Hayley Wickenheiser is at the crossroads of a youth movement in Canadian women’s hockey

On March 14, Hayley Wickenheiser won the Clarkson Cup with the Calgary Inferno of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. It was the first time in team history that Calgary had won the CWHL’s ultimate prize, and the team was ecstatic -- hugging, crying, even bringing out Calder, the son of defender Meaghan Mikkelson and head coach Scott Reid, onto the ice to celebrate.

For some, like goaltender Delayne Brian, it was the first trophy they’d won in a long time. For Wickenheiser, it was just another award to add to her seemingly endless collection.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘I’ve pretty much won every championship except for this one,’” said Wickenheiser after the game. She’s not kidding.

“Wick,” as she’s known by her teammates, has won just about every single prize in the book. She’s a five-time Olympic medalist with four consecutive gold medals and has competed in over two dozen total international tournaments with Hockey Canada, collecting 17 more gold medals in the process. At the age of 37, she was named to the roster for the 2016 IIHF Women’s World Championships, which ended Monday night in a silver medal for Canada. It’s the 13th time in her career she’s represented her country in this tournament.

Wickenheiser, plain and simple, is the embodiment of Canadian hockey. She has been from the start.

But as the 2018 Winter Olympics -- which will celebrate the 20th anniversary of women’s hockey at the Games -- draw closer, it’s time for Wick to hand off the torch that she’s held aloft for so many years as Canada’s premier hockey star.

Wickenheiser was just one member of the first group of women’s players for Canada, the “History Makers” who quickly showed that Canada wasn’t messing around when it came to this hockey business and kept the country on the top of international play for nearly two decades.

But now, her role on the team is changing -- Mikkelson, 31, jokes that they’re getting up there in the age bracket on the team -- and Team Canada is evolving, too. There is a significant number of younger players on this year’s Worlds roster, and a surprising amount of older players missing. Longtime veteran Caroline Ouellette, goaltender Genevieve Lacasse and CWHL star Ann-Sophie Bettez are just a few who could still compete at the international level. After Jayna Hefford announced her retirement from the national team last year, Wickenheiser is the last player from that 1998 roster still playing at the international level.

Meanwhile, 16 members of the 23-player roster in 2016 are 25 years old or younger, with Wickenheiser sitting as the oldest in the group by a good five years. She remains on the team for good reason -- she’s still an elite goal scorer -- but the shift to a younger core is clear. And there’s one young player in particular who’s ready to lead this next group onward and upwards: the inimitable Marie-Philip Poulin.

It is now Poulin’s time to take center stage in women’s hockey, as “The Protege” starts becoming “The Superstar” and Wickenheiser starts becoming “The Legend.” The next hockey prodigy is right in our midst, a 5’7 left-handed shot who strikes terror into goaltenders’ hearts when she splits the defense and speeds her way to the net.

“I think there will be [Poulin] and a group of younger players that will have to take the game on and lead it on into the next few years or the next 10 years ... and that’s just sort of the natural evolution of the game itself,” said Wickenheiser. “It’s important to have that core group and to continue to develop. Even next to her, the next young group of players that will be coming up as well so that you have that depth we need in Canadian hockey.”

We are entering a new era of women’s professional hockey -- one where women’s Olympic hockey is now a highly anticipated, internationally televised event. One where networks like Sportsnet are broadcasting CWHL games to over 100,000 viewers. One where Poulin is leading a new core of Team Canada players into greatness.

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Things have come a long way since Wickenheiser was just starting out on the national team in 1994, the first time the Women’s World Championships were ever held.

“She’s been on the national team for like 20 years,” said Mikkelson. “She is still one of the hardest working players on the team. Before practices, warming up, cooling down, she’s in the gym all the time, and you’d think that after a while it kind of starts to wear on you. But day-in and day-out, she’s there.”

Wickenheiser was just 15 years old when she was named to Canada’s national team for the 1994 Worlds held in Lake Placid, where she picked up her first international point. Back then, she was the youngest on the team, but after playing with boys for the most of her life before moving to Alberta, it was clear that she had the talent to compete at the national level. (A naturally gifted athlete, Wickenheiser also competed in the 2000 Olympics with Team Canada’s softball team, because why stop at being only the most talented hockey player of her time?)

“I thought I wanted to play in the NHL, then I got into high school and I realized ‘Well, maybe I’ll just go to university and play,’” said Wickenheiser. “That became an option to go to an NCAA school, but I decided to stay in Canada, so then from there, the national team opportunity came -- and the rest was kind of history.”

Her career has taken her from Canada to Sweden and Finland, where she competed on men’s teams and became the first woman in hockey history to score a goal on a men’s professional team. She had the chance to play for the ECHL, but declined, and has continued her career with Team Canada ever since. In 2015 she joined the CWHL to skate with eight of her national teammates and compete for the Clarkson Cup. But she hasn’t really thought about slowing down ... yet.

“Obviously you think about what your career is going to be like afterwards. I think it’s important to prepare for life after hockey as you’re in the game,” said Wickenheiser. “But I don’t really feel like I should retire at this point ... I still feel like I’ve got lots of good hockey left.”

That’s a change of tune from just a year ago, when it wasn’t clear when Wickenheiser would ever play professionally again. She had major season-ending surgery on her foot last fall to repair an injury that had been plaguing her since 2012. She’d gone under the knife to try and remedy the problem once the year before, but it wasn’t enough. After playing in the 2014 Sochi Olympics with a broken foot, she ultimately decided to have the second surgery to try and give her one more chance to finish her career strong.

The foot injury had the potential to end Wickenheiser’s career for good, sending her out on a sour note after such a storied career on the ice. Though playing in a tight hockey boot might have helped her continue to play through the pain, the injury was by far the most severe in her career -- to the point where she wasn’t able to put any weight on her foot at all after the surgery. That meant absolutely no walking and definitely no skating. For a star used to dazzling on the ice for almost two decades, that’s like a death sentence. The second surgery meant she had a plate and eight screws inserted into her foot, and Wickenheiser told the Canadian Press that she wondered if she’d even ever walk normally again.

She missed the 2015 World Championships, breaking a 12-year streak of consecutive Worlds appearances. She wasn’t named to the 2015 Four Nations Cup roster, either, despite the fact that she was playing well for the Inferno -- she had started the season with a four-game point streak. But Wickenheiser wanted to make sure that she could finally put the injury behind her and come back to play at a level she knew she could. She says now, finally, she’s feeling good on the ice again.

Though Wickenheiser is mostly known for leading Team Canada’s powerful offense, the goal-scorer has slowed down just a tad. The forward, who has well over 100 points in 67 total IlHF contests, now plays more of a depth role on the Inferno as younger players like Brianne Jenner and Jillian Saulnier lead the Calgary team in scoring. Wickenheiser finished the season with 16 points in 23 games in her first season in the C, joining players like Blayre Turnbull and Bailey Bram in providing invaluable depth on the Clarkson Cup championship team. She still sees time on the power play, too, and while she’s not quite as noticeable now as teammates like Rebecca Johnston, at least once a game she’ll make a move, deke a defender or snag the puck and go streaking back through the neutral zone that’s just vintage Wickenheiser. A couple times a game, it’s like Wick time travels back to when she was in her prime.

“I’m still here,” it says. “I’ve still got it.”

Despite the flashes of brilliance, it seems inevitable that Wickenheiser’s career will start to come to a close in the not-too-distant future. She started this year’s World Championships on the third line, and though the lines have been shuffled after a tough loss to the United States, she doesn’t quite have the same raw speed that her younger national teammates do. She’s the closest thing to the seemingly immortal Jaromir Jagr that the women’s game has, but Wickenheiser is finally in the swan song of her career after more than 20 years of leading Canada.

“An incredible legacy, I think, is what she’s leaving,” said Mikkelson. “I don’t know if there will ever be another Hayley Wickenheiser in women’s hockey.”

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Enter Poulin.

If you’ve watched any international tournament over the last few years, you know who Poulin is. A two-time Olympic gold medalist, she is known affectionately (to some) as the “American dream crusher” for her uncanny knack of scoring goals at inopportune moments against Canada’s biggest rival, Team USA. Wickenheiser has another moniker for her.

“I think I’ve got a nickname for her: ‘Clutch,’” said a grinning Wick.

Poulin scored the gold medal game-winning goal in two consecutive Olympics for Team Canada, including this one in an incredible comeback game for Team Canada in 2014, when her team was down by two goals with five minutes to play. Poulin scored the goal to tie it up with less than a minute to go in the game, then put a dagger in Team USA’s collective heart on a power play in overtime.

But even back when she was just 15 years old, Poulin was turning heads. Her talent was noticeable enough to catch the attention of Lisa-Marie Breton, a GM-captain for the then-Montreal Stars of the CWHL in their inaugural year. They needed players, so who else to call but the best up-and-coming player in Canada? Poulin played two years in the CWHL before college, finishing with 43 points in just 16 games her rookie season and earning the rookie of the year award. The next season, she helped her team to the Clarkson Cup before packing her bags and heading down to Boston.

In addition to her international career, she shattered just about every record at Boston University during her four years there. When she left BU, she was the program’s all-time leader in goals (81), assists (100) and points (181), and she broke the team’s single-season scoring record as a freshman. Poulin was also the first Terrier to be named Hockey East’s rookie of the year and was nominated twice for the Patty Kazmaier Award, given every year to the best women’s hockey player in the country. She took a break to do that whole Olympic thing in 2014, then came back her senior year to co-captain the team for the second straight season. The team is now suffering from what can be politely called a post-Poulin hangover.

Now she’s back with her CWHL team, since renamed Les Canadiennes, and she helped them earn the top spot in the league during the regular season. Poulin won the regular season scoring title and the MVP award, re-establishing herself as a CWHL superstar. And it seems as though she’s starting to come into her own as a leader on the team as well.

“She has such a big heart, she plays with such intensity, she leads by example, and she’s just finding her voice,” said Team Canada and Les Canadiennes teammate Ouellette. “It’s a challenge, where English is our second language, and I’ve had the same challenges where I’ve had to learn English and become comfortable with it, but already to see how much she’s grown. She has everyone’s respect -- not only her teammates, but her opponents -- the way she carries herself and the way she plays every game.”

As Wickenheiser’s career with Hockey Canada begins to come to a close, Poulin is leading a new generation of stars on Canada’s national team. The BU alum and Team Canada captain turned 25 this week and is just hitting her prime. While she still has years of hockey to play, it’s hard not to see the parallels with her career and Wick’s. Both grew up playing on boys’ teams, both were recruited to Team Canada at unusually young ages (Poulin was playing on the senior national team at just 18), both have quickly captured the attention of a hockey-mad country and both are leading the world’s top hockey program.

“They’re two great players, and we’re really lucky as a country to have them,” said Mikkelson.

That’s an understatement. Poulin is not quite single-handedly responsible for the last two Olympic gold medals, but she’s pretty close. And Wick -- well, the amount she’s contributed to women’s hockey and the remarkable career she’s had speaks for itself. Mikkelson’s right: There likely won’t ever be a player quite like Wickenheiser.

Her legacy will always be felt -- it was, after all, her group of players that helped develop Hockey Canada to where it is today, and helped professional women’s hockey develop to the point where it found a spot on TV, even it if it’s just once or twice a year. But the torch of Canadian women’s hockey, still burning brightly, is no longer theirs to hold up. She’s been one of the country’s most phenomenal athletes for years, and now, her time in the spotlight on the ice is nearly up.

It’s Poulin’s turn to forge her own path.

“Everybody brings something different, and I think Pou will create her own legacy that she’ll leave,” said Mikkelson. “It’s crazy that she’s so young and she’s accomplished so much.

“But I think, at the same time, she’s just getting started.”