Q and A: Brianne Jenner talks Charge, Team Canada and what's ahead

If you ask captain Brianne Jenner, there’s still a lot of belief in the Ottawa Charge dressing room, despite the team’s slow start.

After all, history has a habit of repeating itself, and Ottawa orchestrated quite the turnaround last season: After earning just one win through their first five games, the Charge went on a run to the PWHL Championship before ultimately dropping the best-of-five to the Minnesota Frost.

On Sunday, a rematch of that final will take place just north of Chicago at Allstate Arena in Rosemount, Ill., one of the Takeover Tour stops to showcase the PWHL and test out markets for future expansion. The Charge will be looking for their second win of the season after a 1-5 start that has them in last place. 

Ahead of puck drop (at 2 p.m. ET on Sportsnet), Jenner took time to talk about a range of topics, including the support she’s seen league-wide for her coach, how her Charge are approaching turning this season around, plus her thoughts on kazoos and on her future with Team Canada as Olympic roster announcements loom. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SPORTSNET: There’s a condensed PWHL schedule because of the Olympic Games. How do you approach so much action in such a short timeframe? 

JENNER: I think I learned a lot in Year 1 of this league — it was a higher volume than any other season I've played during my career. It's taken a lot … Just trying to just stay in touch with what I need and the work that I need to get in, but also trying to get as much recovery and rest [as possible].

Plus, you’re a mom to three young kids [two-year-old twin boys and a four-year-old daughter], so rest can be hard to come by, right? 

Yeah [laughs]. We’ve got a busy house, but things are great. Apart from all the colds and flus coming through at this time of year. Other than that, the kids are good — they’re really excited for Christmas.  

Do you have a minivan? 

Oh yeah. As soon as we found out we were having twins, that was our first order of business. And we love it.

Do Hayleigh [her wife] and the kids ever go on the road with you and the team? 

Year 1 they travelled a lot with us, but not as much now. Our daughter’s in junior kindergarten … She came on a Toronto trip last year and she absolutely loved being on the bus with the girls. So, we'll see if we can make that happen again. 

Was she requesting movies and chatting up your teammates? 

Oh yeah, the whole bus was singing Frozen [laughs]. 

Amazing. Canada’s Olympic team hasn’t been named yet, but if you’re headed to your fourth Games, will your family be coming along? 

If I'm lucky enough to go, I think it might be a trip the whole family will come on, but I don't like to have those conversations until we need to. 

Has the dynamic changed on the world stage since your Charge team is so international? You’re now playing PWHL teammates when you face teams like Finland, Czechia and Russia. 

Our team is very international, and we have been since Year 1. I think it's something that we take a lot of pride in, and we do have fun with it. It's really cool to get to know different cultures and different perspectives. So, we love it in our dressing room — we’re learning Russian words, Swedish, Finnish, everything. It’s really cool.

But I think there is that national pride when you come back from an international break, and you never want to be that player walking in having lost the event or not performed at the event. We have a safe space in our Ottawa locker room and we really love being teammates, but at the same time we're competitors and we want to be our best for our countries too. 

Let’s hear your best Russian or Finnish. 

Ummmm… I know “thank you”: Spasibo in Russian and kiitos in Finnish. That's what I've been working on. But I’ve got to add something, that’s for sure. But it's hard. I feel like the Russian words aren't sticking with me like they should [laughs].  

There’s a lot of talk about how passionate your team’s fanbase is. How would you describe it to someone who’s never been to a Charge home game? 

The crowd feels like it's right on top of you in TD Place. It's loud. I think with the big screen in there, too, you see everything. You see the crowd, you see the antics — when fans are getting after refs [laughs] or they're getting after opposing teams. It can be hostile. I think in a league that’s so young, our fans create that energy and those rivalries and that competitive atmosphere. 

At the same time, it's a really welcoming space for all hockey fans. And I think our fans have a lot of class, too, so it's really cool. It’s that competitive energy, and it really is a special celebration of our league and of how far women's hockey's come.

Do you like the kazoos [a fan favourite in Ottawa]?

[Laughs.] I have probably 200 kazoos around my house. I don't know how they keep showing up. I feel like they come home in my wife's purse, because the kids get them. 

I love them at the games. At 5:30 in the morning, not as much.

Is that how you get woken up some days, your kids playing kazoos? 

Not all days, but yeah, they've come out at points [laughs].

There are renovations planned for TD Place that would reduce seating capacity, and the league has been vocal that they aren’t happy with that. What’s it like knowing that conversation is going on? 

That's been a big topic for the Ottawa media, and I think it's cool that we are a big topic now. It's great that those conversations are happening, that fans feel passionately about it and the city feels passionately and the league feels passionately. I think we've given the league and Ottawa a great reason to want a franchise to stay. It's a fantastic hockey town. 

But we're not really focused on the plans for the arena because that's really not our job. Our job is to try to win hockey games, but also to fill the seats and have people want to come out and see this great product.

Can you imagine there not being a team in Ottawa in the future because there isn’t an arena with enough capacity for your fan base? 

That’s not something I want to think about at all, to be honest. 

Fair. Do you get recognized when you’re walking around the city?

Yeah, it's a new phenomenon in our world since the league started. But yes, occasionally. It's surreal, for sure. It's nothing that I’d ever dealt with in my career, but it's really cool because almost all the interactions are with people who are excited — like super excited — that there's a team here. They love the Charge. 

Earlier this month, your coach Carla MacLeod shared that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. How did Carla tell the team? 

We found out just a bit before the public did at a team meeting, I think the day before. Carla obviously wanted to let us know why she had to travel [to go see doctors]. It was really shocking. 

Obviously, we're all brought together through hockey, but hockey's not the most important thing. We care about each other and each other's health. I know she's got a great team around her and we 100 per cent support her in whatever she has to do, so we're trying to be there for her and help her through this difficult time. 

She wants us to enjoy doing what we do together. I think that's what's helping her and her process. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but she said that to the media, that being around this group and getting to be a hockey coach, you know, it fills her cup. So, we want to bring good energy to the rink every day and make it a great atmosphere like it has been. 

To see all the support for Carla across the league since she came back to coach her first game following the announcement, what has that meant to your team? 

The hockey community's so supportive. Since the news came out our rink's been filled with pink and it’s really amazing to see the fan support. Obviously, it's way bigger than hockey — and that's the greatest thing about hockey is that it brings people together. So, it's pretty cool to see opposing fans, everybody in the hockey community rally behind her. 

Your team’s first win of the season, you had a pair of goals and two assists. How did that feel to get going personally, and to get that early win at home? 

It was really exciting in just the second game of the season to see our team kind of click and to see the potential that we have. Everyone played fantastic that night. It was exciting to have that first win at home this season and to get to do the thunderclap with the rookies and show them, ‘Hey, this is what TD Place is like after a win.’ That was special.

Your goaltender Gwyneth Philips was named playoff MVP last season. How confident is your team with her back there? 

We have so much confidence in front of Gwen. And she just brings such a great attitude to our dressing room, too. She's so lighthearted and fun to be around and I think that's kind of part of our identity in our locker room. It's really cool to see her stepping into this No. 1 spot and just picking up where she left off.

You won your second game of the season, but haven’t won since. What needs to happen for your team to click? 

Obviously, we're unsatisfied with that start. But I think the most important thing is what can we take from each game. I think each game's taught us some really good lessons, and we know from last year, we were able to really turn things around after our first half, which didn’t go as planned. So, I think there's a lot of confidence in our room in who we are, our character and what we can do together.  

Right now, we’re not riding the roller coaster up and down, we’re just staying focused on what we can learn from the games we’ve had so far and how to best prepare for the next one.

How long did it take you to regroup after losing the final last season? 

It was challenging to finish the way that it did. Not a new feeling; I think if you’ve played hockey long enough, you're used to some seasons ending like that. 

We were really proud of our group and the push that we made. But it definitely feels like unfinished business and I think that was a huge motivator for me. There's always motivation every summer, but I think there's a lot of belief now, having been through those experiences, knowing what it takes to play playoff hockey in this league. It was just a big motivator, to be honest. 

You’re about to play a Takeover game in the Chicago area against Minnesota, featuring Frost captain and Chicago’s own Kendall Coyne. How much do you look forward to that rematch? 

We're always excited to play Minnesota. They had our number the last time we played [in early December, the Frost won 5-1]. And obviously with the way things finished last year, it would be a great way to prove ourselves if we could get a win against them. 

And as someone that got to see firsthand the leadership that Kendall had in making this league happen, I'm excited that she'll be able to go home. Hopefully the crowd gives her a really warm welcome, because she deserves it.

Normally around now you’d be centralized with Team Canada ahead of the Olympics, but not now since the PWHL exists. What will you miss the least about centralization? 

There's some great things to not having it, like getting to be at home and not having to move. But I think there was something really special about the time that you get together as a team. And that was obviously a past era of the national team.

But I won't miss some of the arenas — some of the cold community arenas in Alberta. I’m thinking of Bill Hunter Arena in Edmonton, we used to play at that one a lot. Yeah, not the same seating capacity as what we're used to now. I don’t miss playing there…

The Canadian team went 0-4 against the Americans in the Rivalry Series in the lead-up to the Olympics. How do you regroup after that with the biggest event coming up? 

We faced some adversity… but I have no doubt our group will respond and do everything we can in our power to prepare the best we can over the next month and a half. We’re confident in our abilities — and equally confident in our ability to be resilient when things aren’t going well.

If you’ll allow yourself to look toward the Olympics, what do you most look forward to about the experience? 

I'd be looking forward to competing alongside these teammates. A lot of these girls I've been on the team with for a long time. And it could be the last for a lot of us, if I do go. So, I think I'd just be looking forward to doing it with that group one more time.

Are you saying the 2026 Olympics would be your last? 

I think that's probably a safe statement, yeah. I don’t know if I’ll be… well, I'm not officially saying that [laughs], but if I was a betting woman, yeah, likely. 

You’re only 34. I’m pretty sure Danielle Goyette was 39 or 40 at her last Olympics… 

Yeah, that's true. Okay [laughs]. Never say never, I guess.