After two years in New York, Brooke Hobson signed with Ottawa and rediscovered her love for the game. Now she heads back to face the Sirens with a playoff spot on the line.
Brooke Hobson has had no trouble feeling at home in her first season with the Ottawa Charge. On the ice, she prepares for a game the way she always has, and a big part of that preparation is mental. Every game day, during the national anthem, she runs through three things she wants to bring to the ice that night.
One of them is always the same: I am physical.
"It's a piece of my game that I've had since I was young, when hitting wasn't allowed, so that probably wasn't the greatest back then," Hobson said. "But now that it is allowed. I go into every game, and I tell myself three things about myself, and I'm physical is always one of them. It is something that I take a lot of pride in, and playing a big game, even though it might not be the biggest out there."
At 5-foot-6, Hobson is not going to overwhelm anyone in size, but you'd be hard-pressed to know it looking at her numbers. Through 18 games this season, she has become one of Ottawa's most reliable defensive presences, ranking third on the team with 25 hits and fourth with 14 blocked shots. She has contributed offensively too, within two points of matching her career high, and has been elevated from the third pairing to the second as the season has gone on.
On Sunday, she and the Charge head to New York to face the Sirens, the team that drafted her, in what will be their third meeting of the season. She is not pretending it is just another game.
"For me, it's different going back to New York," she said. "It puts a little fire in my belly, obviously. Just to show them what Charge hockey's about here, the rest of the season, is the plan."
Ottawa is holding onto the fourth and final playoff spot with 12 games to go, and New York is right behind them, two points back. The teams split their first two meetings: New York shut out Ottawa 4-0 in the home opener, and Ottawa came back to win 4-3 in overtime on the road.
Off the ice, Hobson has been just as comfortable in Ottawa.
"Yeah, that's absolutely right," she said when asked if she had rediscovered her love for the game here. "I come to the rink every day here, so excited to be with the team, to learn with the team, and just to grow. I come to this rink, super, super happy to be here. And I'm just glad that this is where I ended up, because I feel like this is home for me. It is really special here."
A big part of that has been her relationship with defensive coach Juuso Toivola.
"I think Juuso has the ultimate hockey brain, honestly, and you can pick his mind on anything and just learn from every single conversation," she said. "I really appreciate that I can come to him with a small area of my game that I want help with, and he'll explain it to me, and how he shows it to me, it just clicks in my head. He'll explain it to me 100 times until I say, 'Yes, that totally makes sense,' and he has the patience to really teach me as an individual player. I couldn't be more thankful for that relationship."
That confidence has spread through the whole group, she says.
"(Toivola) has really, really taught me a lot, and I think that's what's given me and the whole team confidence to finish this last half really, really strong," she said. "We've built and learned the first half, and now it feels like we're really ready to go, and I have no doubt in my mind that if we play Charge hockey, that we can win this season."
With a playoff spot on the line and 12 games to go in the regular season, Hobson returns to New York once again and knows exactly how she'll prepare.