CALGARY — The Canadian women’s hockey team is in search of a new general manager as well as a coach at a time when Professional Women’s Hockey League teams have been scooping up candidates.
Hockey Canada announced Tuesday that general manager Gina Kingsbury will not return next season after eight years overseeing the national women’s team.
Kingsbury is also GM of the PWHL’s Toronto Sceptres.
Troy Ryan, who coached Canada to three world championships and an Olympic gold medal in the six years after Kingsbury promoted him, indicated after February’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that he wouldn’t continue coaching Canada’s women.
Ryan was recently hired as head coach and GM of the PWHL’s expansion team in San Jose after three seasons coaching Kingsbury’s Sceptres.
Hockey Canada’s contracts with Kingsbury and Ryan were to expire in June.
“I’m good with the transition. I’m ready for it,” Kingsbury said. “It’s time for someone to look at the landscape that has shifted in women’s hockey and set out their own vision on what that could look like for the future.”
After a playing career that included Olympic gold medals in 2006 and 2010, Kingsbury joined Hockey Canada in 2016 as a director of hockey operations. She took over the national women’s program in 2018 when Melody Davidson stepped down.
Kingsbury initially left Hockey Canada in 2023 when she was hired as the Sceptres’ first GM, but returned within weeks to sign another contract and manage the women’s team through to the 2026 Olympic Games.
“When I re-signed with Hockey Canada on a contract to finish up the quad and finish off with the Olympics in Milan . . . it was important for me to continue what I’d started. I thought it was important for continuity toward the Milan Games,” Kingsbury said.
“In the back of my mind I think I always knew there was a strong likelihood that would be my last and that a new leadership would come into place.”
The PWHL, expanding by four teams next season to a 12-team league, has churned the coaching and management ranks, which in turn makes Hockey Canada’s quest to find replacements for Kingsbury and Ryan more complex.
“We’ve done quite a bit of analysis, but the sands continue to shift underneath our feet,” said Hockey Canada chief executive officer Katherine Henderson.
“I’m thrilled that there’s four new (PWHL) teams. I’m also saying now there’s four new competitors for a full-time job. I may want to go after some of those people. We’re going to have to up our game a little bit and say ‘come and work with Hockey Canada.’”
The PWHL’s expansion team in Hamilton hired former U.S. women’s hockey team captain Meghan Duggan as general manager, former Canadian goaltender Manon Rheaume is Detroit’s GM, and former player agent Dominique DiDia is the new GM in Las Vegas.
Hockey Canada’s search committee for a GM, who will choose a head coach, includes former national team players Gillian Apps, Therese Brisson and Cassie Campbell, former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving, Hockey Canada executives Scott Salmond and Misha Donskov, and Own The Podium’s Cara Thibault.
“It’s a combination of people who have played in the program, some people who know the system, and then people from the world of super-competitive professional hockey that know what it takes in order to put those teams together,” said Henderson, who wants a new GM in place by the end of June.
Canada will need a GM and coach for the women’s world championship, Nov. 6-16 in Herning and Esbjerg, Denmark. The 2027 world championship is in Quebec City.
Canada fell 2-1 in overtime to the United States in the Olympic women’s hockey final Feb. 19 in Milan, Italy, for an eighth straight loss to its archrival.
“We want to contend for a medal at every single international event we play and preferably the colour is gold,” Henderson said. “That will be what we put in front of this GM.”
The PWHL quickly altered the women’s hockey landscape in its first three seasons. The International Ice Hockey Federation shifted the world championship, historically held in April, to November starting this year to avoid conflict with the PWHL season.
The 2026 Olympic women’s hockey tournament was the first in the PWHL era. Canada’s women didn’t spend five to six months together training and playing games as they had for previous Olympic Games.
Ryan and Kingsbury, who led Canada to Olympic gold in 2022 and back-to-back world titles in 2021 and 2022 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, were the first to hold top leadership roles with both a PWHL team and the Canadian women’s team simultaneously.
Both Kingsbury and Henderson indicated a full-time person at Hockey Canada dedicated to running women’s hockey, but tapping into the PWHL for tournament personnel was a likely scenario in the future.
A hybrid of Hockey Canada staff and NHL general managers and coaches has traditionally led Canada’s men into world championships and Olympic Games.
“We now need to live in a world probably closer to how we put together our men’s senior teams,” Henderson said.
Kingsbury also believes that model works for the women’s team, with a dedicated person at Hockey Canada directing it.
“Someone needs to be at the helm of women’s hockey at Hockey Canada from a high-performance perspective,” Kingsbury said. ”It can’t be on the side of someone’s desk. It can’t be done solely with part-time or contracted people.
“I do think there is a place for PWHL GMs to be a part of teams and the Olympic team and world championship teams and help select players. There’s an opportunity for coaches I think certainly to be from the PWHL.”
By Donna Spencer.
