NHL executive Duhamel helps grow game at World Ball Hockey championship

Mandi Duhamel's workday focuses on growing the game of hockey.

As the NHL's senior director of business insights and industry growth, her team analyzes how the League and the NHL Players' Association's Industry Growth Fund, a specific fund built into the collective bargaining agreement in 2013 to increase participation in the sport while focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, has impacted the communities of the NHL's 32 teams. She is also the co-chair of the NHL and NHLPA's Female Hockey Advisory Committee which was created in 2019 and is committed to promoting the growth of women's and girls' hockey.
But Duhamel's dedication to the sport and growing it goes beyond the walls of her office -- and beyond the ice, too.
Though she may have played forward for the University of Ottawa and for Ottawa of the Canadian Women's Hockey League, worked for Hockey Canada as the manager of female development, served as an assistant coach for a few schools like the University of Calgary and co-coached Calgary to the CWHL's 2019 Clarkson Cup championship, Duhamel is also dedicated to building the sport from the ground up, literally.
Beginning Tuesday in Laval, Quebec, Duhamel is coaching the Canada women's national team at the 2022 International Street and Ball Hockey Federation World Ball Hockey Championship.
"Ball hockey is such a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful experience, and for people who enjoy the game [of hockey, in general]," Duhamel said. "But skating is such a hurdle to the game of ice hockey. I love that ball hockey is in the family. It's the same idea and I hope that people see it as more accessible but still as equal opportunity to play the game of hockey."
The sport, "literally, hockey on your feet," as Duhamel coined it, has players wear sneakers instead of skates and stickhandling with an orange ball instead of a puck on polished concrete or a dek inside a hockey rink.
And, like ice hockey, it is a sport that can take someone to the highest level of representing their country.
Of course, coaching a Canadian national hockey team always comes with an added layer of pressure. Duhamel is cognizant that the spotlight will be shining bright on her and her team once the tournament, which runs through June 27, begins. Not only because Canada is the defending champion after defeating the United States 4-2 in 2019 and has won the tournament five of the seven previous cycles, but with the tournament being played on home soil.
However, for Duhamel meeting this pressure head-on and representing her country is nothing new. She captained the 2017 team that finished third at the world championship in Pardubice, Czech Republic, and served as the coach for the 2016 and 2018 master's teams that each won the ISBHF World Ball Hockey Masters Championship.
Drawing from her experiences is a big reason why Duhamel was the clear choice to coach the national team when Sara Hayward accepted the general manager position from the Canada Ball Hockey Association. And it's a reason why Giuliana Pallotta, who played with and was mentored by Duhamel in 2017, thinks she will make a fantastic coach.
"It's a long tournament and I think that she's going to let people kind of shine," said Pallotta, who is the captain this year. "I think some players maybe go into a tournament with the expectation of how things will go, but she will allow them to have a chance to show what they can do. I think the girls are really, really going to be on board with something like that because you don't always get that in a coach."
Although she'll have a hard time keeping her feet planted on the bench because, "as a coach, one of the hardest things is to not be on the floor, [you] stand on the bench and wish you could just jump out and help," Duhamel said.
Duhamel is primed to push her roster that runs the gamut from young and fresh first-timers to hardened veterans to a new level.
A full buy-in by her team will be important with the 2022 women's tournament featuring six equally strong teams: Canada, United States, Slovakia, Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Lebanon, who will be making its tournament debut. Slovakia (2011) and the Czech Republic (2017) have each won the tournament and the United States finished runner-up in each of the past two (2017, 2019).
"She's such an inspiring person and a coach," said Hayward, who was also the GM of each master's team Duhamel coached. "She thinks outside the box. Her creativity is crazy … nothing stops her creativity. Her ability to motivate players, her energy as a person, her knowledge of the game. She just knows what the job is and gets it done."
Duhamel will be focused on a few things during her time in Quebec: growing the game of hockey, introducing the sport of ball hockey to new fans, and motivating and maximizing her players with "some vengeance," after that third-place finish five years ago, sprinkled in.
"We want to be relentless, we want to be exciting and we want to leave it all out there," she said. "And I definitely think that this is the group that's going to put on a good show for anybody who wants to come and watch, and we know we want to walk away just leaving it all out there, and if that ends up with the gold in our hands then that's the most we can ask for."