Andrew Ference played 16 seasons in the NHL. He lives in Edmonton.
Hayley Wickenheiser has one of the most impressive sports resumes you will find. Five Olympic medals, more than she has room for on the mantel. She has been a trailblazer for future generations of female athletes by being the first woman to play and score in a professional men's league. I could fill a page with her accomplishments and the reasons they should be celebrated. With the news of her retirement on Friday, many people will celebrate these athletic achievements and aim to be just like Hayley in their own pursuit of greatness.
Widely considered the best female hockey player in the world, Hayley spent 23 years playing for Team Canada. In the course of her career, the 38-year-old Saskatchewan native won four gold medals and a silver, and was twice named the tournament's most valuable player. In 276 games for Team Canada, she scored 168 goals and had 379 points. In 2003 she became the first woman to score a goal while playing in a professional men's league as a member of Kirkkonummi Salamat in Finland's division II league.
I point to Hayley when speaking to my own two daughters about role models, and these sporting accomplishments are not always the highlight of those conversations.
Ava is 11 and Stella is seven, and we are fortunate to call Hayley a friend and to have spent time in the off season together. The humbleness, kindness and drive that Hayley possesses, and we have witnessed, make it easy to understand how she accomplished what she did. I imagine Hayley will deflect most of the praise in her retirement ceremonies and speak about how she just feels fortunate to have played and represented Canada so many times -- that she's lucky.
I assure you that it is not luck or fortune that we should celebrate. Hayley's success in life is born of being one of the hardest working people that I have known. Of course, qualities like stubbornness, pride and incredible sportsmanship supplement her success, but it's the hard work that I always come back to when talking to my girls.
Hayley's ability to have committed to goals in her life and then work her butt off to achieve them has also made her an incredible mother and student. How many people knew she has also attended medical school?
During the summers, Hayley would join guys like myself, Jarome Iginla and Chuck Kobasew to skate to prepare for the upcoming seasons. I liked bringing my girls down to watch because Hayley was usually the one leading us through skating and skills drills that she had thought up to fine tune her own game.
As we scrimmaged we understood that she wanted zero preferential treatment. We would be insulting her if we didn't play her physically and just as hard as we played against each other. She would give you a chop of the stick as equal as the next guy on the ice. Her competitiveness even in the off season was awesome. I'm convinced she could have probably made a run for a Summer Olympics in cycling as well as she would be breathing down my neck on the toughest hills in the Okanagan.
In celebrating Hayley's career, our family applauds the medals, trophies and awards but we also focus on the path that got her there.
Gold medals at the Olympics are not an obtainable goal for most of us, but trying to emulate Hayley's hard work, positivity and determination is. I celebrate what Hayley has done so far and look forward to seeing what's next for her. The qualities that drive her are valuable far beyond sport.