“Do I want to be at the heart of the leadership that will bring change [à Hockey Canada] ? The answer is yes, but there are still conditions. »
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
At the very center of the development of women’s hockey in the country for years, Danièle Sauvageau says she is open to the idea of being part of the team that “would allow for rapid change” at Hockey Canada. “What role could I play? It would be to see,” she said.
Sauvageau’s name is one of those mentioned when it comes time to talk about the future members of Hockey Canada’s new board of directors. The Press met the 60-year-old woman on Wednesday, the day after the wholesale resignation of all members of the federation’s board, a decision taken in the wake of the sex scandals which affected the Canadian junior teams of 2018 and 2003.
Can I contribute? Definitively. Do I have experience? Definitively. Do I have the passion? Definitively. Now it’s a campaign too. You have to make yourself known.
Daniele Sauvageau
“Unfortunately, what is said in Quebec, it seems that it stays in Quebec, she continues. If I did the same thing, but on the Toronto side, English Canada would potentially hear about it. We know who I am, but do we potentially know what I could bring? This is something that should be checked. »
Sauvageau also takes the opportunity to recall that the sponsors who dropped Hockey Canada in recent weeks “said that they wanted to continue to ensure that part of [leur] funding goes to the women’s team. “So we believe in female leadership,” she notes.
A rapid transition
Danièle Sauvageau is, of course, well known in the world of Canadian women’s hockey. She was the head of the Canadian team that won the gold medal at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. She was also the one who set up Center 21.02, a high performance center in Verdun Auditorium, in 2021.
I have always contributed to the advancement of hockey and I always will. Every time I tried to walk away from it, it seemed like there was a plan. Here, there was no league and I said to myself: we are going to open a center. We’ve been talking about it for 20 years.
Daniele Sauvageau
In Sauvageau’s opinion, Hockey Canada must now put in place a team capable of making a quick transition.
“It’s a bit like hockey. If there is a team that manages to win the Stanley Cup, it is a team that is able to read information quickly, to be agile in transition and to attack again. Leadership is a bit the same thing, ”she says.
“We have to put in place a structure that will be agile in order to make a quick transition to where we want to go, that is to say to the net, to be a winner at the end of the track. »