“WHERE’D YOU GET THAT ONE?”

T he woman is wearing a pointed helmet and armour plate. She’s wielding her hockey stick like a weapon and she looks like she’s going to battle to win at all costs. You wouldn’t want to mess with her.

As soon as Sami Jo Small sits down on a bench wearing a blue jersey with that logo plastered on the front, the 10-or-so of us already at Toronto’s Rennie Park Rink for our weekly outdoor shinny game immediately start peppering her with questions. Mostly: “Where did you get that one?”

In the three seasons we’ve been playing at the most beautiful rink on earth, the Rennie Rink Rats — a group of 30- and 40-something men and women in our absolute hockey primes — have often had questions and words of admiration for the jerseys Small shows up wearing. Of course, there’s a fair bit that stands out about Small among our group of 17. She’s the only goalie on the roster (she plays defence; this is true shinny). She’s the only one who forgoes hockey gloves in favour of mittens (the Winnipeg native won’t tolerate cold fingers). She’s the only one with a new hip (a recent addition that has temporarily affected her speed, but not her uncanny ability to defend her team’s net with a sneaky poke check and skates that seem bigger than they are). And she’s also the only Olympic gold medallist and world champion.

T he story of how Small got her yellow Team Sweden jersey takes the cake. She was playing at the 2001 3 Nations Cup, which featured Canada, Finland and Sweden (the United States had withdrawn due to the Sept. 11 attacks). Sweden’s starting goalie was already injured when the Swedes came up against Canada, and in the second period, down went their backup. Sweden didn’t have a third goalie. Small was sitting on the Canadian bench, dressed as Team Canada’s backup.

SMALL: My coach just yelled at me: “Get in net!” [Laughs.] I thought it really wasn’t her choice, so I said, “Are you serious?” And she [Danièle Sauvageau] yelled at me again: “Get in net!”

I just kind of looked over at [Swedish coach] Peter Elander as I was skating by, like, “Should I be doing this, playing for Sweden?” But I did. I was in my Canada stuff for the rest of the second period, playing against Canada. And then I went into the Swedish dressing room between the second and third periods and they gave me a Swedish jersey to wear for the third period.

We [Sweden] got demolished. It was already 5–0 when I went in and it was kinda like, “you’re throwing me in there?” [Laughs.] Probably every single person on my team scored on me and I think I just stood in my crease, laughing. It certainly was a barrage at that point. The team was a little deflated, but yeah, they battled hard for me in front [laughs], tried to minimize those quality chances.

The official record of the game has the score at 5–0, so it technically ended once Small went in. Every member of the Swedish team signed the front of the jersey they gifted her after the game, and the team included a note at the top.

It says: “To Sammy [sic] Jo Small from the Swedish team and coaching staff. Thanks for your goaltending for Team Sweden against Canada in Vieromaki [sic] Finland 2 Nov. 2001.”

T he most striking jersey in Small’s collection is from Tomiris Astana, a pro team from Kazakhstan. This is the one featuring that fierce woman for its logo, and no jersey has prompted more questions or awe from our group.

SMALL: This one is actually a club team — they have a full club team in Kazakhstan for women. We actually played against Kazakhstan in the 2002 Olympics. They were quite good, having gotten onto that stage. But I got this jersey about five years ago. We were in Kazakhstan because we were brought over by the Canadian Embassy. They were doing a big celebration for Canada’s 150^th [in 2017], and every embassy around the world got to do their own kind of celebration or party. The Kazakhstani ambassador was a huge hockey fan, so he brought over me, Billy [Bridges], Ken Dryden, Dennis Maruk. Igor Larionov was also on our team, and we played against the alumni team of the KHL Team there, Barys Nur-Sultan.

It was a solid game — it was in the big venue and we got to celebrate Canada-Kazakh relations. One of the girls there, Bulbul Kartanbayeva, who ended up playing in the NWHL, she was the captain of the Kazakh team. I had given her a Canada jersey, and she got me this one. Isn’t it so cool?

S mall brought along a handful of childhood jerseys, including a tiny one from the first rep team she made at age 10, the Glenwood Bruins. The one she calls “a Manitoba OG” is off-white, a little beat up and has a buffalo logo on the front. It’s a Team Manitoba jersey from the 1991 Canada Games, the first to include women’s hockey. The 14-year-old Small wore No. 20 and was one of the team’s alternate captains. But she didn’t play in net.  

SMALL: I played defence because I didn’t think women’s hockey was that great, and I’d never seen women’s hockey. I had never seen another girl play hockey, in fact. I was playing boys’ AAA at the time, and I was like, “Should I try defence?” [Laughs.]

Still to this day, my Manitoba coaches are mad at me that I didn’t play goalie. I’m like: “Why didn’t you make me play goalie? [Laughs]. Why was that a thing? Why was I allowed to choose, like, ever?”

When there was a call for the team, there was one girl from up north who came and was a super hockey player. There was myself, who played boys’ hockey, and Laura Vanderhorst had played AA hockey; everybody else had only every played ringette. So when we went to try out, the coaches taught the girls how to cut their sticks and stuff. I had grown up playing boys’ hockey, which is very misogynistic. I didn’t think that girls could play hockey. I really had internalized what all of the people around me had said for so long, and I even thought: “I don’t know that I want to play for this girls’ team. They’re not that good.” It was such a terrible attitude to have at the time, and I mean, I can see how it happens, because you sit in this dressing room for such a long time. Guys would shout – if a girl went past the dressing room, they would be like, “Oh, there’s a girl outside, shut the door!” Meanwhile, I’m in the dressing room. So it was as if I was part of this family on the inside and I was certainly not inclusive when I went to my tryout.

S mall’s Winnipeg Selects jersey is noteworthy for what she chose to put on the back. She played on this team in 1989, at age 13.

SMALL: This was my first boys’ rep team, and I wanted a unique number — as if being the only girl wasn’t unique enough. So, I picked 111. I figured I was always No. 1 or No. 31, because that’s what they give you as a goalie, but this was the first time I got to pick my own number. I just thought it was so unique to be 111. And why the coaches allowed me, I don’t know, but they did. I thought I was so crafty and creative. Clearly I was not.

This is my first travelling team, what they’d now call spring hockey. It was a bunch of AAA teams trying out for this select team, and we went to a tournament in Montreal. What did I draw [on the top left corner of the jersey]? “The hockey festival 1989.” I even wrote the scores. We played Ottawa, Boston, New York. It was a solid team. Two of the guys on this team went on to play in the NHL. Jason Botterill was on this team and so was Mike Leclerc — he played for almost a decade in the NHL. You can see their signatures. This one brings back a lot of memories.

A fter high school, Small was recruited to Stanford University to join its track team, and while there she earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Stanford was her choice for another reason, too.

SMALL: I knew that Stanford had a men’s hockey team, so that’s why I went and became a discus and javelin thrower, and moonlighted on the hockey team. We probably practised once a week and had two games on weekends. The team played in the Pac-10 [conference], travelled to University of Washington, Oregon, Arizona, all the big schools. It was legit hockey.

This is from my freshman year — we went to the national championships and came in third. But nobody goes to Stanford to play hockey, let’s be honest. Our top line of guys were good, they had played D-1. In the ACHA [American Collegiate Hockey Association] there’s no eligibility rules, so we could have guys doing masters or PhDs, playing on our team. But our fourth line had only ever rollerbladed in their lives. It was like playing glorified men’s rec league. It was so fun, and we were good.

Did the team know I was coming to Stanford? No. [Laughs.] Initially, I think they were a little reluctant. I talked to the coaches, they gave me my own dressing room and had a very kid-gloves treatment with me. Slowly but surely…

Small is interrupted by a shinny player who wants to know: “Do you have your Olympic gold medal?” She doesn’t and apologizes. He’ll be over later for a picture with her.

…So once they realized I could play and I had this whole dressing room to myself and they had 25 adult men in one dressing room, they started to slowly come over [laughs]. And in the end it was like having 25 brothers on the team. Sport is just such a great way, when you go to college, of having instant friends. It was awesome. I played all four years.

S mall has never turned up at one of our shinny skates in her own Canada jersey, and it’s not on account of humility, “it’s because the arms are giant on goalie jerseys,” she says, so instead she’s played wearing a Jennifer Botterill. Each of her “Small” Team Canada sweaters has a piece of masking tape on the inside where she’s indicated the year and the event. This one says: “Team Canada 2002,” and it’s from the first-ever Olympic gold for Canada’s women. Small was the team’s backup.

SMALL: This isn’t from the game that I played — this is the third jersey. It was the first time we had ever had a third jersey, and I thought that was really neat, that we got to wear that at the Olympics. When I think of that third jersey, I always think of Geraldine Heaney, one of the icons in women’s hockey, and she must have had a stellar game when we wore this jersey. I also think of Cassie [Campbell-Pascall]. She does a fist-pump behind the net when she scores on a pass from Hayley Wickenheiser in the semi-final against Finland, and it’s in this jersey. We were down 3–1 going into the third period in that game. I think that’s why it’s so iconic in my mind. So many great photos were taken in that game, because it was such a great comeback.

This jersey is cool because, before this, we didn’t really get Team Canada jerseys that they gave us — that was really the first one that we didn’t have to buy, so that was exciting. And we only got one. Usually there were firehouse sales and they would do them every couple years with Hockey Canada, and you’d go in and there’d just be rooms of jerseys you could buy for like $25, but all different names. Some of my favourites that I have, like I have a Justin Pogge jersey that he must’ve worn for some game, but it was No. 1, so I was like, “I’ll get the No. 1.”

But we actually got this jersey given to us.

A pink one stands out in Small’s collection, and it’s historic as all-get-out. Team Canada wore it at the 2007 World Championships in Winnipeg as a tribute to the 1990 World Championship Canadian team that sported pink at the first IIHF-sanctioned world championship for the sport, and Small’s jersey is decorated in signatures of the players from that 1990 team.

SMALL: Susie Yuen, who was one of my mentors growing up and from Winnipeg, that’s her signature right there. Dawn McGuire, she was the captain of that team, Heather Ginzel, Judy Diduck, Vicky Sunohara was on this team, Stacy Wilson, Shirley Cameron, Angela James — yeah, just some amazing names. We won this world championship.

This game was the round-robin game and we won it in a shootout — Charline Labonté played in net, and it was a close game, it was so exciting. Hayley Wickenheiser scored the winning goal in a shootout. Of course she did. We didn’t wear the pink jerseys in the finals.

I watched the 1990 world championships and I remember the pink jerseys they wore, certainly. I thought it was strange. I thought it was unfair that they had to wear the pink jerseys, I didn’t know the story behind it. It was a publicity attempt from Hockey Canada and the head honchos had this grand idea that if they wore pink, it would attract more media attention. And it certainly did. I don’t think the girls initially loved it. What I really remember about it was the white pants and the white gloves [laughs] in addition to the pink jerseys.

I would’ve been 13 years old watching them play, and I thought it was amazing that they were playing in front of packed crowds. And knowing that there was a Manitoba player [Yuen] on the team made the possibility real, like if she does this, I could do this. Susie was only four-foot-11. She was this little sparkplug. She was one of the top point-getters in that tournament. A year later she befriended me and wanted me to come out to her practices, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. She wanted someone to shoot on. She was the first one who taught me to train in the summer. She’d take me to the gym. She’s 10 years older than me and she was such a great mentor to me.

O ne of Small’s most recent acquisitions is a Laurie Boschman Jets jersey. Boschman played for Winnipeg for eight seasons in the 1980s, and he was Small’s favourite player when she was a kid.

SMALL: I thought Laurie was a girl. I thought there was a girl on the Jets, so he was my favourite player.

A client gave me this just recently because when I do speaking engagements, I always talk about having dreams of playing in the NHL and thinking Laurie was a girl and then realizing that girls didn’t play in the NHL. I was probably around the age of seven or eight when I realized, either at a Jets game or just before I went to a Jets game.