Fast-paced women’s league rolls into town

BY MICHAEL PIASETZKI

The National Women’s Hockey League, featuring several current Olympians and others identified by the Canadian Hockey Association as future prospects, rolled into the Kirkland Arena on Sunday.

A packed house watched the Montreal Axion, a team that for the most part calls the Étienne-Desmarteau Arena in Rosemont home, but whose roster features two West Island-based players, including forward Jesse Scanzano and defenceman Lauriane Rougeau take on the Brampton Thunder. The Thunder came out on top with a 5-2 victory. Scanzano and Rougeau each picked up assists.

Playing against women in the NWHL has not deterred Scanzano’s progress at all. One of the highest-rated under-22 women’s hockey players in the province, she is in her third season with the Axion, having joined them three years ago as a 15-year-old. Before that, she played bantam BB boys’ hockey in the Lac St. Louis Hockey Association with the West Island Royals.

“I just felt the step up from bantam to midget boys’ hockey was not for me,” said Scanzano, a six-foot, 180-pound aggressive forward blessed with a nice scoring touch who attends John Abbott College and has aspirations to study and play for an Ivy League university in the United States after graduation.

“The reason I joined the Axion instead of playing regional midget AA women’s hockey for Lac St. Louis is I had been identified by Hockey Canada, and it wanted me to play the highest level of hockey possible.”

While Scanzano, who recently returned from Ravensburg, Germany, where she was part of the gold-medal winning u-22 Canadian women’s team at the European Air Canada Cup, is already a seasoned veteran in the NWHL, Rougeau is in her rookie year.

The 16-year-old defenceman, still in high school at Collège Notre Dame, became the first girl to play midget espoir last year when she toiled for the Lac St. Louis Tigers.

“I actually like playing with girls more than the guys,” said Rougeau, a five-foot-eight, 160-pound Beaconsfield resident who is off to Whitehorse next week, part of the Quebec women’s hockey team that will be participating in the upcoming Canada Winter Games. “I find there’s more communication in girls’ hockey. We play more for each other.”

While Rougeau admitted she’s hoping to catch Hockey Canada’s attention by turning in a strong performance at the Canada Games, Scanzano is under its radar screen as a possible future member of its senior team. In order to get to that level, said Axion goaltender Kim St. Pierre, who won Olympic gold with Canada in 2002 at Salt Lake City and last year in Turin, Italy, she will have to train just as hard off the ice as on it.

“It’s become so competitive now at the senior level,” said St. Pierre. “She’ll have to take care of her body, and work just as hard in the gym as on the ice. You know, I have played on the senior team for nine years now, and every year is a new challenge just to make the roster.”