CALGARY — Their slogan for the tournament is Daughters Need Hockey Heroes too and Elizabeth Turgeon fits the bill on two levels.
Her father is a possible Hall Of Famer, Pierre Turgeon, who wrapped up his professional career last season as the 27th highest-scorer in NHL history and a hero to some in his many NHL stops. Elizabeth is now in the midst of forging her own hockey identity this week as the second-youngest member of the United States' team, competing in the first-ever women's under-18 hockey championship.
The tournament, which began Monday and concludes with the gold-medal game Saturday, features eight teams and mirrors the recently completed world juniors, officially known in IIHF circles as the men's under-20 championship. When the IIHF approved a women's junior equivalent, it set the age limit at age 18, according to president Rene Fasel, because so many of the top women's players in the world have already cracked the national team line-up by that age.
The 15-year-old Turgeon is from a multi-sport, ultra-athletic family (her twin sister, Alexandra, is a volleyball player and the only one of the four Turgeon children who doesn't play hockey). Father Pierre, although best known for his 19-year NHL career and as the first player chosen in the 1987 entry draft, also played for Canada in the 1982 Little League World Series. Last summer, he became the first Canadian elected to the Little League Hall of Excellence in Williamsport, joining such notables as Bruce Springsteen and U.S. president George Bush. At the age of 12, Pierre Turgeon was already 5-11, taller even than his baseball coaches. His daughter clearly inherited the same genes. She is closing in on 5-10 already, and physically resembles the emerging Canadian star, Gillian Apps, herself a member of a famous hockey-playing family.
By the vagabond nature of the professional hockey player's life, the Turgeons moved around quite a few times over the years. Elizabeth was born in Long Island, when Pierre played for the Islanders, and also lived for a time in Montreal, St. Louis and Dallas before settling into her current home, just outside of Denver.
The largest crowds she'd played in front of prior to this week came in Quebec City, where she competed in the annual peewee tournament on an all-girls team coached by Manon Rheaume, the first women ever to play in an NHL exhibition game.
Like so many of her peers, Turgeon would like to play for the United States in the Olympics, but she also acknowledged that one day, down the road, she wouldn't mind living the life of a hockey professional either.
Asked if she thought that might be possible in her lifetime — or if a female pro league was simply too far-fetched a notion to consider — she answered: "Oh no, I've thought about that. That'd be awesome to have. I would love to do that. It would be a dream."
The American team also features Amanda Kessel, sister of the Boston Bruins' forward Phil Kessel and daughter of former professional quarterback Phil Kessel Sr., who was drafted by the NFL's Washington Redskins and played briefly for the CFL's Calgary Stampeders. This is Amanda Kessel's first visit to Calgary and if it wasn't for an injury, she might have gotten a chance to see her cousin, David Moss, play for the NHL Flames.
According to Kessel, it was Moss's decision to play hockey as a boy that turned what might have been a football-playing family towards hockey.
"My brothers and I just followed in his footsteps," said Kessel. "I was born into it. From the time I was three, I had skates on — because my brothers were all playing."
Kessel is 16 and now plays for the girls' team at Shattuck-St. Mary's high school in Minnesota, along with two other members of the U.S. club, goaltender Rebecca Ruegsegger and forward Brianna Decker. She made the switch from boys to girls' hockey only last year and said "it was quite a transition. It's been tough."
One of the reasons: No hitting in girls' hockey, something Kessel says she liked quite a bit.
"I didn't know they were going to have a U-18 tournament until recently, but I was excited to hear about it," said Kessel, who previously attended two world junior tournaments to see her brother Phil play. "I hope they get a good turnout here and it keeps growing and starts to be a bigger deal.
"Ultimately, it would be my goal to make the Olympics sometime in my career. That's basically what I'm working for. This is a good step towards it."
Canada's team is coached by Melody Davidson, general manager of the national team program, who has seen Kessel play but not Turgeon and praised the former as a "very, very good player."
According to Davidson, the decision by the IIHF to adopt an under-18 championship will ultimately help grow the sport world-wide.
"For the European countries and even for the U.S., it's going to be a great tool for them to build depth within their programs and to catch those young kids earlier, so they don't go to other sports," said Davidson. "For us, we had a pretty good infrastructure without it, but who's going to complain about another world championship in your sport?"
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