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Cornell University Athletics

Jillian Saulnier '15 is one of seven skaters to join assistant coach Doug Derraugh for Team Canada's training camp in advance of the 2021 IIHF World Women's Championship. (Patrick Shanahan/Cornell Athletics)
Patrick Shanahan/Cornell Athletics

Eight Cornell Alum Bound For Team Canada Training Camp

1/19/2021 3:45:00 PM

CALGARY, Alberta — Seven Cornell women's hockey alumnae have been invited by Hockey Canada to the training camp for the national team that will be named for the 2021 IIHF Women's World Championship. Doug Derraugh, the Everett Family Head Coach of Women's Hockey, will also serve as an assistant coach for Team Canada.
 
Cornell will be represented by 20 percent of the 35 players vying for spot on the final roster. Four of them are among the 11 defenders in camp, led by veterans Laura Fortino '13 and Lauriane Rougeau '13. Both helped Canada win medals at the last two Olympics. The other two – Jaime Bourbonnais '20 and Micah Zandee-Hart '20 competed for Cornell the last time it hit the ice. Bourbonnais and Zandee-Hart has international experience at junior levels, with Zandee-Hart also having the experienced of being centralized with the senior national team leading up to the 2018 Olympics.
 
The remaining three Cornellians invited to compete are all forwards. Brianne Jenner '15, the Big Red's all-time leading scorer with 229 points, returns alongside classmate Jillian Saulnier '15. Kristin O'Neill '20 will also bid to compete in Worlds at the senior level for the first time, having previously played twice at the U18 level.
 
Derraugh returns to the bench, where he has served with Team Canada in some capacity since the 2011-12 Worlds. The Big Red's all-time winningest coach for women's hockey was in line to serve in an identical role at the 2020 Worlds before the event was cancelled due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
All seven Cornell skaters in the event are members of the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association -- an organization formed in May 2019 to unite some of the world's best players in an effort to pave the way for a sustainable professional women's hockey league that can pay its players a living wage. PWHPA players train together at five regional hubs around the U.S. and Canada – Bourbonnais, Rougeau, O'Neill and Saulnier are based in Montreal; Fortino and Jenner in Toronto; and Zandee-Hart in Calgary.
 
The training camp will run through the end of the month before final rosters are announced before the start of the World Championships, scheduled for April 7-17 in two Nova Scotian cities – Halifax and Truro.
 
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