Something to prove: How Blayre Turnbull became the ‘glue’ of the Canadian women’s hockey team | CBC Sports

On the ice inside a rink in Etobicoke, Ont., where Team Canada was running its second Olympic training camp this past fall, head coach Troy Ryan skated over to Blayre Turnbull.

Ryan didn’t like the team’s passing during that day’s practice. He wanted to see if his long-time Canadian assistant captain saw what he was seeing on the ice.

She gave Ryan a nod.

“I now know that someone like Blayre, who I trust, is feeling the same way I’m feeling,” Ryan said about that day. “So I can go home with confidence as a coach to know that I’m probably heading in the right direction.”

Over a decade on the national team, the 32-year-old has become someone trusted by coaches and teammates alike. A player who thinks like a coach, she’s become a bridge between Ryan, the rest of the coaching staff and the players.

She’s not the flashiest player. She might not score the game-winning goal.

But in the tense moments in the biggest games, Turnbull is one of the players the Canadian staff rely on most to defend the house.

“She competes hard and that’s her bread and butter,” fellow assistant captain Jocelyne Larocque said.

Off the ice, few players are more important to the Canadian program than Turnbull, who’s looking to go to her third Olympics in Italy this February.

“I’m still learning from her,” Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin said in September. “I’m still in awe every time I watch her do her thing. As a leader, she has a big role in this group. For us, we lean on her. We learn a lot from her. She’s the glue to this team.”

At the heart of it all is grit, something Turnbull learned early on growing up in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County.

Shaped by Nova Scotia

Turnbull grew up in Stellarton, N.S., a town of fewer than 5,000 people that was built on the gruelling work of coal mining. It sits more than 150 kilometres northeast of Halifax, and it’s the place that has shaped and propelled Turnbull toward the career she has now.

When Turnbull was growing up there, the only way to play hockey was to play with boys. She never wanted to get pushed off the puck by them and always wanted to compete harder. That applied to the boys she played organized hockey with, as well as her younger brother, Brent, who she often battled on the driveway.

It’s how she’s always approached the game, but that mentality goes beyond the rink, too.

“That’s something that I learned at a really young age from my parents,” Turnbull said. “That was kind of the attitude my brother and I were taught to approach everything with.”

That resilience and determination became her biggest strength as an athlete.

When she was young, she compared herself to players from Halifax, always feeling like she had something to prove against peers from the city. She felt it when she represented Atlantic Canada against the best athletes from bigger provinces like Ontario and Quebec.

It stayed with her when she went to prep school at Shattuck-St. Mary’s and then the University of Wisconsin. She was playing with the top players in North America, and again needed to prove she belonged.

But she felt it the strongest when she was cut from the Canadian Under-18 team and didn’t get invited back to the national team for several years.

“That mentality went hand-in-hand with the grit that I learned at an early age, and those two things have really helped me form into the type of player that I am now,” Turnbull said.

She found her way back to the Canadian team in the 2015-16 season and hasn’t looked back since.

She’s cemented a role on Canada’s penalty kill as a forward other players hate playing against. It’s also a unit that is prone to pounce on a turnover with speed, earning the moniker, “the power kill.”

“Blayre Turnbull’s best asset is when she’s on that forecheck or she’s trying to get that puck from you,” Larocque said. “It’s going to take a lot to not lose that battle. She just competes so hard, and her passion and love for whatever team she plays on is so evident.”

That doesn’t mean that Turnbull feels like she no longer has something to prove. That’s never gone away, not after winning Olympic gold and three world championships.

It always drives her.

“It’s an easy thing for me to fall back on when times are hard or when times get easy, too,” she said.

An east coast connection

Ryan has worked with Turnbull for several years on the national team and, since late 2023, they’ve worked together on the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres. Ryan is the team’s coach and Turnbull its captain.

You can trace their connection back to Nova Scotia.

Like Turnbull, Ryan has fought for everything he’s earned. Raised by a single mother in Spryfield, N.S., the community helped Ryan get to where he is in hockey today, whether it was the youth hockey coaches who taught him how to shingle a roof in exchange for his hockey fees or the parents of friends who drove him to practice.

“The way that we were both raised and our upbringing and some of the hardships that we both have experienced in our lives I think really allows us to connect and kind of understand what makes the other one click,” Turnbull said.

The pair also understand what it’s like to represent a small place. In the Maritimes, one person’s success feels like it belongs to everyone, in a region where few degrees of separation exist.

That sense of pride that Turnbull has embraced, and how hard she works to live up to it, makes Ryan emotional when he thinks about it.

“I know her family a little bit as well, and I think anything less wouldn’t have been acceptable in her family,” Ryan said. “She comes by it quite honestly.”

When the Takeover Tour stopped in Halifax in December, Turnbull signs were spread throughout the sold-out Scotiabank Centre as her Sceptres took on the Montreal Victoire. She and teammate Allie Munroe, who’s from Yarmouth, N.S., led their teammates inside the rink, accompanied by a bagpiper, in Nova Scotia fashion.

The Takeover Tour also took her home to Pictou County for a pop-up clinic after the game against the Victoire. And every summer, she returns to the province to run a hockey camp alongside Boston Fleet forward Jill Saulnier, who’s from Halifax.

Even when she’s not home, Nova Scotia’s not far away.

“I’ll talk to my grandmother on the phone and she’ll say so and so from down the street, you don’t know them, but they stay up and they watch all your games, and they just wanted me to say they’re so proud of you,” Turnbull said. “That’s so nice and so kind of everyone back home. That’s just what it’s like growing up there.”

Embracing her role

On the national team, Turnbull has taken cues from other leaders like Poulin, Larocque, Brianne Jenner and Renata Fast, who all wear letters for Team Canada.

Larocque has been in plenty of leadership group meetings with Turnbull, both on Team Canada and with the Sceptres. One common thread is that Turnbull is always thinking about her team.

“Her love and loyalty to whatever team she’s on, it’s pretty special,” said Larocque, who now plays for the Ottawa Charge.

Ryan has helped with some of that pressure, particularly on the Sceptres.

As captain, Turnbull said she often expects herself to be perfect. Ryan has helped her relax. 

It might be the biggest way she’s grown as a player over the last decade. Turnbull understands the role she plays, and shows up as her authentic self.

“If you don’t look at points, if you just look at the impact that players like me have on a game, I’ve really started to embrace that and understand that my value and my worth is something that can’t be measured with stats on the ice,” Turnbull said.

For Ryan, he’s tried to stress that it’s impossible to be perfect. It’s better to be someone your team can rely on. That’s become Turnbull.

Ryan sees a future in coaching for Turnbull. A perfect full circle moment for him would be the chance to work alongside her as an advisor, with Turnbull ascending to a head coach’s role somewhere.

“I have never met anybody more fitting for that sort of end of career kind of move for me than Blayre Turnbull,” Ryan said.

Turnbull’s Sceptres will host the Seattle Torrent at TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ont. on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET. You can watch the game on CBC and CBC Gem.