THE CANADIAN PRESS
CALGARY — Hayley Wickenheiser said her first practice with her Swedish men’s hockey team Eskilstuna was deathly silent.
Her male teammates were fixated on her.
"They were all watching to see if I could actually skate and shoot," she said.
Now they translate instructions for drills for her and fine her if they catch her wearing her street shoes into the dressing room.
"They make fun of me and joke around, so that tells you they’re pretty comfortable," Wickenheiser said Wednesday in Calgary.
"It’s not easy to have a female come into a men’s team, so to handle it the way they have has been surprisingly good for me."
The 29-year-old forward from Shaunavon, Sask., was in Calgary to participate in a five-day camp with the Canadian women’s hockey team. As a result, she’ll miss Eskilstuna Linden’s first game of the season Sunday.
She’ll be back in Eskilstuna for their home opener Wednesday against Arboga, which incidentally was the club that was very interested in signing her a year ago and then unceremoniously cut her loose.
Eskilstuna is in the third level of in men’s professional hockey in Sweden below the Elite League and the second-tier Alsvenskan.
Wickenheiser, the all-time leading scorer on the Canadian women’s team and the team’s captain the last two years, had three goals and two assists in six pre-season games before returning to Canada.
She’s played about 18 to 20 minutes a game and has spent time on both the power play and penalty kill.
"She’s done really well," said head coach Mattias Karlin. "She’s played six pre-season games and was very good in three of them."
Karlin, a former Boston Bruins draft pick who played for their AHL in Providence as well as for the Swedish Elite League’s Modo, says taking and avoiding hits when the regular season starts will be the five-foot-10, 171-pound Wickenheiser’s greatest challenge playing against men.
"Everyone knows her now. It’s a bit special when you are a girl playing with boys," Karlin said from Sweden. "She’s really smart so I don’t think it will be a problem.
"She uses her head a bit more than the other guys on the team."
Karlin rates Wickenheiser’s skill set among the top five players on his team and says her speed is "average."
Wickenheiser said every time she touched the puck in Eskilstuna’s pre-season home games the fans would cheer, but she’s happy the novelty has worn off.
"Now they don’t cheer unless you do something relevant in the game and that’s a good thing," she said. "The honeymoon is over and now the expectations begin."
Wickenheiser became the first female player other than a goaltender to play in a men’s pro hockey league in 2003 when she spent parts of two seasons with Kirkkonummi Salamat in Finland.
She had three goals and 16 assists in 40 games there.
Another hurdle in juggling both men’s pro hockey and her national women’s team commitments will be getting enough rest so she doesn’t get injured.
"The difference for me personally is playing against players bigger, faster, stronger every day," Wickenheiser explained.
"I find physically I really have to get rest, I really have to be sharp and I can’t be tired. They’re skilled. They can all pass and move the puck so, if you’re off, it’s noticeable."
When Wickenheiser returns to the Canadian team in November for the Four Nations Cup in Lake Placid, N.Y., her Eskilstuna teammates will have days off during an international hockey break while she’ll play against women’s teams from the U.S., Sweden and Finland.
"It’s going to be hard," she said. "When you’re being paid to play professional hockey you don’t take days off. I’ll just have to get through it."
Eskilstuna, whose top sponsor is the automaker Volvo, is providing Wickenheiser with a furnished house, two cars and a modest salary.
Her partner Tomas Pacina, who is a skills coach for the Florida Panthers, and their son Noah live with her in Eskilstuna, which is a city of about 93,000 people located 100 kilometres west of Stockholm.
.Wickenheiser expects to miss two national team camps this winter, but points out that veteran players wouldn’t be invited to every camp because head coach Melody Davidson wants to work some new blood into her player pool.
"It’s worked out well for everybody provided I don’t get injured and miss something," she said. "It’s important if I’m the captain I have to be at these events and I want to be there as much as I can within reason and also be respectful to my team over there."
She joined Eskilstuna straight off a stint providing colour commentary for the Olympic softball tournament in Beijing. Wickenheiser also played softball for Canada in the 2000 Olympics.
Forty-three players were invited to the Canadian women’s camp. Canada seeks to defend its title at the Four Nations Cup as well as reclaim the world championship the U.S. took from them in Harbin, China, in April.
About 27 players will be invited in May to try out and train full-time for the Olympic team for 2010. They’ll congregate in Calgary in August.
"This is a huge camp for everybody because you want to make it into the 27 spots that get to try out for the Olympic team," Wickenheiser said. "If you don’t have a good camp here, it’s over.
"It’s important for everybody to set the bar and set the tone for where we want to be in 17 months."
The women’s team invited two more players Wednesday: McGill forward Ann-Sophie Bettez of Sept-Iles, Que., and University of Connecticut forward Dominique Thibault of Ottawa.
