The Hamilton Golden Hawks were Canada's first ever national team captained by Marian Coveny, and backstopped by legendary goalie Cathy Philips. They've also been one of the most overlooked women's hockey teams in history.
In the annals of women's hockey history, few teams had the lasting impact, and few teams remain overlooked to the extent of the Hamilton Golden Hawks. In the dawn of the PWHL, teams like the Vancouver Amazons, Ottawa Alert, Pittsburgh Pennies, and others have had their day in the sun. The Preston Rivulettes have received recognition from the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and other organizations as well.
But the Hamilton Golden Hawks have been largely overlooked despite being a more contemporary team. If the PWHL were to visit Hamilton, Ontario for a stop on the PWHL Takeover Tour, or expand to the city, where a team could be a primary tenant at the newly renovated, 17,000 seat TD Coliseum.
The Hamilton Golden Hawks, alongside the Edmonton Chimos, were one of the most dominant and influential teams in Canada during the 1980s. The organization was founded in 1977 and they'd go on to compete in the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League, the best league in the world at the time, for two decades.
At the 1983-84 national championships, the Golden Hawks finished third at the Esso women's hockey nationals, their first podium position at the event. The following season in 1984-85, the Golden Hawks improved to second at the event falling to the Edmonton Chimos.
The Hawks however, would finally win their first national title in 1985-86 beating the Maidstone Saskies 7-2 in the gold medal game. They'd repeat the following year winning the 1987 national title, edging the Chimos 3-2 in the gold medal game.
That 1987 tournament, however, is where Hamilton entrenched themselves into the history books. That year, with the first World Women's Hockey Tournament, the precursor to a women's World Championship slated to take place, it was decided that Canada's national champion would become Team Canada for the tournament which featured national teams from USA, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, and Team Ontario, who replaced West Germany after they dropped out of the event late due to a conflict over the absence of body checking at the event.
Hamilton was joined at the national championships that year by a ringer named Angela James, who helped them win the title before joining Team Ontario for the World Tournament. She was joined on Team Ontario at the event by Geraldine Heaney. Both would eventually find themselves enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and spend years staring for Team Canada. But they'd never seen a Team Canada until the Hamilton Golden Hawks took on the moniker in 1987, and it was a moment that inspired both players watching their idols, veterans like Marian Coveny and Cathy Philips, star for the Golden Hawks.
"It was amazing to see Team Canada, the national champion Hamilton Golden Hawks," Geraldine Heaney wrote in Ice In Their Veins: Women's Relentless Pursuit of the Puck remembering the 1987 event and Golden Hawks. "I always looked up to that team. They’d win all the time with Cathy Phillips and Marian Coveny. We were only Team Ontario, and I wanted to be on that other team, just to wear the Team Canada jersey."
That first tournament was motivation for James, Heaney, and many others who finally saw a future in the sport, one that involved representing Canada internationally.
As the 1987 tournament approached, many members of the Golden Hawks, alongside tournament organizer Fran Rider, kept the event moving forward, keeping the motivation for what has become a catalyst moment in the history of women's hockey, alive.
At the tournament, Marian Coveny took to the ice as Team Canada's first ever captain having led the Golden Hawks to back-to-back national titles. As she stepped on the ice for the first time at the tournament, she was heard uttering a phrase that has lived on in women's hockey lore since.
As Coveny's blades touched the ice, she echoed Neil Armstrong's moon landing saying she was taking "one giant step for womankind."
And it was.
“I didn’t think anyone heard me,” Coveny told reporters after the game. “To think that I am the captain of Team Canada just blows my mind.”
Coveny proceeded to score Canada's first ever national team goal in that game, a lopsided 10-0 win against Switzerland.
Canada, the Hamilton Golden Hawks, would go on to win gold at that tournament, something they'd repeat three years later at the first official World Championship in Ottawa in 1990. Hamilton Golden Hawks goalie Cathy Philips backstopped Canada to gold in 1990, on a team filled with players who had competed in the 1987 event like Shirley Cameron, Heaney, James, Dawn McGuire and others. One member of Canada's 1990 roster, Vickey Sunohara, attended the 1987 tournament watching the Golden Hawks win gold as a 16-year-old fan. As did 10-year-old Cheryl Pounder who would later join Canada's national team as well.
Since then, the impact of the Golden Hawks, not only for their 1987 appearance as the first ever Team Canada, but for their efforts to push women's hockey forward globally. As Fran Rider said, perhaps no player carried more of that than Golden Hawks founding member, and 1987 captain Marian Coveny.
“She made a difference,” Rider said. “The future of the game revolved around her. She wasn’t just playing for an event, she wasn’t just playing for a championship, she was playing for the future of the game, she was representing the future of women’s hockey. The players finally had an opportunity to show who they were and what they could do on the world stage, and (Coveny) was the leader of that entire movement, because she was the captain of Team Canada and Canada was the center of hockey. That was all on her shoulders, and she stepped up to the plate.”
The members of that historic 1987 Hamilton Golden Hawks team were a snapshot in the 20-year history of the organization, but their role as a quintessencial component of Canadian hockey history, as the first ever Team Canada, is one that should not be forgotten.
With women's hockey continuing to take giant steps forward, the Hamilton Golden Hawks remain as a forerunner to the game's current widespread success.