By Donna Spencer,
The Canadian Press
Canada will be green in goal at the Four Nations Cup women’s hockey tournament.
Hockey Canada has announced the country’s 22-player roster for tournament Nov. 4-8 in Sundsvall, Sweden. Canada is the defending champion having beaten the U.S. women 3-2 in a shootout in last year’s final in Kamloops, B.C. Finland and host Sweden round out the field for the annual tournament.
Goaltenders Emerance Maschmeyer of Bruderheim, Alta., and Erica Howe of Orleans, Ont., have fewer than five career starts for the national team between them. Canada’s roster includes seven players who won Olympic gold in 2014 in Sochi, Russia: Marie-Philip Poulin, Meghan Agosta, Natalie Spooner, Jennifer Wakefield, Rebecca Johnston, Laura Fortino, Lauriane Rougeau.
Those players minus Agosta, along with forwards Jillian Saulnier, Bailey Bram, Jessica Campbell, Emily Clark, Sarah Davis and defenders Courtney Birchard, Brigette Lacquette and Halli Krzyzaniak, won a silver medal at the women’s world championship in April.
Maschmeyer, 21, dressed for two games at the world championship, but did not play in the tournament.
Defencemen Sarah Edney of Mississauga, Ont., and Renata Fast of Burlington, Ont., as well as forwards Sarah Lefort of Ormstown, Que., Sarah Nurse of Hamilton and Sarah Potomak of Aldergrove, B.C., will make their national-team debuts in Sweden.
Agosta, Canada’s leading scorer and tournament MVP at the 2010 Winter Olympics, returns to the national team after taking police training in Vancouver last winter.
Left off the Four Nations roster were Sochi veterans Hayley Wickenheiser, Haley Irwin, Jocelyne Larocque, Brianne Jenner, Melodie Daoust, Tara Watchorn and goaltender Charline Labonte. Those players participated in the national team’s September camp.
Goaltender Shannon Szabados, Canada’s winning goalie in both the 2010 and 2014 Olympic finals, is playing men’s pro hockey for the Southern Professional Hockey League’s Columbus Cottonmouths. Canada will be coached by 1998 Olympian Laura Schuler of Toronto.