350 games played during that decade until war brought an end to their dynasty. Ranscombe led the Rivs to six Dominion championships and it was her fame that enabled a women's league to flourish in Ontario and for women's hockey to become popular right across the country. After retiring as a player, she became a coach and before her death donated all her equipment to the Hockey Hall of Fame. |
| Tiia Reima was one of her country's most productive and decorated forwards from the late '80s to the mid 2000's. She holds the Finnish career mark for most assists in World Championship play with 20 and has earned five bronze medals at the '90, '92, '94, '97 and '99 World Championships. A two-time Olympian, Reima led her teams to numerous European and Finnish League Championships and is a former member of the Finnish national junior women's soccer team. |
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Perhaps the most famous female hockey player in the world, Manon Rheaume was the first woman to play with an NHL team when she saw action in a 1992 pre-season game for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Thereafter, she proceeded to play for a variety of men's minor pro teams. Rheaume first appeared with Canada's National Women's Team in 1992 and was named to the All-Star Team when Canada won the Women's World Championship that year. Rheaume was also an All-Star with Canada's winning entry at the 1994 event, but was cut from the team prior to the 1997 World Championships. An aggressive goaltender who could handle the puck well, Rheaume regained her spot on the National Team and was the better of Canada's two goalies at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano. |
| As both a player and an executive, Fran Rider has made significant contributions to the advancement of women's and girls' hockey in Canada. Beginning in 1967 as a defenseman in her hometown of Etobicoke, Ontario, Rider realized firsthand the lack of opportunities afforded females in playing organized hockey. In 1975, the Ontario Women's Hockey Association was formed to further participation and interest in women's hockey. Under Fran, the organization's executive director, the OWHA has grown exponentially, giving thousands of girls and women opportunities to play female hockey that didn't exist previously. In recognition of her dedication to women's hockey, the silver medal-winning team at the Senior Women's National Championships is presented with the Fran Rider Cup. Fran was the first female recipient of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association's Award of Merit and the first woman to collect the Ontario Hockey Association's Minor Hockey Service Award. In addition, Fran Rider was presented with the OHA's Gold Stick Award, the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Citizenship's Contribution to Sport Award and was elected to the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame. |
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At a time when interest in women's sports was germinating, Bobbi Rosenfeld was already dominating, not just in hockey (her favourite team sport), but in lacrosse, basketball, softball, tennis and track & field. In fact, Fanny 'Bobbie' Rosenfeld's sporting exploits were so extraordinary during the 1920s and thirties that she was named Canada's Female Athlete of the First Half-Century (1900-1950). Rosenfeld was born in Austria in 1904, but moved to Barrie, Ontario as a child and by her early twenties, had starred as a centre on the 1927 and '29 Ontario champion Toronto Patterson Pats of the North Toronto Ladies' City League. A newspaper during the era called Rosenfeld the "superwoman of ladies' hockey." In 1924, Bobbie helped inaugurate the Ladies' Ontario Hockey Association. Bobbie Rosenfeld represented Canada in track & field at the 1928 Olympics, winning a gold medal in the 4x100 relay and a silver in the hundred yard dash. After retiring, Bobbie Rosenfeld wrote a daily column on women's sports for the Globe and Mail. |
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