Hannah Miller, finally, finds her way home with PWHL Vancouver

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The little moments aren’t the only reason Hannah Miller does it, but they are a big one.

Little moments like meeting young fans as she stepped off the ice at Minoru Arena in Richmond on Thursday, after a hard skate on day four of the inaugural Vancouver Hockey School women’s pro camp.

“We were all young once, all kids once, and even me now, you still look up to certain NHL players,” the 29-year-old North Vancouver native remarked. “I think it’s really cool and special for young girls now to see us professionally and getting to make a living.”

The PWHL is here. Training is still a couple months away, but that there are players already skating around town, able to wave the flag that professional women’s hockey is firmly in Vancouver.

Miller travelled the world to chase her love of hockey. After playing prep for the Okanagan Hockey Academy, she went to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, then played four seasons in China and Russia, plus a season in Sweden, before returning to Canada two years ago to suit up for Toronto in the PWHL’s inaugural season.

When she was young, college hockey was the dream. While she was at St. Lawrence, a pro era, of a sort, emerged. But the PWHL is the full-on real deal.

“A lot of these girls (in the PWHL) had to have a real job for a long time,” she said of her teammates and opponents who played in the PWHL’s predecessors, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, the National Women’s Hockey League, the Premier Hockey Federation, or the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association.

She has managed to avoid that. She’s a vanguard, really.

“Ultimately, I loved the game and I wanted to be able to play it as long as possible,” she said. She was able to make the money work, but that couldn’t go on forever.

“I knew that if I wanted to play as long as possible I would need to make a living. I need to be able to pay for life. I was able to really be a pro player right out of college and not have to have another job. I could just worry about perfecting my craft.”

Even through this paid world tour, the PWHL is what she had been dreaming of. Playing two seasons in Toronto was fun, but now she’s truly coming home. And she’s playing in a barn she always dreamed of.

The Pacific Coliseum, where the still-unnamed Vancouver team will play, is where she would watch the Vancouver Giants play when she was young. It’s where she would see the Super Dogs during the PNE. It’s where she’d go see Monster Trucks.

“It’s a full circle moment,” he admitted. “Super special. I don’t think it’s really going to set in until we play that first game at the Pacific Coliseum and I look around and see, hopefully, a packed house. I think it will be a lot of emotions, but also just super humbled and grateful to be on this ride.”

There’s also another dream in front of her, one she hopes is going to be realized shortly. When Hockey Canada announced this week the 30-player long-list squad for the Olympic women’s team, Miller’s name wasn’t on it.

A former Canada U18 captain, and the sixth-leading scorer in the PWHL last season, normally you would expect her on such a list.

But as part of playing for KRS Vanke Rays in China, she was picked to play for the Chinese national team at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Hockey Canada tried to pick her for last spring’s Women’s World Championships, but the IIHF stepped in and said she hadn’t satisfied the two-year residency requirement needed to transfer national teams.

Hockey Canada was again set to pick her for the 2025-26 long list, but the IIHF again intervened, essentially telling Miller and the national team that players aren’t allowed to switch countries twice.

But the case that Miller and Canada have presented to the IIHF is twofold. First, she’s not switching to a third country, she is merely appealing to return to her country of birth. And second, China is not letting her play for them anyways, as the Chinese federation put a new policy in place in 2024, ruling dual-passport players like Miller were no longer eligible for the Chinese team.

“So right now, I have no national team to represent,” Miller said. “We’ll see what happens here. It’s out of my hands. Whatever happens, happens. I really hope I do get the opportunity to to try to make Team Canada and get to go to these training blocks that start at the end of August. I would love nothing more than that.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com