All About Balance: Team Canada announces 2019 World Championship roster

Will a mixed roster of veterans and newcomers help Canada capture Worlds gold?

Today Team Canada announced their 23-player roster for the upcoming Women’s World Championship in Espoo, Finland. The roster includes 18 players returning from November’s Four Nations Cup in Saskatoon, and 16 players from the 2018 Olympic roster.

Six players on this roster will be at their first World Championships. Perhaps surprisingly, one of those players is Mélodie Daoust. The 27-year-old has been to two Four Nations Cup tournaments and the last two Winter Olympics, but the only World Championship roster she’s been on was in 2010’s U18 Worlds. Daoust has only played 14 games this CWHL season due to injury, but she had 18 points in those 14 games, 10 of which were goals. In spite of her injury, that puts her in fourth place on Les Canadiennes in goal-scoring.

The other newcomers are Ann-Sophie Bettez (Les Canadiennes), who made her senior team debut during the Rivalry Series, Jaime Bourbonnais (Cornell), Loren Gabel (Clarkson), Sarah Nurse (Toronto Furies), and Micah Zandee-Hart (Cornell). Bettez is second in scoring in the CWHL leading into the playoffs with 45 points, behind only Marie-Philip Poulin with 51. Nurse is second on the Furies with 21 points in her rookie CWHL season. Jaime Bourbonnais is the highest-scoring defender on Cornell’s team and third on the team with 29 points in 28 games played.

Not returning from the Rivalry Series roster are forwards Brittany Howard (Toronto Furies), Rebecca Leslie (Calgary Inferno) and Victoria Bach (Markham Thunder), and defenders Katelyn Gosling (Calgary Inferno) and Halli Krzyzaniak (Calgary Inferno). After a Rivalry Series where NCAA players were unavailable, Team Canada has chosen to infuse their Worlds roster with some young talent, in hopes of winning their first World Championship since 2012.

The 2019 Women’s World Championship will take place from April 4 to 14, and Canada will start their tournament off by facing Team Switzerland.


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