The stakes keep getting higher for Samantha Sutherland.
The 19-year-old Cochranite is in her second season with the Boston University Terriers women’s hockey team while working her way up Hockey Canada’s elite women’s stream.
The 5-foot-4 forward was at WinSport Calgary for the Team Canada fall women’s hockey festival Sept. 22-28, where Canada’s top-48 female development prospects were assessed in a week-long camp that included scrimmages. Ten Canadian gold-medal-winning Olympians skated alongside the prospects. Sutherland assisted on Haley Irwin’s festival-winning goal Sept. 28, won 3-2 by Team Red.
Sutherland’s back at B.U., hitting the books and playing for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school’s women’s hockey team in the Hockey East Conference. She’s never out of the national team loop because B.U.’s women’s hockey program grooms players for national programs. Two-time Canadian Olympian Marie-Philip Poulin plays for the Terriers, which sent six players to Canada’s women’s Fall Festival development camp in Calgary and one to Team USA tryouts.
“The coach is very supportive of all the national team programs,” Sutherland says of Terriers head coach Brian Durocher. “We try to schedule our university games around the national camps.”
Scoring five goals and adding 19 assists in her 38-game rookie NCAA Hockey East season last year put Sutherland on the path to Canada’s elite women’s hockey program. She’s hoping to crack the final Under-22-year-old (U22) national development roster for Meco Cup play in Germany in January.
“They invite some players to get them into the program. Right now I’m part of the development team,” Sutherland explains. “Basically, they filter you into the national team program. There are four years. Every couple of months there’s a tournament like the Four Nations Cup. You play for them and keep staying in the process.
“They have different coaches for you for different things. Then they decide if you’re going to be on the team for that year.”
Her university coach knows she’s a high-skills competitor.
“She brings, certainly from a skill standpoint, a very good pair of hands to the game. She possesses the puck well,” says Terriers head coach Durocher. “She actually shoots the puck extremely well. She has a level of consistency that’s recognizable every day. She doesn’t have the highs and lows that way.”
Two years in, her Boston University experience agrees with Sutherland.
“I love it here. I’d like to stay after for a bit,” Sutherland offers. “I’m definitely happy with how much I’ve improved since I left Cochrane and Warner and started at B.U.
“I appreciate how much more intensity there is being involved with these kinds of people. This year we’re going to be playing against all the Olympians who are back in the NCAA. I’ve definitely become a more defensive player. I think I still have play-making with me, but I’m quite pleased with what B.U. has done for us.”
It’s moved her onto the radar at the next level, where she hopes to one day wear Team Canada’s sweater.
