MONTREAL – In all six LPHF markets, training camps have been launched. The players who participated in the inaugural season of the circuit are back after an off-season which stretched over five months. For newly drafted recruits, it’s the end of a mental countdown that began in June.
Audrey-Anne Veillette has been waiting for this moment for a year and a half.
The Ottawa Charge attacker has the knife between her teeth. This time last year, a knee injury relegated her to a walk-on role with the team that selected her in the 15th round of the league’s inaugural draft. Earn your place and prove your worth among the best players in the world? His head wasn’t there at all.
“I even had trouble walking,” she recalls.
Between Montreal and Ottawa, Veillette spent the first winter of his post-university life patiently following the stages of his rehabilitation. In March, the lights turned green. She signed a contract as a reserve player. She began training with her teammates, but was ineligible on game days. “I had one foot in, one foot out,” she illustrates. Until the end, patience and moderation remained the themes of his season.
“When I left, it wasn’t the real Audrey-Anne. Right now, it’s the real Audrey-Anne that I’m showing. »
“Since the day they drafted me, that’s my goal,” continues the former star forward of the Université de Montréal Carabins. I didn’t know if I was going to play last year. That’s not what I was thinking about, I was already thinking about this season. I come for last place, I come to make my place. I don’t have a plan B, it’s my plan A. I’ve been preparing for this for quite a long time, I’m really ready. »
When she speaks of the “last place”, Veillette refers to the mathematical portrait that presents itself to her at the Charge camp. The team from the Canadian capital currently has 20 players under contract out of the 23 places that will be filled in its final squad. Twelve of them are attackers. Vacancies are rare.
There will be three who will battle for the provisional title of thirteenth attacker. The Quebecer will compete with Taylor House, a 26-year-old American who spent the last year with the MoDo club in Sweden, and Mannon McMahon, 23, who has just finished a five-season career with the University of Minnesota -Duluth. The latter was a fifth-round pick by Ottawa in the 2024 draft.
We can assume that Veillette leaves with a head start. She is known to the coaching staff, already has a good rapport with her teammates and is familiar with the team environment. Last season, even lived on the margins, also helped her get a head start on the demands of the league. “I was definitely less stressed this year going into camp,” she confirms.
But the limits of his comfort zone are well defined. “Everything depends on the camp. Of course, having been with the team last year, people know me. But to say that I have an advantage over the other two, I don’t know. I think that everything will be decided at camp and especially in the two matches that we will play in Montreal,” she foresees.
Indeed, the Ottawa Charge and the Boston Fleet will be in Verdun next week to participate in a mini-camp in which the Montreal Victoire will also participate. Each team will play two preparatory games. They will then have five days, after the conclusion of the event, to announce their final training.
“The practices are important, but the two matches I think will be crucial,” anticipates Veillette.
Here too, the Drummondville native could enjoy the advantage of familiarity. For four years, she has completed her summer training at the 21.02 Center which adjoins the old Verdun auditorium. This year, she noticed unusual traffic in the LaSalle Boulevard facilities. “The other summers, there were like five or six of us. The Team Canada girls often go to camps in the summer. But I don’t know what happened there. Everyone got the memo to come to Montreal. » She estimates that there were nearly twenty players on the center’s ice rink in September and October. “I’ve never seen this before. »
It is in this context that she has been able to continue to shape the player she wants to become at the professional level. After scoring 26 goals in 22 games in her last season with the Carabins, she is aware that she will not be able to help her team in the same way in the LPHF. His summer training was mostly focused on learning the basics of physical play and executing the play faster.
All this, she hopes, will allow her to put a second foot in the doorway where she found herself immobile, despite herself, last season. Then she will go looking for other doors to break down.
“I want to play in the league. We know, there are a lot of injuries. One person’s misfortune is another’s happiness, as they say. That’s it business hockey, it’s a game of opportunities. Even if I start as the thirteenth striker with the last remaining contract, there is always the possibility of moving up afterwards. That’s how I see it. »
