Sauvageau again blazing trail as 2025 Hockey Hall of Fame electee

The 2025 Hockey Hall of Fame induction is Monday. This year’s class includes Jennifer Botterill, Zdeno Chara, Brianna Decker, Duncan Keith, Alexander Mogilny and Joe Thornton in the Players category, and Jack Parker and Daniele Sauvageau in the Builders category. Here, NHL.com columnist Dave Stubbs profiles Sauvageau.

Daniele Sauvageau has been blazing a hockey trail since she was a teenager in Deux-Montagnes, Quebec, 30 miles west of Montreal.

The energetic pioneer has broken one glass ceiling after another during her four-plus decades as a coach, general manager, consultant, educator, broadcaster and sports administrator.

So, it’s hardly a surprise that Sauvageau continues to be breaking new ground. On Monday, she will become the first woman enshrined in the Builders category of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

“From the bottom of my soul, I felt like it was bigger than any news I’ve ever received,” she said of the June 24 telephone call of congratulations she took from the Hall of Fame’s Mike Gartner and Lanny McDonald.

Daniele Sauvageau (r.) with Montreal Victoire 2025 draft pick Nicole Gosling (c., No. 4 overall) and Jayna Hefford, PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations.

Sauvageau was in an Ottawa hotel room, as general manager of Montreal Victoire of the Professional Women’s Hockey League conducting player interviews for that night’s draft, when the call came.

“I felt, physically, that my airway was very thin and my heart started to beat so fast,” she recalled. “When I realized [my election] was true, I immediately started thinking about my parents, my family.

“This was recognition not just for what I have done but for all the people I’ve done it with, all the people I’ve met along the way. And yes, for all the people who told me, ‘No, you cannot do it. You cannot play, you cannot coach.’

“I realized then that the word ‘no’ was simply short for ‘new opportunity.’ That’s what ‘no’ has come to mean to me in my life. ‘No’ has become yes -- yes, you can do it. The day that Mike and Lanny called was the pinnacle.”

Sauvageau’s historic Hall of Fame election is yet another door that she’s opening for herself, and others.

Montreal Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin after a PWHL game at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, on Feb. 2, 2025.

“I think it just allows us to know that anything is possible, that nothing is too big, too small,” said Victoire captain Marie-Philip Poulin, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion.

“Especially as a woman, you have your place in the sport. I think it’s growing together. For women and men to be able to grow it together, when we talk about hockey it’s just the same sport we love. We love the game of hockey and it’s not us against the men. That’s what Daniele has done. When you believe in something and you fight for it, great things can happen.

“Seeing Daniele as the first female being recognized as a Builder, to me it’s right for it to happen for what she’s done for the growth of women’s hockey, but also for the sport in general.”

Sauvageau, 63, never could have imagined this honor when at age 13, enthusiastically arriving with two younger brothers at the St. Eustache Arena north of Montreal, she was told she wasn’t eligible to play. It was the first time she was refused permission to do something because of her gender.

She could have sulked while she waited for her brothers, but instead she chose to take charge of the water bottles on the bench, playing a role for the team.

From left: Montreal Victoire GM Daniele Sauvageau, Erin Ambrose, Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey and coach Kori Cheverie.

“It was almost like within a moment, the biggest door had opened,” Sauvageau said of learning of her Hall of Fame election. “All the projects I worked on, every time that I thought I was not going anywhere, or the door was closed …

“That day with my brothers in St. Eustache, I felt that a door was slamming in my face. It hurt so much. But I kept my foot in the doorway and didn’t let it close by bringing those water bottles to the bench.”

Sauvageau has been around hockey since her youth in Deux-Montagnes, by age 17 coaching the boys and girls teams at St. Jerome’s College, where she was studying.

She moved steadily to higher levels in the women’s game, leading to her promotion to the job of head coach for Team Quebec at the 1994-95 Canadian national championship. Sauvageau quickly had jobs of much greater responsibility, including coaching posts with Canada’s under-19 team and the country’s representative at the 1996 IIHF Women’s Pacific Rim Championship, guiding the latter squad to the gold medal.

She wasn’t yet even in second gear. Sauvageau was an assistant coach for Canada at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, that team winning silver behind the gold of the archrival United States.

Her country would take a deep look inside its high-performance and grassroots programs, looking ahead to the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics with Sauvageau a key member of those panels, taking the reins as general manager and head coach.

“I said at the time, ‘Look at where the Canadian flag is for the medal ceremony. We need to advance. We need it to be higher than it was in Nagano,’” she said. “My view at the time was, ‘What can we do with the resources that we have?’ We needed a plan to develop the athletes who in four years were going to be playing for Team Canada.

“That’s what I worked on for four years because I didn’t think that our flag was in the right place in Nagano. For Salt Lake City, I didn’t think about winning games or even talk about winning the gold medal. It was only about putting the best plan together in order to have the best performance.”

Her arms raised, Team Canada coach Daniele Sauvageau celebrates the country’s gold-medal win against Team USA at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics on Feb. 21, 2002.

New players arrived. Veterans were in some cases asked to take on different roles, even change positions. Sauvageau knocked on doors, selling the women’s game to sponsors, adding support staff, nutritionists and other elements to the program.

After eight consecutive losses to the U.S. in national-team women’s play, Canada would defeat its American foes 3-2 in the gold-medal game on Feb. 21, 2002.

For nearly 33 years, from 1986-2018, Sauvageau served in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Montreal Police Service, for a time supervising an emergency response team that worked, among other cases, undercover drug busts, bomb scares, kidnapping, and motorcycle-gang turf wars.

Her start in law enforcement and Salt Lake City gold -- two events that in many ways define her life -- came on the same date 16 years apart, Sauvageau having joined the RCMP on Feb. 21, 1986.

Her experience in police work played an important part in her preparations for Salt Lake City.

“I’ve learned from policing that you plan for the unknown,” Sauvageau said. “In order to do that, you have to be very prepared. You could be walking on the street and have something happen right in front of you. In sports, you have time to prepare, rain or shine, you know the date of the Olympics, the date of the World Championship, but you still need to perform on demand. What are you going to do that day?

“I’ve often been asked what I learned from policing for use in sports, and vice versa. It’s funny, they used to call me Coach on the force, and in sports they call me Chief. At the end of the day, it’s two different worlds. In policing, when things aren’t going well, we come together as one like no other thing I’ve seen. In sports, when things aren’t going well, sometimes this is when people are going to hide in the corner. This is when you need people to stay together and stay focused. These are the people you’re going to compete with.”

Sauvageau has been decorated with multiple national honors recognizing her contribution to women’s hockey and her work on and off the ice in coaching and sports administration, sharing her wisdom as a speaker and presenter at various conferences.

Coach Daniele Sauvageau (back row, far left) celebrates the University of Montreal Carabins’ 2012-13 Quebec university women’s hockey championship. The Carabins would go on to win the national title that season.

She was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 2008, the year she founded the University of Montreal Carabins women’s hockey program.

In 2012, Sauvageau was named to the 12-member selection committee for the newly introduced Order of Hockey in Canada, an initiative that pays tribute to extraordinary contributions to the national game. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2013 (the nation’s highest civilian honor) and received the 2021 Hockey Canada Female Breakthrough Award.

Sauvageau has been part of Canada’s Olympic effort, winter and summer, on eight occasions, serving as a coach, general manager, coaching mentor and TV analyst. She played a vital role in seven gold-medal wins for the country at the IIHF Women’s World Championship.

Add to her credentials being the first woman coach in Quebec major-junior hockey, in 1999-2000 as an assistant with the Montreal Rocket, and the first woman to work as an analyst on French TV’s “La Soiree du hockey” telecasts.

Sauvageau is busier than ever today as GM of the Victoire, this women’s hockey pioneer justifiably proud of a league that’s on solid footing and bringing more girls and women to the game, building a solid foundation for the future.

“I never meant to be the first in all the things I’ve done,” she said in reflection. “I didn’t know that girls couldn’t play hockey when I was playing with my brother outside. My parents never stopped me from doing something because I was a girl.

“My dad taught me to finish what I started and I’m going to just keep going. I believe that life brought me to where I needed to be. I’ve been privileged and fortunate to be there and say, ‘I’m going to do this, push it, try it, push it to the next level.’”

Sauvageau has long said that she was born to be a coach, a belief she still holds close to her heart.

“When you look at the definition of what a coach really is, it’s simply bringing a project or a person from Point A to B, then B to C, to D and so on,” she said. “I would have loved to coach in the NHL, but there are so many ways to live your passion.

Memorabilia from Daniele Sauvageau’s coaching career has been preserved by her family. Here: from the 1988 Calgary and 1998 Nagano Olympics.

“Being a GM with the Victoire right now, I’m working with my coaching staff, with my team, evaluating talent, talking directly to the players, as all GMs do, trying to find a way to get from Point A to Point B, then moving forward.”

The essence of being a coach, Sauvageau said, “is being a parent, a manager, a general manager, a police officer. Every project that I’ve worked on has been to work with human beings. We’re in the human-being business and I believe this is what the integrity, the DNA, of a coach is.

“We teach the player to become their own coach. When I look at great leaders, when I taught, I had the privilege to exchange ideas on the subject -- what is a leader, where are they, what have they learned? They have all needed to be a student of the game, no matter if they’re in business, tech, sport or medicine. There’s always something to learn trying to become the best coach, be aware, to surround yourself with the best people, to allow yourself to be coached. That’s the essence of advancement.”

Perseverance, Sauvageau said, is her strongest quality.

“To still be here with the passion I have,” she said. “For me, a passion is like a little fire. People will come in and put a log on the fire and it will grow. That’s how it’s been for me.”

This weekend, Sauvageau will again be in the Hall of Fame’s Esso Great Hall, her plaque installed with those of all the others who have been enshrined. She gave a corporate talk in that stately room in July, shortly after having been elected.

“I had tears when I started to speak,” she recalled. “Life was bringing me here a few weeks after I took Mike and Lanny’s call. I was alone in the room with a sound technician for the setup and I thought, ‘What a privilege it is to be here, seeing where my plaque will be.’ It was one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Top photo: Montreal Victoire GM Daniele Sauvageau at Place Bell, her team’s home arena, in Laval, Quebec, north of Montreal.