For PWHL star Brianne Jenner, it wouldn't be summer without a hockey camp or two

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Brianne Jenner doesn’t have to look far at all these days for examples of the impact the PWHL is having on society.

The captain of the Ottawa Charge is heading into hers and the league’s third year.

She’s also a long-time player on the summer hockey camp circuit — first as a participant, then tagging along with her father to his camps as a helper — and now running her own, with one this week just outside of Oakville where she grew up and another next month in Ottawa.

Jenner loves the camps for the opportunities they provide for young women and the skills they teach. She loves the time she gets to spend with her friends and fellow PWHLers who help out with the camps, too.

In Oakville this week, that list included Gabbie Hughes, Zoe Boyd, Alexa Vasko, Emma Buckles and Jesse Eldridge just to name a few.

But Jenner also loves the feedback she gets from the young women participating in the camp and seeing how much attitudes are changing within the women’s game.

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Talking on the phone following a long day of on-ice instruction on Tuesday at Joshua’s Creek Arena, Jenner recalled when she first started her own camp back around 2016 the conversations about who the campers’ favourite players or favourite teams almost always ended up in a discussion of then present-day NHLers and that league.

That’s no longer the case.

“I think the first year, two summers ago, when the league launched and I would ask who is your favourite hockey player?” Jenner recalled. “We would have those conversations at lunch hour, or what is your favourite team and it was almost always an NHL team and an NHL player. You would get the odd Team Canada (women’s) player but now you never get a male player. It’s always a female and that’s cool.

“The coolest change is it’s talked about. It’s cool to be a fan of the women’s game and that is really exciting.”

Jenner admitted she was taken a bit aback by the forwardness and confidence of one particular camper this week who suggested maybe Jenner could bring national team teammate and the PWHL’s rookie of the year this past season, Sarah Fillier of the New York Sirens, to camp next summer.

“I had one kid say today, ‘Can you have Sarah Fillier coach next year because she is young enough, that, you know, I might play in the PWHL with her.’ But that’s cool, right,” Jenner said after she stopped laughing about the request. “They all have that dream now. They all want to play in the PWHL. It’s awesome.”

As mentioned, Jenner has one more camp on her schedule in her now-home city of Ottawa in August, but that will be it. Jenner’s primary focus remains her playing career and that means getting ready for a third PWHL season while simultaneously preparing for a potential fourth consecutive Olympic games with Canada’s national senior women’s hockey team.

Jenner and the Charge had a long playoff run that eventually ended with the Charge on the short end of the fourth-consecutive overtime game with Minnesota as the Frost won its second consecutive Walter Cup.

Afterwards, Jenner gave herself three weeks just to rest up and catch up with family before starting the preparations for the coming year.

That preparation will coincide with the work she has to put in with the national team as she looks to cement her fourth time representing Canada at the Olympics. The two camps she will devote two of her summer weeks to will be the only time she’s not working on her own game.

“I give myself just the two weeks for these things because, as a current player and a professional player, that’s sort of my limit now just because of training and the toll these weeks can take with all the organization and the prep that goes into them,” Jenner said.

“I would love to do more,” she added. “I think maybe when the playing career dies down I would love to keep doing it keep expanding it.”

Jenner admits the past couple of months with the PWHL expanding, the expansion draft which saw good friends and good teammates moving on, and then even free agency that saw more of the Charge roster bid farewell to Ottawa was tough.

“I think it was tough on every player, but exciting too, though,” Jenner said. “I think everyone recognizes the fact that 46 or however many more jobs are now available for players and that’s great.

“The fact there will be new opportunities for coaches and general managers, all of that is great. It’s wonderful. But yeah there was a lot of uncertainty and that’s something we are all getting used to now that we are part of pro sports.

“It’s definitely challenging for me with my family,” Jenner added. “You are always trying to be as prepared as you can for all these situations, but it’s the not-so-easy part of being a pro, but I don’t think anyone is complaining because it’s still the dream job.”

The off-season work will really start to ramp up in the fall when Jenner and the rest of the Olympic hopefuls will gather. And not long after that she’ll be back in Ottawa with her Charge teammates as they prepare for the upcoming season with a training camp.

“It definitely shortens the (off-season), but I don’t think anyone would ever complain,” Jenner said of the added Olympic training. “Getting a chance to compete for a spot on the Olympic team is something that never gets old, you don’t take it for granted, and I think our group knows how important that time together is.

“We have a really special group and have had for a number of years with the national team and I think we know how important that preparation time is and how much value we get when we do spend that time together both on the ice and off the ice.

“It will be a busy fall, but one full of great opportunities.”

mganter@postmedia.com