On the ice at the rink in Etobicoke, Ont., where Team Canada held its second Olympic training camp last fall, head coach Troy Ryan skated past Blair Turnbull.
Ryan didn't like the team's pass during practice that day. He wanted to see if his longtime Canadian assistant captain saw what he saw on the ice.
She nodded to Ryan.
“Now I know that someone like Blair, who I trust, feels the same way I do,” Ryan said of that day. “So I can go home with confidence as a coach and know that I'm probably going in the right direction.”
During his ten years with the national team, the 32-year-old footballer has gained the trust of both coaches and teammates. A player who thinks like a coach, she has become a bridge between Ryan, the rest of the coaching staff and the players.
She's not the brightest player. She may not score the winning goal.
But in the tense moments of the biggest games, Turnbull is one of the players Canada's staff relies on most to defend at home.
“She competes hard, and that's her bread and butter,” said fellow assistant captain Jocelyn Larocque.
Meet the captain of the Toronto Sceptres with a terrifying nickname.
Off the ice, few players are more important to the Canadian program than Turnbull, who is set to go to her third Olympics in Italy this February.
“I'm still learning from her,” Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin said in September. “I still get awe every time I watch her do her thing. As a leader, she plays a big role in this group. As for us, we rely on it. We learn a lot from her. She is the glue for this team.”
At the heart of it all is perseverance, something Turnbull learned early on while growing up in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
Created by Nova Scotia
Turnbull grew up in Stellarton, North Carolina, a town of fewer than 5,000 people built on the grueling work of coal mining. It's located more than 150 kilometers northeast of Halifax, and it's the place that shaped and pushed Turnbull into the career she has today.
When Turnbull was growing up there, the only way to play hockey was to play with the boys. She never wanted them to push her off the puck and always wanted to compete harder. This included the boys she played organized hockey with, as well as her little brother Brent, with whom she often battled in the driveway.
That's how she's always approached the game, but that mentality extends beyond the rink.
“I learned that at a very young age from my parents,” Turnbull said. “It was kind of the attitude that my brother and I were taught to approach everything with.”
This resilience and determination became her greatest strength as an athlete.
In her youth, she compared herself to players from Halifax, always feeling that she had something to prove against her peers from the city. She felt it when she represented Atlantic Canada against top athletes from larger provinces like Ontario and Quebec.
It stayed with her when she went to Shattuck Street Preparatory School. Mary and then the University of Wisconsin. She was playing against the best players in North America and once again she had to prove she belonged.
But she felt it most strongly when she was cut from the Canadian U18 team and was not invited back to the team for several years.
“That mentality went hand in hand with the tenacity I learned at an early age and those two things really helped shape me into the type of player I am today,” Turnbull said.
She returned to Team Canada for the 2015-16 season and hasn't looked back since.
She has cemented her role on Team Canada's penalty kill as the forward that other players hate playing against. It is also a unit that tends to rush into action, earning it the nickname “power kill.”
“The best thing about Blair Turnbull is when she's on the forecheck or when she's trying to take the puck away from you,” Larocque said. “It's going to take a lot of effort not to lose this battle. She competes so hard and her passion and love for whatever team she plays on is so obvious.”
That doesn't mean Turnbull feels she has nothing left to prove. That never went away, not after winning Olympic gold and three World Championships.
This always drives her.
“It's easy for me to turn to help when times are hard or when times get easy,” she said.
East Coast Connection
Ryan worked with Turnbull on the national team for several years, and the two have worked together on the PWHL's Toronto Scepter since late 2023. Ryan is the team's coach and Turnbull is its captain.
You can trace their connection to Nova Scotia.
Like Turnbull, Ryan fought for everything he earned. Raised by a single mother in Spryfield, North Carolina, the community helped Ryan get to where he is in hockey today, whether it was his kids' hockey coaches who taught him how to roof in exchange for hockey royalties or friends' parents who drove him to practice.
“The way we were both raised, our upbringings and some of the struggles that we've both experienced in our lives, I think really allows us to connect and kind of understand what makes the other one click,” Turnbull said.
The couple also understands what it means to represent a small place. In Primorye, it seems that one person's success belongs to everyone, in a region where there are few degrees of separation.
The pride Turnbull has taken and how hard she works to live up to it makes Ryan emotional when he thinks about it.
“I know her family a little bit too, and I think anything less would be unacceptable in her family,” Ryan said. “She approaches it with complete integrity.”
When the Takeover Tour ended in Halifax in December, Turnbull's posters were scattered throughout the sold-out Scotiabank Center as her Scepters took on Montreal's Victoria. She and teammate Ellie Munro, originally from Yarmouth, North Carolina, led their teammates to the rink, accompanied by a Nova Scotia-style bagpiper.
The Takeover Tour also took her home to Pictou County, where she attended a makeshift clinic after the game against Victoire. And every summer she returns to the province to run a hockey camp with Boston Fleet forward Jill Saulnier, originally from Halifax.
Even when she's not home, Nova Scotia isn't far away.
“I'll talk to grandma on the phone and she'll say this and that from the street, you don't know them but they stay up and watch all your games and they just wanted me to say they're so proud of you,” Turnbull said. “Everything is so nice and so kind from the house. That’s exactly what it’s like to grow up there.”
Accepting your role
With the national team, Turnbull follows the example of other leaders such as Poulin, Larocque, Brianna Jenner and Renata Fast, who all wear Team Canada letters.
Larocque participated in many leadership group meetings with Turnbull, both on Team Canada and with the Sceptres. The common thread is that Turnbull is always thinking about his team.
“Her love and dedication to the team she plays for is very special,” said Larocque, who now plays for the Ottawa Charge.
Ryan helped alleviate some of that pressure, especially with the Scepters.
As a captain, Turnbull said she often expects perfection from herself. Ryan helped her relax.
This may be the best way she has grown as a player over the last decade. Turnbull understands the role she plays and comes across as her true self.
“If you don't look at points and just look at the impact that players like me have on the game, I really started to understand that and realize that my value and my value is something that can't be measured by on-ice statistics,” Turnbull said.
As for Ryan, he tried to emphasize that it is impossible to be perfect. It's better to be someone your team can rely on. It became Turnbull.
Ryan sees a future in Turnbull's coaching. The perfect time to come full circle would be for him to work alongside her as an advisor while Turnbull becomes a head coach somewhere.
“I've never met anyone better suited to end his career like this than Blair Turnbull,” Ryan said.
Turnbull's scepter will host Seattle Torrent at TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario. on Saturday at 2:00 pm ET. You can watch the game on CBC and CBC Gem.
