Cornell-educated Amy Curlew of Happy Valley-Goose Bay made some hockey history Tuesday, becoming one of Toronto’s top draft picks in the National Women’s Hockey League.
Toronto is an expansion team in the U.S.-based NWHL, a six-team operation (with Minnesota, Boston, Buffalo, Connecticut and Metropolitan Riveters, a New York/New Jersey combined squad) entering its sixth season.
The league staged its draft Tuesday and it continued Wednesday, with Curlew picked eighth overall by Toronto.
Many of the game’s top female players are in the NWHL, especially since the Canadian Women’s Hockey League discontinued its operations in May, 2019 after starting in 2007.
Curlew, 22, is a 5-3 forward who played four seasons Cornell, an Ivy League school.
Prior to heading off to the NCAA Division I Big Red, she played club hockey for the Oakville Hornets of the Ontario Provincial Women’s Hockey League and four years of prep school with Appleby College in Oakville, Ont.
She also suited up for the province’s Canada Winter Games team. She was assistant captain of the 2015 squad in Prince George, B.C.
Curlew was seventh on Cornell scoring this season, her senior year, with nine goals and 22 points in 32 games.
The top-ranked Big Red were dominant in the ECAC conference at 19-0-3. They lost the ECAC championship game to the Princeton Tigers, a team which features St. John’s native Maggie Connors.
The Tigers didn’t get a crack at a national championship as the NCAA cancelled nationals because of COVID-19.
