By Josh Bell
It was an incongruous sight: the RCMP mounties standing on guard for… The Star-Spangled Banner.
It wasn’t the outcome Ottawa wanted from the home team at the 2013 IIHF world women’s hockey championships.
The dream of second miracle comeback against USA had ended moments earlier following a furious scramble in the dying seconds of a 3-2 game.
When the final buzzer sounded, the sea of red jerseys inside Scotiabank Place fell silent, only cheers from the U.S. champions audible.
Watching it all unfold, painfully, from press row was Geneviève Lacasse. The Team Canada goaltender with Ottawa ties tasted defeat in a world championships final for the first time, having won gold with her country last year in Vermont.
“I was really discouraged,” Lacasse says solemnly.
There was one uplifting sight that masked the bitter defeat for a moment though. Before they skated off the ice with their silver medals, Team Canada raised their sticks in salute to the crowd, and received a hearty ovation in return from those who remained in the arena.
As the players made their way towards the exit under Section 105, tons of young girls’ hockey players crammed against the railings, applauding their heroes despite the defeat.
“That has been the coolest thing about being here – the fans and everyone supporting us,” Lacasse notes. “We have the best fans in the world. Even after we lost, they are all still there cheering for us. Absolutely the best fans in the world, no other fans would do that.”
Late bloomer rises to Team Canada Geneviève Lacasse’s journey to Team Canada began back on the streets of Kingston, where her older brother would stick her in the net for road hockey.
“We played road hockey every day after school,” the 23-year-old smiles. “Then I tried figure skating and I didn’t like it. I told my mom that it hurt my head because you have to pull your hair tight back. So I got into hockey. I was a player for a year, then I split player and goalie and finally I was a full-time goalie.”
Lacasse’s father was a member of the Canadian armed forces, which led to her first experience with organized hockey.
“I didn’t start hockey until eight years old – a little bit late,” she explains. “I played for the team on base, for Fort Henry, with all the military kids. Then I played for the Titans, a boys’ team.”
Lacasse may have been a late-bloomer, but her success came in a hurry. The Hockey East rookie-of-the-year and team MVP compiled a long list of achievements and honours during four years at Providence College, where she studied chemistry.
Lacasse caught the eye of national team staff then, and wound up wearing the maple leaf for international tournaments with the under-22 squad such as the MLP Cup in Switzerland.
“It’s a huge honour to wear it, even if it’s just practice, or for games,” notes the athlete who moved to Ottawa for summertime training last year. “Just to put on the jersey, I feel so lucky and fortunate.”
Return home for pre-tourney Drafted ninth overall by the Boston Blades in the 2012 Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) Draft, Lacasse backstopped the Blades to a league championship in her rookie year, just before Team Canada assembled in advance of the April 2-9 worlds.
Before the first puck dropped, Lacasse and Team Canada spent five days in Petawawa, where she’d lived for two years when she was younger.
“It was cool being with the troops,” says Lacasse, whose father now lives in Limoges. “We got to shoot some guns, we rode in a tank, and we even played some Call of Duty simulation stuff. It was a lot of fun. Being on base, seeing mess dinner where we used to eat, it’s very different living accommodations that we’re not used to. We were in the barracks, had to make our beds and had to walk to the communal bathroom. I think it was all good.”
Canada-USA rivalry heats up The tournament-opener against arch-rival USA marked Lacasse’s first view of a world championships game on home soil.
“It was really good atmosphere,” remarks the team’s #3 goalie who competed alongside seven Team USA players for the Blades. “It was kind of funny when we were booing the American players. I haven’t played with the team in front of a crowd like this in Canada so I thought it was really cool.”
The U.S. led the game 2-0 through two-and-a-half periods, but Canada turned in a furious finish the final nine minutes, tying the game and eventually winning 3-2 in a shootout.
Canada easily cruised to victory in its next preliminary matches, dominating Switzerland and Finland 13-0 and 8-0, followed by a comfortable 8-1 trouncing of Russia in the semi-final.
The Friday night game against Finland attracted a world record crowd for a women’s hockey game, with an attendance of 18,013. This was largely due to the fact that the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association provincial championships were taking place across Ottawa from April 4-7.
“It’s really cool being able to be a positive role model for the little girls here,” Lacasse highlights, calling the crowd for the Finland game “unreal.”
“It was just great,” she adds. “Even when they played the anthem, hearing everyone singing along gave me goosebumps.”
Silver adds fuel for Sochi fire Although the final game didn’t turn out in the Canadians’ favour, the tournament nonetheless provided a spark for many young girls’ hockey players’ dreams.
Lacasse has some bold future aspirations of her own as she now looks ahead to next year and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The #3 goalie tag isn’t one she loves.
“I’m really excited, I don’t want to just go to the Olympics though,” Lacasse signals. “I want to be the starting goalie, I want to play in the gold medal game and I want it to be in my control and do what I can to be there.”
Reality kicked back in for Lacasse immediately after the tournament as she went straight back to Boston to finish up her winter semester classes. But as painful as it was, Lacasse plans to keep the memory of the championship game loss present in her mind.
“It can only go up from this level and I think this will give us extra motivation,” she explains. “When you’re doing your workout and you can’t do that extra rep, you think back to this feeling and you do the extra rep, you do the extra workout.
“We kind of got pushed down the mountain a little bit, but we’ll climb back up.”