Calgary's Carla MacLeod 'thrilled' to be coaching in historic hockey league

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Carla MacLeod is proud to be part of puck history.

As head coach of the Professional Women’s Hockey League entry in Ottawa, the Calgarian is bursting over the chance to help build something big for the sport she dearly loves.

But she’s also taking time out to savour the moments of being a key cog in the start-up league.

“The other day, we stopped a drill we were doing and brought everyone in and just paused and said, ‘We just want you to know what a privilege it is for us coaches to be on the ice with all you high-calibre players,” said Macleod amid the sport’s stars such as Emily Clark, Brianne Jenner and Emerance Maschmeyer.

“So it’s been really a treat as a coach to be involved at this level, and, in the same breath, I’m excited to help them grow and become better players and keep being the incredible humans that they are.

“It’s a job full of privilege, and that’s not lost on me.”

It’s a job that she wasn’t really expecting.

With things going strong for her as bench boss of the University of Calgary Dinos, MacLeod thought she was living her dream job as late as September.

But the rise of the PWHL to further the ambition of fair play at the highest level of sports opened up a gig for her in the nation’s capital.

And it didn’t take long for the 41-year-old Bishop Carroll and University of Wisconsin graduate to embrace the chance to further her career and join in on the new-found fun for women in hockey.

“It’s just an opportunity to be a part of something incredibly special,” said MacLeod, during these days of PWHL training camps ahead of the inaugural campaign. “Hopefully, I can help continue to grow it and be a part of continuing the momentum. That’s kind of what I thought when (Ottawa) GM Michael Hirshfeld called.

“It’s a thrill,” she continued. “It’s a thrill to be a part of the league. It’s a thrill to be part of Ottawa. And every day, we’re just thrilled to be learning a little bit more about each other.”

Soon enough, they’ll be thrilled to be playing, as well.

The puck drops on the inaugural PWHL season in early January — schedule still to be announced. The regular season, which is proposed to be 24 games for each team and end in June 2024, will then be followed by playoffs and a final format.

But for now, it’s training camp — including a pre-season summit involving all six teams slated for Dec. 3-7 in Utica, N.Y. — to help each team pare down to 20 players.

“You can only imagine the level of excitement and the energy that’s coming from every one of involved — players through staff,” MacLeod said. “So it’s been a lot of fun to this point, and I expected nothing less, in all honesty.”

So, coach, what’s the identity of the Ottawa team — reportedly set to be called ‘Alert’ in a salute to the women’s team called the Ottawa Alerts which took to the ice during the First World War in 1915?

“I think that’ll come as part of the process of what we’re learning as we spend time together,” MacLeod said. “I think we’re trying to be somewhat patient, if I’m being honest. We don’t want to force an identity on the group if that identity doesn’t fit the group, so we’re learning who we are and learning to embrace how it is we want play and who it is we want to be. It’s sort of our everyday conversation.

“So I think we’re certainly walking down a path. We know we’re in a market that really appreciates sport.”

The market has a coach in MacLeod who appreciates the game as much as anyone.

The native of Spruce Grove, Alta., is a two-time Olympic gold medallist for Canada, who has long embraced coaching, even before she retired from playing the game in 2010.

“The game has been so good to me for my whole life,” enthused Macleod, crediting her parents and coaches — including Team Canada’s Wally Kozak and Mel Davidson and Wisconsin Badgers’ Mark Johnson — for her on-ice success. “As a player, I got to explore a lot of different levels and opportunities (including with the Western Women’s Hockey League’s Calgary Oval X-treme) and certainly embraced all of them and really enjoyed them. And for me when I retired, it wasn’t so much a question of whether I was gonna coach. It was just whether or not I could make a career at it. And I was really fortunate to cross paths with some great people that believed in me as a coach, too.”

Macleod started as an assistant coach with the Mount Royal University Cougars and moved into the same role with Canada’s under-18 squad and Japan’s national team.

Then came a head role with the Edge School just outside of Calgary, coaching high-school hockey, before moving onto the Dinos and guiding the Czech Republic to its first medal — a bronze — at the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship.

“I’ve been really lucky to get some pretty incredible opportunities with Mount Royal, when I first started coaching in Calgary with Scott Rivett, and then it took me to Japan, and I was able to go to the Sochi Olympics with the Japanese women’s national team,” recalled MacLeod. “What a thrill that was, and what an incredible group.

“With the high-school hockey for seven years, there was the day-to-day engagement that you get when working with high-school student-athletes. Probably as a coach, that was my best learning ground. I got to try things, and I had a group of players and parents that really trusted the process to me and helped me learn as a coach. I could do things and be terrible, and we’d just say, ‘We can fix it.’ I thought I had an opportunity there to really grow as a young coach and thought it served me well.”

As did polishing her subsequent tenure with the Dinos, from whom she felt sad to leave — especially given the early-season timing of the call to the PWHL.

But it’s a summons she didn’t dare resist.

And, really, who can blame her?

“You’ve always dreamt that this league would become a reality, and we’ve actually pushed along the way to try to make it a reality,” added MacLeod. “The fact that we’re at this point is incredible. And you know, there’s a responsibility now to do right by the opportunity — make sure we put the right product in the market that people want to be a part of and support. So for me, the excitement level’s through the roof.

“At the end of the day, all of us sitting in this position, whether it be as a coach or a player or staff member, nobody’s done this before in our game. It’s never been an option — not to this level. I think there’s been a lot of builders before us that have laid a bit of a foundation for us to get here, but the PWHL, as we know it now, has never been in existence.

“So I feel really really fortunate. I don’t take it for granted that I’m in this league. And I think I’ve found my right home here in Ottawa.”

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