Ottawa’s leadership core has three Olympic gold, three silver among them.
Ottawa’s leadership core has three Olympic gold, three silver among them.
OTTAWA, ON - PWHL Ottawa announced their inaugural captains at a ceremony at the Canadian Tire Centre before the Ottawa Senators game against the New Jersey Devils today.
Forward Brianne Jenner, 32, of Oakville was announced as captain. Jenner has been a part of Team Canada for over a decade and was named MVP at the 2022 Beijing Olympics where she took home her second gold medal. She is an alumnus of Cornell University and previously played for the Calgary Inferno of the now-defunct CWHL – winning the Clarkson Cup right here at the Canadian Tire Centre in 2016 – as well as the PWHPA.
“Brianne Jenner has been a name in our game and a mover in our game for years,” said head coach Carla MacLeod. “The respect that she garners by her diligence, her detail, her consistency, is regarded by everyone – players and staff alike – and it's been on every team she's ever been a part of.”
Jenner is joined by fellow Team Canada veteran and forward Emily Clark, 28, of Saskatoon, who told reporters that she has looked up to Jenner for her entire career.
“She's done so much for the game, as an individual and for the entire sport, so to be able to go to work with her every day and learn from her every day is something I don't take for granted,” she said. “I'm really excited to get to do this journey with her.”
Clark is also a PWHPA alumni and played collegiate hockey for the University of Wisconsin.
Ottawa’s leadership group is rounded out by Missouri’s Jincy Roese (née Dunne), 26, who joined both Team USA and the PWHPA in 2021 after graduating from Ohio State, where she served as captain. She referred to Brenner and Clark as her heroes and two of the most respected women in the game.
“I'm just so honored that I get to wake up and play hockey for a living,” Roese added. “To be considered a leader, it's not something I take lightly and I’m super grateful.”
Clark told reporters that the captains found out that they had been selected this morning. They along with MacLeod and general manager Mike Hirshfeld emphasized the depth and breadth of leadership even of outside the captaincy.
“I think our superpower will be our diversity,” said Clark. “We have so many nations represented, players from all over the world, and I think we're bringing the best out of all of our games to make our own Ottawa identity and I think that's really special.”
During the ceremony, the first ever captain of the Ottawa Senators Laurie Boschman gave the new captains’ their jerseys. Boschman held the position for the Senators’ inaugural 1992-93 season before retiring. The proceedings were capped off with Jenner, accompanied by her alternates, dropping the ceremonial face-off between Senators captain Brady Tkachuk and Devils captain Nico Hischier. They were met with loud cheering and applause from the fans as well as stick taps from both teams.
Ottawa comes second only to PWHL New York in announcing their captains. On December 21, New York took to Manhattan’s iconic Rockefeller Center Ice Rink to inaugurate Micah Zandee-Hart as captain along with Alex Carpenter and Ella Shelton as her alternates.
Jenner, Clark, and Roese will be leading Ottawa at this Tuesday’s home opener against Montreal, which will be both teams’ first ever regular season game. With ticket sales numbering over 8000, the game is expected to break the attendance record for any professional women’s hockey game, surpassing the bar set by a CWHL All-Star game and the championship game between Lulea and Brynas in the SDHL.
“We’re quickly learning what a community this is,” said MacLeod. “We can't wait until Tuesday and beyond and just provide another hockey opportunity for the great people of Ottawa. We know their energy is going to help us that evening.”
For those who didn’t snag tickets, it will be broadcast on TSN 1 (western Canada), 4 (Ontario sans Ottawa), and 5 (Ottawa, parts of southeastern Ontario, and eastern Canada); French audiences can tune into RDS2.