Six teams of talented under-18 AAA girls hockey players from across Canada will be in Dieppe later this month.
The city will host the Esso Cup from April 19 to 25, and it’s the first time it has ever been held in New Brunswick.
It’s a national tournament sanctioned by Hockey Canada. It’s the equivalent of the Telus Cup, which many know as the tournament for the boys.
This year’s hosts of the Esso Cup are the Moncton Rockets. The Northern Selects will represent Atlantic Canada, the Winnipeg Ice for the western region, the Red Deer Chiefs for the Pacific region and a team for Quebec and Ontario, which are still to be determined.
“It’s a very fast moving and high calibre hockey at the U18 level,” Co-Chair Melanie McGrath explained.
McGrath added that women’s hockey has seen a lot of growth over the last few years, “There’s actually more growth right now in numbers in female hockey than there is in the male hockey. It’s exciting to see that girls’ hockey is growing at a fast pace. And the game is also growing exponentially compared to what it was five years ago. Just when we look at New Brunswick, we now have a U13 AAA girls team. We have four U15 AAA, I think they have four in the province and U18 AAA, we have three. So the game is getting a lot faster, and there are a lot more players who are at the elite level.”
She also explained that a lot of work has been done at the Hockey New Brunswick level with the various associations for the younger levels.
Girls who are starting to play the game at five or six years old now have the opportunity to play just with a girls’ team, whereas that wasn’t the case just ten years ago.
“You can now develop your game and stay with the girls’ team from start to finish of your career. And the PWHL, which is the Women’s Professional League, provides a new goal for the players to even continue to play hockey, later on. At the same time, there’s a U22 league, there’s the college, and there’s the university league. So there are a lot of opportunities for girls,” McGrath explained.
All of the games at the Esso Cup will be played at the Uniplex in Dieppe.
“We’ll have three games per day, one at 11, one at four, and the last game at 7 pm. We’ll have the host team every night, so it’s a round-robin format. The host team will play all teams at 7 pm, starting on Sunday, April 19th. The semifinals are going to be on Friday, April 24th and medal games on Saturday, April 25th,” McGrath said.
Spectators will need to buy tickets online before the tournament or in person on site before each game.
