Hockey Canada starts search for new women's team general manager, coach

Canada’s National Women’s Team general manager Gina Kingsbury, right, speaks to the media as head coach Troy Ryan looks on at Hockey Canada’s National Teams orientation camp in Calgary, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

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 won three world championships and an Olympic gold medal in the six years after Kingsbury promoted him to head coach, 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. The organization said the parting with both was by mutual agreement.

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.

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,” Henderson said.

“Part of what they’re going to be doing is to take a look at the analysis that we’ve done on where are we right now and where do we need to be next year for the women’s worlds, a year after for the women’s worlds, and then the Olympic Games is really important for this team.”

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 has quickly altered the women’s hockey landscape. 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 no longer spend five to six months together training and playing games ahead of an Olympic Games.

Ryan and Kingsbury, who led Canada to Olympic gold in 2022, were the first to hold top leadership roles with both a PWHL team and the Canadian women’s team simultaneously.

Other than her preference for a full-time women’s general manager, Henderson wanted to leave her search committee a blank slate for the search. The CEO didn’t rule out the next GM or coach having PWHL connections.

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.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press