Maggie Connors will be wearing the orange and black of the Princeton Tigers beginning this fall, but the St. John’s teen will be setting aside a few days this week to once again wear the red and white of Canada.
Connors has been named to the Canadian women’s development hockey team that will take on the United States in a three-game exhibition series beginning Thursday in Calgary. It’s a step up on the Canadian hockey ladder for Connors, who will turn 18 in a couple of months; she was a member of the Canadian female under-18 team last season and was part of this country’s bronze medal-winning team at the 2018 world women’s U18 championship in Russia.
But that doesn’t mean Newfoundland has lost its representation on the national U18 women’s team. Shailynn Snow of Clarke’s Beach has been named to the Canadian U18 team that will also be facing the U.S. in exhibition play in Calgary this week.
The two events are combined to billed at the Summer Showcase.
Connors and Snow, 17, were among 92 players in Calgary taking part in selection camps for the two national sides. That number has been just about cut in half for the exhibition series, with 22 players on the development team and 23 on the U18 roster.
The two Newfoundlanders, both forwards, impressed offensively during games held in conjunction with the selection camps.
Snow tied for scoring lead among players who participated in three intrasquad games, registering four goals and collecting a couple of assists. Connors had two goals during four games during a training camp tournament that include two Canadian split squads, the Japanese national team and a USports entry of Canadian university players. One of Connors’ tallies was the opener for Team Angela James in a 4-3 win over Team Geraldine Heaney in the tourney final.
Connors and Snow have plenty in common besides wearing the maple leaf in Calgary this week.
Both are headed to American universities on athletic scholarships, Connors is going to Princeton in New Jersey, while Snow is committed for 2019 to St. Lawrence College, the Canton, N.Y., school that’s traditionally had one of the strongest programs in NCAA Division 1 women’s hockey.
The two are products of prep schools. Connors graduated from Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Fairbault, Minn., this past spring, while Snow is set to return to Ridley College in St. Catherine’s, Ontario for her senior year.
The two also played in the Canadian under-18 women’s championship with Team Atlantic. In fact they were teammates in 290017 in that event.
Snow has to be hoping she’ll be able to add another point of commonality with Connors — participation in the world under-18 championship.
This week’s three-game U18 series against the Americans — it also starts Thursday — will be the start of a Hockey Canada period of assessment leading to selection of the team to represent this country at the 2019 IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship, Jan. 6-13 in Obihiro, Japan.
The national development team, labelled the second step in Hockey Canada’s women’s high performance program, traditionally plays one international event each year, the latest being the 2018 Nations Cup in Germany
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