She quit hockey twice. Now, with no prior international experience, she’s an Olympian

MILAN — Five years before becoming a Canadian Olympian, Kati Tabin was a hockey player crashing on a friend’s couch.

She was playing for the Connecticut Whale of the now-defunct Premier Hockey Federation, but without a fully processed visa, Tabin couldn’t collect a paycheck. After six games and nearly two months on the couch, Tabin’s career seemingly came to an end in December 2021.

“I ended up just going home (to Winnipeg),” said Tabin in an interview with The Athletic. “I didn’t really have that much money to live there for free.”

Tabin’s stop in Connecticut was just one of what’s been a winding path to the 2026 Milan Olympics for the 28-year-old defender. When she hit the ice for the women’s hockey tournament on Saturday, she became the oldest player since 2002 to debut for Team Canada at the Olympics — and one of very few Canadians to crack an Olympic roster with no prior international experience.

After the game, Tabin said she was feeling “a lot of emotions.”

“Obviously, I was really, really excited and didn’t know how it was going to feel out there,” she said. “But it was nice to get game one under my belt and get a feel for it.”

Tabin’s inclusion on the Canadian roster is a strong indicator of two things: her own persistence and the opportunities created for players by the Professional Women’s Hockey League. In the two years since the league launched in January 2024, Tabin has gone from the bubble to establishing herself as a steady, shutdown defender and the exact kind of player Team Canada might need to upset the No. 1-ranked Americans.

“Kati Tabin is a perfect example of an athlete that has taken the platform that was offered to her and shown that she’s a great shutdown ‘D’ that is hard to play against,” said Canada general manager Gina Kingsbury. “She is playing really great hockey and we think that’s going to continue to (the Olympics). The elements that she brings, the style of play she brings in the PWHL, is exactly what we are looking for.”

Tabin had decided she was done with hockey once before.

Over her four-year career at Quinnipiac University, Tabin played well enough to be named captain of the team and get an invite to a 47-player Canadian national women’s team camp ahead of her final season. Her performance then, however, wasn’t enough to make her any sort of mainstay on the national team.

After her senior season in 2020, the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tabin felt she hit a dead end. At the time, the PHF presented one of the few post-graduate opportunities, but in 2020-21, the league was attempting to play a “bubble” tournament in Lake Placid, N.Y., which failed due to rapid COVID-19 transmission.

“There weren’t very many places to go play or practice,” Tabin said. “So I just ultimately made the decision (that) it’s just time I hang them up and get a real job.”

Tabin took a position as a marketing director for a campground and marina in Wisconsin, but soon started to miss being on the ice. With the encouragement of her mom, Heather, Tabin left for Connecticut to try out for the Whale.

She hadn’t played competitively in 18 months, so she went into her visit with low expectations: She’d visit friends and former Quinnipiac teammates, talk to coach Colton Orr, and potentially secure a roster spot for next season.

“I was obviously pretty rusty,” Tabin said.

So she was surprised when the team came to her with a contract offer — but not for the next season. Tabin joined the Whale immediately, sleeping on her teammate Abbie Ives’ couch while her work visa was processed. She played six games, without pay, for the love of the game.

But after several weeks, Tabin went home to Winnipeg, disillusioned with the idea of making hockey a full-time job. She got a new gig as a player development coach at the RINK Training Centre, a hockey facility just outside the city. The position kept Tabin on the ice, and one year later she felt ready to give hockey one more shot, this time with the PHF’s Toronto franchise.

“Always in the back of my mind I wanted to get back in the door with Hockey Canada,” Tabin said. “So I just said, why not? You really gotta put everything forward here if you wanna get there.”

She spent the summer training and getting back into shape before the start of the 2022-23 season.

As a member of the Toronto Six, Tabin balanced a full-time job at Yamaha Motor Canada to help offset her modest salary and finished the year as the highest scoring defender en route to a league championship.

“I just put my head down, went to work and didn’t care how much I was getting paid,” Tabin said. “It was a lot, but I just loved the game and it was a really fun year.”

Tabin signed a two-year extension with Toronto just weeks before she learned the league would cease operations in June 2023. A new league led by Mark Walter, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and tennis legend Billie Jean King would launch the following year, but it meant that Tabin’s contract was nullified. Despite another abrupt change in her career, Tabin stuck with it and declared for the inaugural PWHL draft, where she was selected 30th overall by Montreal.

Since then, Tabin has built a reputation as one of the most consistent all-situations defenders in the league. Montreal general manager Danièle Sauvageau said Tabin “does everything right.”

Tabin’s skating ability allows her to keep up with the high-octane forwards in the PWHL, and her physicality makes Tabin among the most difficult to play against.

It’s a skill set displayed on a major stage for the first time in Tabin’s career

“The PHF allowed me to kind of get my feet wet, and then when I joined the PWHL, I was against USA’s and Team Canada’s top players every game and I think that just allowed me to reach another level, especially here in Montreal being able to train alongside (Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey, Ann-Renée Desbiens and Erin Ambrose),” Tabin said. “My physicality grew, my speed grew, my offense and defense both grew as a whole and I feel like I’ve just become much more consistent.”

Team Canada decision-makers took note of that growth, too. Over the summer, Tabin was named to the 30-player roster that would try out for the Olympic team and made her Team Canada debut in November at the Rivalry Series. When it came time to name the 23-player roster for the 2026 Olympics, Tabin’s name was on it.

Montreal coach Kori Cheverie, who also serves as an assistant coach for Team Canada, was the one to deliver the news on a call with the rest of the national team staff.

“‘Holy s—,’” Tabin said. “Those were my first words. And then honestly, I just blacked out.

Obviously, I believed in myself but just hearing those words was kind of a shock, like oh my god I really did this … It’s a true dream come true.”

That Tabin cracked the Olympic team over players with more international experience and a 19-year-old phenom whose game has been likened to that of NHL star Quinn Hughes might have come as a surprise to some. But, to Team Canada staff, she brings something the team needs if it’s going to have a chance at beating Team USA — the top-ranked team who outscored Canada 24-7 at Rivalry Series — in an expected gold medal rematch.

“A lot of players when they play against her in the PWHL, they recognize the physicality that she has, they recognize the compete, they recognize how difficult she is to play against,” said Canada head coach Troy Ryan. “And I think it’s important to have some players like that in your group.”

In Milan, Tabin should give Canada another solid defender to play against top competition. If Canada needs someone to step in and play tough matchup minutes — either due to injury or poor performance — Tabin has proven herself capable of playing that role against top competition in the PWHL.

“I actually think a lot of players could learn a lot from Kati Tabin’s journey,” said Ryan. “She stuck with her game, didn’t change who she was as a player or as a person, and finds herself in the Olympic Games at this point in her career.

“To me, that is what the Olympics are about.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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