How a girls hockey team from Nain found themselves at a PWHL playoff game

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Team Nainimiut, a girls hockey squad from the astir bluish assemblage successful Labrador, got to alert to Montreal to ticker a PWHL playoff game.

A girls hockey squad from the astir bluish assemblage successful Labrador got to alert to Montreal

Regan Burden · CBC News

· Posted: May 18, 2025 4:43 AM EDT | Last Updated: 38 minutes ago

Team Nainimiut had the travel of a lifetime, taking successful a PWHL playoffs crippled successful Montreal.

It's a trip they volition retrieve for a lifetime. Girls from Nain had the accidental to question to Montreal to ticker a Professional Women's Hockey League playoff game.

The travel came to beryllium erstwhile TSN's Breaking Down Barriers, a bid that highlights individuals and organizations who privation to alteration hockey culture, did a feature connected the squad and their community.

"We cognize hockey is [a] beauteous exclusive sport, truthful we privation to stock and archer those stories and item programs that are welcoming to everybody," the show's host, Saroya Tinker, told CBC Radio's Labrador Morning.

Tinker is taking connected a manager relation this reason, directing the occurrence featuring the girls from Nain. On apical of her relation with TSN, Tinker is the manager of diversity, equity and inclusion with the PWHL.

A unit filmed the girls successful Nain to get a consciousness of the assemblage and the things they bash there. Then came the astir breathtaking portion of the acquisition for the squad — actually heading to Montreal to drawback the PWHL playoff game.

Air Canada and the PWHL were large sponsors of the trip, but Julie Dicker, a team chaperone during the trip, says it wouldn't person been imaginable without backing from the Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Circle Newfoundland and Labrador.

"It astir wasn't going to hap due to the fact that of the outgo of the travel from Goose Bay to Nain and return," Dicker said. "It was done Aboriginal Sport [and] Recreation Circle N.L., thankfully for them that they came done and funded that portion of the travel for the girls."

In summation to arranging for them to ticker a PWHL game, Tinker and an Air Canada typical worked unneurotic to make an itinerary afloat of events to support the girls engaged and having fun.

WATCH | Nain girls caput to the PWHL playoffs:

Nain girls’ hockey squad flown to PWHL playoffs for unforgettable experience

It was the accidental of a beingness for a girls’ hockey squad from Newfoundland and Labrador’s northernmost community. Nain’s Team Nainimiut was flown to Quebec to ticker a Professional Women's Hockey League playoff crippled betwixt the Ottawa Charge and the Montreal Victoire. The CBC's Regan Burden reports.

"We got a circuit of aged Montreal, they went connected the ferris wheel, they had a enactment sheet astatine Air Canada's caput bureau and a circuit of the airdrome and baggage claim," Tinker said.

"They had an Indigenous assemblage person Nakuset travel and speech to them, and she was a portion of the Sixties Scoop and she shared her communicative astir increasing up and being adopted and being successful Montreal … and trying to find her roots."

'It was conscionable amazing'

The item of the travel for galore of the girls happened earlier the crippled adjacent started. The squad was able to caput down to the tunnels to fist-bump players of the Montreal Victoire arsenic they made their mode onto the ice.

Jaycie Kalleo, 1 of the players with Team Nainimiut, said she ne'er thought they would ever get to spell to a crippled similar that.

"It was conscionable astonishing and it was truthful unthinkable conscionable to attend," said Kalleo.

The squad was treated to seats successful a suite, and even got tons of clip connected the large screens wrong the arena.

Saroya Tinker, big of TSN's Breaking Down Barriers and manager of Director, Equity and Inclusion with the PWHL grabs a selfie with members of Team Nainimiut astatine the Nain airstrip.

Tinker said each of the girls from Nain mislaid their voices from screaming and cheering truthful loud.

Raine Andersen, different subordinate connected Team Nainimiut, said being selected for the travel made them consciousness recognized.

The Nain team's episode of Breaking Down Barriers is scheduled to aerial during this year's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation connected Sept. 30 — something the girls accidental they are looking guardant to watching.

"It's going to beryllium similar truly amazing. My ma is going to beryllium similar 'Oh my god, you're connected the TV, you're famous,'" said Tessa Dicker.

Team Nainimiut meets players of the Montreal Victoire.

Tinker's extremity of inspiring the girls and putting smiles connected their faces was surely a success. After the trip, galore of the girls said they're feeling inspired to prosecute careers of their ain successful the PWHL.

"If they enactment their caput to it, if they enactment hard for it, they tin marque it arsenic acold arsenic they privation to go," Julie Dicker said.

"We did conscionable immoderate of the Montreal Victoire players and immoderate of the Ottawa Charge players, and successful gathering them some of their players were Indigenous too, similar us. And immoderate of them came from tiny Indigenous communities, similar us. So, if the girls truly privation to prosecute thing … it's imaginable for anybody, [as] agelong arsenic you enactment hard, [as] agelong arsenic you travel your dreams."

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