PWHL star Natalie Spooner relishing 11th world championship after returning from knee surgery
Natalie Spooner had April 2025 circled on her calendar.
The reigning PWHL MVP missed the beginning of this season as she recovered from off-season knee surgery, the product of an injury she sustained during the Toronto Sceptres's first-round playoff loss to Minnesota last spring.
But Spooner knew she wanted to be back and up to full speed in time to help defend Canada's title as world champions. The Canadians begin play on Thursday in the Czech Republic, with Finland up first on the team's schedule.
"I'm glad I'm here," Spooner said in an interview with CBC Sports's Hockey North.
"I'm so excited to be here, grateful to be here and just looking forward to getting on that ice and representing my country again. It's been so much fun just to be back with the girls and this group. It's such an amazing group."
It caps off a whirlwind two years for Spooner, who not only returned to play in the PWHL's inaugural season about a year after giving birth to her son, Rory, but led the league in points and goals. She was also named the International Ice Hockey Federation's Female Player of the Year.
Then, she resumed play in February after recovering from ACL surgery. It didn't take long to return to her usual office: planted in front of the net, making life difficult for PWHL goalies.
"We are tremendously proud of the work she has invested in getting herself to this point," Toronto GM Gina Kingsbury said when Spooner rejoined the Sceptres's lineup. "This has been a long journey, and she has shown throughout this process just how elite of an athlete she is."
After more than a decade on the world stage, 34-year-old Spooner still gets excited to see the Canadian locker room, decorated to feel like home, and the ice where her team will compete. This year will be her 11th world championship, and she'll be competing alongside five teammates who will be having their first taste of the senior national team at worlds.
"I think they can kind of remind us just about the excitement and the fun that comes with playing in these tournaments," Spooner said.
It takes her back to the nerves and anticipation she felt back in 2011, at her first worlds in Switzerland.
A year later, she won her first world championship in Vermont. After getting trounced by the Americans 9-2 in the preliminary round, Spooner and captain Hayley Wickenheiser organized some team bonding in the form of a flash mob dance in the team meal room.
WATCH | Spooner previews Team Canada at the women's world championship on Hockey North:
When the Canadians met the Americans again in the final, the result was much different: a 5-4 overtime championship win, thanks to a clinching goal from Caroline Ouellette.
Spooner also thinks about a very different competition inside a COVID bubble in Calgary in 2021. After two cancelled tournaments, months off the ice and a lot of time spent alone inside hotel rooms, the Canadians became world champions for the first time in more than a decade.
Advice from a veteran
Over the years, her role on the national team has evolved. She went from playing on the fourth line as a rookie with Cherie Piper and Gillian Apps, to competing alongside Wickenheiser and Meghan Agosta at her first Olympics in 2014.
At those Games in Russia, Wickenheiser told Spooner not to worry about what anyone else thinks, and to just play her game. It's advice that's always stuck with her, and it's what she'd tell her teammates who will make their worlds debut later this week.That includes 25-year-old Daryl Watts, who Spooner expects will have a huge impact on the Canadian offence, and 18-year-old Chloe Primerano, a defender whose game is already mature enough to play with the best of the best.
"Just getting to see [Primerano] in practice, I would tell her to shoot the puck to the net," Spooner said. "She's getting pucks through, and I'm around the net so that's going to work out pretty good for me."
That's one thing that hasn't changed over more than a decade: her style of play. Spooner has always been hard to play against.
"The good thing is I can kind of adapt to wherever they see me and whatever they want me to do," she said. "I'm going to be that player who takes pucks to the net, is good net front, which I think is pretty adaptable to any line you put me on. I can do the same job."
The Canadians are looking to win a second consecutive world championship, and a third title in four years. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Spooner and the rest of Team Canada will take on Finland at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, followed by Switzerland at 9 a.m. on Friday.
The Canadians will battle the United States at 1 p.m. on Sunday before wrapping up the preliminary round against the Czech Republic on Monday at 1 p.m.
The gold-medal game is set for April 20.
Other storylines to watch
• Finland will take on Canada without its best defender and captain. Jenni Hiirikoski was left off the roster due to illness. She played nearly 32 minutes in Finland's bronze-medal win over the Czech Republic last year.
• The Czechs will host the tournament for the first time. The best female hockey players in the world have gathered in České Budějovice, a small city near the country's southern border with Austria. The Czech team, led by Ottawa Charge head coach, Carla MacLeod, will look to capitalize on a strong season by Charge forward Tereza Vanišová. She's tied with American Hilary Knight for second in PWHL goal scoring (15 goals), two behind league-leading Marie-Philip Poulin.
Boston Fleet captain Hilary Knight leads the PWHL in points (28) and is tied for second in goals (15). ()
• Knight, the all-time leading scorer at women's worlds, is in the middle of a strong comeback season after last year's injury-impacted PWHL campaign with the Boston Fleet. She leads the PWHL in points (28) and will look to avenge an overtime loss in last year's world championship to Canada.
• Knight is joined on the American roster by last year's world championship MVP, 21-year-old Laila Edwards. This time around, Edwards will be playing as a defender, as head coach John Wroblewski looks to make the best use of her shot. She's fresh off a national championship with the Wisconsin Badgers and being named a top-three finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, which is given to the top female player in NCAA hockey.
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