Top-shelf talent

She’s the Wayne Gretzky of women’s hockey.

Jennifer Botterill may also be the social blueprint for character.

In her memoir, Why Not You, Botterill’s poise and conviction shine through in her willingness to express her studious opinions to millions watching televised hockey, whether they like it or not.

Botterill, who was born in Ottawa and raised in Winnipeg, was one of the world’s best hockey players before becoming a forceful analyst of the game on TV. She often has an alternate perspective from those of her usually male panellists and she vigorously defends it. “I’m one of the few women doing what I do, and I represent a strong female voice in a space where there aren’t many of us,” she writes. “I’m doing what I set out to do: make a difference. And that’s a much stronger force than any negativity about my opinions.”

The Botterill family lived in Winnipeg, in Wildwood Park, and Jennifer and brother Jason spent most of their time outside school at Wildwood Park Community Centre and the Wildwood Club, playing sports. Jennifer’s first team was the Waverley Heights Storm.

In 1992, Jennifer was a teenager in Winnipeg when it was announced women’s hockey would be introduced to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

She was an outstanding player, and after her fourth season in the game her dad Cal, a sports psychologist, took her to lunch. “Dad and I had a conversation over chicken sandwiches that proved to be the biggest ‘lightbulb moment’ of my life,” she writes.

Her dad said that if she continued to work hard she’d have a chance to make the coming Olympics, to which she replied “I’ve never even played hockey for Manitoba before, Dad, let alone Canada.”

What her father said next “struck a chord unlike anything else,” and it opened up the world to her. He looked straight at Jennifer and asked: Why not you?

“I sat there feeling astonished as I let those words sink in: ‘Why Not You,’” she writes. “As my dad suggested to me, if someone else can be there representing our country on the Olympics stage, why can’t it be you?”

Botterill made the team, and at age 18 was Canada’s youngest player. It turns out she was tailor-made for hockey, a cut above sensational, had an iron will and helped the national team take victory after victory.

Her first experience with Olympic hockey — in Nagano in 1998 — ended with a crushing disappointment. Canada lost the gold medal game to the U.S.

“I didn’t want to see my teammates feel that sad again. I didn’t want my heart to hurt that much again either. My mental and physical exhaustion lasted months after the Nagano Olympics,” she writes.

With Botterill, Canada’s women would win Olympic gold in 2002, 2006 and 2010; she was also on five world champion Team Canada squads. The 2010 Olympic gold-medal game was, she notes, “the last I played with the Maple Leaf on my chest.”

Botterill studied psychology at Harvard and graduated with honours in 2003. Playing hockey for the Harvard Crimson between 1998 and 2003, she is the only player ever to have been named twice as college hockey’s top female; she scored a goal or more in every one of her 113 games but one, and set a record for most points in a game with 10. After college, she won back-to-back nationals with the Toronto Aeros in 2004 and 2005.

Why Not You is more than a hockey book. It’s the story of growing up, a child nurtured by parents who gave their children space to grow up.

Jennifer’s mother Doreen was also an Olympian; she was a speedskater at the Games twice, in 1964 and 1968. Jennifer’s brother Jason was selected in the first round of the NHL draft in 1994 by the Dallas Stars, and won three straight gold medals at the World Junior Hockey Championships. In 2025, he was named general manager of the Seattle Kraken.

And then there’s Jennifer’s dad Cal, who has advised NHL teams and works with Olympic athletes.

Botterill’s focus now includes public speaking and media, including covering the NHL as a broadcast analyst.

“Later in life I would be the mother of three kids, juggling my second career in hockey as a broadcaster,” she writes, “and I’d lean on the many lessons I learned at Harvard to help me through those busy times so that I could be the best mom and broadcaster possible.”

She first became a broadcast analyst in 2018 for the NHL’s New York Islanders. “Up in the broadcast booth they had fellow Winnipegger and four-time Stanley Cup champion Butch Goring,” she recalls.

In 2021, Sportsnet hired Botterill to join the world’s premier hockey broadcast as a studio analyst, appearing on Hockey Night in Canada for select shows. (In September, it was announced she wouldn’t be returning to Sportsnet as part of the network’s NHL coverage, and has since returned to NHL on TNT.)

“Jen has inspired so many young kids, both boys and girls, to compete at the highest levels… She has a real love and passion for hockey and her knowledge of the game is unquestionable,” says none other than hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

“Now, as a mother of three young girls who play a lot of sports,” Botterill writes, “I better understand my parents’ perspective and what it’s like to watch your kids play or compete. I know what it’s like to want my kids to do well and to be happy when they leave the ice or field or court. In any environment, that’s what a parent wants for their kids — and the games are still meaningful, whether or not on the Olympic stage.”

Botterill was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2025.

Barry Craig is a retired journalist.