A position as a scout in the NHL came to Brigette Lacquette at a time when she needed it.
She becomes the first Aboriginal woman to recruit for an NHL team. His employer is the Chicago Blackhawks.
Lacquette was the first First Nations woman to play hockey for Canada at the Olympic Winter Games in 2018.
The defender won an Olympic silver medal, but has been barred from Canada’s Olympic roster for 2022.
“I’ve had to go through some things mentally and emotionally throughout the summer with everything that’s going on in my life,” Lacquette told The Canadian Press.
“This job has kept me busy, and I have something to look forward to and something that I want to be good at, improve every day and give it my all. “
“It turns out I really like this job. “
The 29-year-old Ojibwa from Mallard, Man., Has also played three World Championships, winning two silver medals and one bronze in six years on the Women’s National Team.
In May, Lacquette saw on his Facebook page a seemingly random post written by Blackhawks assistant general manager Ryan Stewart, who oversees the career assessment.
“I had to google it because, to be honest, I didn’t think it was real,” Lacquette said.
The Blackhawks were looking to rebuild their scout squad, Stewart said.
“We were looking for more diverse opinions… just more opinions, more different people to bring in here,” he explained. So, doing a lot of research and doing different things, his name just popped up, and I kind of took a deeper dive. “
“Of everyone I’ve spoken to, from former college coaches to teammates, they have been rave about her hockey sense and integrity as a person. For me, if you have a hockey sense as a player, that translates very well into recruiting. “
At that point, she still wasn’t sure if she was going to be invited to attend the 2022 Canadian Olympic Team camp.
“I told him I would let him know next week. I thought ‘this is actually super cool, like, this is crazy’, but my mind was focused on hockey, ”she recounted.
“I was not centralized, then I inquired about the work. I spoke to superiors, and they offered me a job as a professional recruiter. They told me that my job was basically to watch all the NHL draft players who play in the WHL. “
The territory of Lacquette has recently extended from the three Prairie provinces to British Columbia.
“October was definitely a busy month. I didn’t really know what to expect, said Lacquette. I was excited to drive to Lethbridge and watch a hockey game, but then I thought to myself: What am I looking for? “
“I’ve been playing hockey my whole life so I watched the game, broke it down into some aspects and noted the skills of the players. I wrote reports about them. The more I look at them, the more I notice that they are improving or not improving. “
Stewart said, “I was amazed by her reports, and she knows the details that help a player move up to the pro level and obviously, more than that, to the NHL level. She got those kinds of nuances very quickly here. “
Knowing the tension over sports teams with Indigenous logos and names, Lacquette explained that she had done her homework on the Chicago logo and Black Hawk, a leader of the Thunder Clan who resisted the takeover of the land. belonging to his people.
“They honor Black Hawk, represented by their logo,” Lacquette said. They do a lot of things on land recognition and good work with first nations communities. “
Lacquette was the most qualified person for the job, according to Stewart.
“She just has a great hockey head,” he insisted. There is a long list of people who want this job, but we are very selective. She went through the entire process. “
Lacquette joins a small group of women who recruit in the NHL, namely Cammi Granato (Seattle Kraken), Blake Bolden (Los Angeles Kings) and Meghan Hunter (Blackhawks).
Lacquette still plays for the Association of Professional Hockey Players (PWHPA).
She observed the players at the Junior Team Canada selection camp and played for the PWHPA against the Canadian Women’s Team earlier in December in Calgary.