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The Canadian women’s hockey team will have a new general manager and head coach leading the team into the next Olympic cycle.
GM Gina Kingsbury and head coach Troy Ryan won’t return to their roles, Hockey Canada announced on Tuesday. Both were on contracts set to expire this year.
“Gina and Troy were instrumental to tremendous success with our women’s team in their respective roles and we are grateful for the time and effort that was given to Canada’s national women’s team,” Hockey Canada’s senior vice president of high performance and hockey operations, Scott Salmond, said in a statement.
“Moving forward, Hockey Canada is looking to bring in the best available candidate for the general manager position with the National Women’s Team who will focus on implementing the strategy and vision of the program heading into the 2026-27 season and our next quad.”
A search committee appointed by Hockey Canada will identify the next general manager of the women’s team, and that person will hire the next head coach.
The search committee will be chaired by Hockey Canada board member and three-time Olympic gold medallist, Gillian Apps. It will also include two other former members of the Canadian women’s hockey team: Olympic gold medallist and former captain, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, and Thérèse Brisson, a 2002 Olympic gold medallist who is the CEO of Alpine Canada.
Team Canada forwards Sarah Fillier and Laura Stacey say they’re still hurting from their overtime loss to the U.S. in the Olympics women’s hockey final in Milan, but they’re ‘proud of the way we battled’ and silenced the ‘outside noise’ from critics.
They’ll be joined by Salmond, Misha Donskov, who is Hockey Canada’s senior vice president of hockey operations, Own the Podium’s high-performance advisor, Cara Thibault, and Brad Treliving, the former Toronto Maple Leafs GM who is a member of the management group for the Canadian men’s team.
“Hockey Canada is extremely grateful for the commitment, passion and expertise that Gina and Troy displayed each time they represented Canada with our national women’s team,” Hockey Canada president and CEO, Katherine Henderson, said in a statement. “We cannot thank them both enough for providing world-class treatment to our women’s hockey program and exemplifying what it means to be a leader on the international stage.”
Under Kingsbury and Ryan, the Canadian women’s national team won Olympic gold in 2022 and world championship titles in 2021, 2022 and 2024. The world championship gold in 2021 was the program’s first since 2012.
But the team lost to the United States at the Olympics this past February, at the world championship last spring and at a lopsided Rivalry Series this past fall. Some questioned the decision to stick with a veteran-heavy lineup as opposed to embracing more youth, as the Americans did over the last four years to much success.
After the loss at the Olympics, Ryan had said it was “probably the right time for change” behind the bench.
“I think win or lose in this situation that this was a typical point of transitioning, to some extent,” he said in February.
Outside of Hockey Canada, Kingsbury is the general manager of the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres. Ryan was the head coach of the Sceptres for the past three seasons, but was recently named the dual GM-head coach of PWHL San Jose, an expansion team set to begin play this fall.
It’s not yet clear whether the new general manager will be in that job full time. Both Ryan and Kingsbury managed their jobs with Hockey Canada while working with the Sceptres.
Top coaching candidates
Earlier this year, Ryan mentioned two of his assistants, Kori Cheverie and Caroline Ouellette, as top candidates to take over behind Canada’s bench.
“They’ve worked with me as assistant coaches for a number of years and at some point, it’s someone else’s opportunity and someone else’s stage to do their thing,” Ryan said.
Cheverie would seem to be a frontrunner. She was the PWHL’s coach of the year last season, and just led the Montreal Victoire to the franchise’s first Walter Cup. She’s nominated for the PWHL’s top coaching award again this season.
Ouellette was an assistant on the Victoire this season, and has had a successful career behind the bench of one of the top university women’s hockey programs in Canada at Concordia University. She’s also a four-time gold medalist with Team Canada and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Regardless of who takes over, it’s the first step in what could be big changes for the Canadian women’s hockey team.
The world championship is set for November, a new annual timeslot meant to avoid crossover with the PWHL season.
The new GM will determine who’s invited to that camp, but it would be the perfect opportunity to start getting young talent more opportunity ahead of the next Olympics in 2030.
“There’s a possibility of a changing of the guard with our women’s team, with some leadership there, potentially,” Salmond told CBC Sports in February. “But we will be extremely respectful of those players. If they can continue to contribute and help us win, and that’s what they want, then we’ll give them every opportunity to do that. But we have to be looking today at what gives us the best opportunity four years from now.”
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