CALGARY — If Laura Schuler coaches Canada’s next Olympic women’s hockey team, her full plate this season is a dress rehearsal for that workload.
The 45-year-old from Toronto was named the new coach of the Dartmouth women this summer as well as Canada’s head coach for a second season.
Schuler considers rebuilding the Big Green while overseeing a national team ramping up for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, a pair of plum hockey jobs and not overload.
"That’s my passion and what I want to be doing," Schuler said this week at a national team camp in Calgary.
The 44 invited players wrap up the eight-day camp Sunday with an intrasquad game.
A Canadian forward in the first women’s world championship in 1990 and also when women’s hockey made its Olympic debut in 1998, Schuler became the first alumnus to be head coach of the team last winter.
Canada lost 1-0 in overtime to the U.S. in April’s world championship final in Kamloops, B.C. The Americans also beat them 3-2 in overtime to take last November’s Four Nations Cup.
Schuler was a woman without a coaching job between those assignments.
After working as an assistant to Shannon Miller at Minnesota-Duluth for eight years, the school controversially jettisoned the entire women’s team coaching staff in the spring of 2015.
Melody Davidson, the general manager of national women’s teams for Hockey Canada, felt it was important Schuler be behind the bench of a team this winter working her coaching muscles when she wasn’t behind Canada’s.
"It’s crucial," Davidson said. "It wasn’t conducive for her to go another year without having a full-time team to work with."
Schuler will coach Canada at the Four Nations Cup in November, in a two-game series against the U.S. in December and at the 2016 world championship in Plymouth, Mich.
Her assistants are Dwayne Gylywoychuk of Winnipeg, Troy Ryan of Spryfield, N.S., and goaltending coach Brad Kirkwood of Calgary.
The national team will be a full-time commitment in less than a year.
Players and coaches will move to Calgary next summer for almost seven months of training and approximately 50 games before the opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang.
It’s an intense, hectic process that Schuler lived twice as a player when she tried out for the 1998 and 2002 Olympic squads.
She’s currently the top candidate to coach the Canadian women in the next Winter Games, which would also make her the first player alumnus to do so. Former national team forward Danielle Goyette was an assistant coach in 2014.
The number of women who have been head coaches in the five Olympic women’s hockey tournaments to date is two — Davidson (2006, 2010) and Katey Stone of the U.S. (2014).
Schuler said Dartmouth would support a leave of absence to coach the Olympic team.
"It would be a dream for me to be coaching at both levels with our Olympic team as well in the NCAA," Schuler said. "Those are my goals."
Dan Church was named head coach of the Canadian women two years out from the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
He abruptly left the team with just weeks to go, saying Hockey Canada lacked confidence in his ability to do the job. Canada won gold with Church’s replacement Kevin Dineen.
Davidson said that turmoil didn’t make her reluctant to extend Schuler’s current contract from one year to two.
"We just want to take it one year at a time," Davidson said. "This year, what’s important right now is the world championship."
Canada has won four straight Olympic golds, but the Americans have taken seven of the last nine world championships.
With just three goals scored in their last four meetings with the U.S., Schuler is putting more emphasis on offensive creativity for the Canadians in 2016-17.
"In the past we’ve worked a lot on our defensive zone play, we worked a lot on our entries, but we haven’t focused a lot on our offensive zone play," she said. "It’s going to be about trying to create more scoring opportunities and how to create those scoring opportunities."
