Sarah Nurse greets fans before a Toronto-Montreal game in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, a new forum where the Olympic gold medalist and other athletes are able to build a community of fans.Mark Blinch/Getty Images
When she was a little girl playing on a boys’ competitive hockey team, Sarah Nurse asked her coach if she could wear dresses to games.
He said no. Her teammates would be wearing shirts and ties, and the coach expected her to as well. Ms. Nurse responded by arriving to the rink in a pink dress shirt with a Toronto Maple Leafs tie.
The Canadian hockey star, who is biracial-Black, has been breaking the mould for most of her life. Ms. Nurse, now 29, smiled while recounting that anecdote for a video shoot this past November in a Toronto studio, where she looked as camera-ready as the models in the headshots on the walls.
The Olympic gold medalist traversed wardrobe changes and different looks, from designer jeans to a shimmery black business suit, street sneakers to heels, peach lip gloss to bombshell red lipstick, posing as comfortably with a Fendi handbag as with a hockey stick.
“I want to transcend sport and be seen in different spaces,” Ms. Nurse said. “And show people you can be unique, and that’s okay.”
Ms. Nurse has built a reputation for bold fashion off the ice, like this green pregame outfit at a March 17 match in Pittsburgh.Justin Berl/Getty Images
In a sport that shields faces, Ms. Nurse has burst out from under the helmet. The Hamilton native is a powerhouse on the ice and is becoming a massive name off it, helping widen the spotlight for women’s hockey. That November shoot was for her own personal website she launched later in the inaugural season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which kicked off Jan. 1.
The PWHL is off to a promising start since its launch five months ago. Successes include 2.9 million Canadians tuning in for the debut game on CBC, Sportsnet and TSN; a pair of sellout games at big NHL rinks in Toronto and Montreal, and fans buying up all the available PWHL merchandise.
As the PWHL ramps up to its first playoffs, Ms. Nurse isn’t the league’s only star, but she’s arguably becoming its most recognizable face. She is also a tireless advocate for the sport, with multiple irons in the fire. She is vice-president of the PWHL players’ association, but also plays for Canada’s national team, which won a seven-game rivalry series with the United States and a world championship in the past few months, too.
As a testament to her significant status, Ms. Nurse has more major endorsement deals than nearly anyone in hockey, outside of an elite group of NHL stars. Asked what Ms. Nurse has made on sponsorships, her agent Thomas Houlton of Dulcedo Sports & Entertainment, said “in the millions.”
These deals put her in the spotlight, but she doesn’t just want fame for fame’s sake. She aims to open doors for others, including more players like herself who don’t fit the traditional mould. “I think of the little me, and what it would have felt like to see a woman hockey player on a billboard, on a cereal box or in a commercial, because I never saw that when I was young,” Ms. Nurse said. “Girls and boys are going to grow up seeing women in sport in positions of power, and that’s going to be normal for them.”
Ms. Nurse celebrates with Brianne Jenner and Ashton Bell after their gold-medal victory at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. Ms. Nurse and her teammates had won silver four years earlier, at her Winter Games debut in Pyeongchang, South Korea.Elsa/Getty Images
With diversity increasing in hockey, you could say the timing was right for Ms. Nurse, a young biracial Black woman, to emerge as a star player and advocate, but that would be underselling her efforts.
She honed her ability to juggle her multiple skills while earning a business degree at University of Wisconsin, which she attended on a hockey scholarship from 2013-17, during which the Badgers made the Frozen Four each year.
As a sportswoman, she is a powerhouse. Ms. Nurse has five world medals and two Olympic medals to her name. In 2022, during Canada’s gold-medal run in Beijing, she set records for most points (18) and most assists (13) in a single Olympic tournament. Through 21 games for PWHL Toronto, Ms. Nurse is top 10 in the league in points (17), assists (10), and goals (seven). That includes the overtime winner she netted on her two-goal night in Montreal last Saturday before a raucous record-breaking crowd of 21,105 at Bell Centre.
“Where some other athletes may be feeling the emotions in a game like that, people like Sarah have been in those big games, and their pulse tends to slow down,” said Troy Ryan, her coach for both Toronto and Team Canada. “So I usually expect in those big games, people like Sarah Nurse will find a way.”
Off the ice, she has been working to become a household name for years. In 2018 she signed with Dulcedo, an agency that also represents models and influencers.
Prior to the PWHL’s launch, female players usually got a burst of attention around Winter Olympics. In the four years between the Games, it was easy for female hockey players to lose traction with fans and be forgotten. In order to stay relevant and recognizable, Ms. Nurse and Dulcedo built a plan. “We had to build Sarah’s own platform through social media,” Mr. Houlton said. “She really got comfortable in front of the camera making content for social media.”
She took to it naturally. When they first got started, Mr. Houlton booked her a deal with the Dairy Farmers of Ontario during the pandemic – her first content collaboration on TikTok. She came up with the idea to set up milk bags as shooting targets on a street hockey net, then exploded them with pucks. It was a hit and showed her skill and personality. She polished that on-camera confidence with reps over time.
As she became more comfortable, she expanded her reach. “‘I like makeup and getting in full glam and it’s a huge part of who I am,’” Ms. Nurse recalls telling Mr. Houlton when she signed with Dulcedo. “He said, ‘Amazing, we can get you into that space.’”
Ms. Nurse boasts many endorsement deals. For Adidas, Ms. Nurse appears in billboards and a commercial that also features two global superstars, soccer icon Lionel Messi and three-time SuperBowl champion Patrick Mahomes.
She works with CCM, RBC, Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, Chevrolet, plus she’s blazed into categories not as traditional for female athletes.
She was the first woman to make the cover of an EA Sports NHL video game, has a limited-edition hockey Barbie in her likeness and a deal with Dyson she earned largely via some social-media content she made demonstrating how she styles her striking curls using the company’s high-end hair diffuser. She’s also partnered with beauty brands L’Oréal, Dove and Revlon.
In the years since signing with Dulcedo, she’s appeared all over – as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race, in documentaries Black Ice and Ice Queens. She’s been on The Social, and on hockey broadcasts on TNT and Sportsnet.
Ms Nurse, far right, helps her teammates try to get past Montreal goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens. Ms. Nurse is on the board of players who negotiated the PWHL's first package of compensation and benefits.Mark Blinch/Getty Images
Besides bringing women’s hockey to the public eye, one of her missions has been to advocate for what the women deserve.
As a board member for its players’ association, Ms. Nurse was part of a small group of women who helped build the foundation of the PWHL before it launched, negotiating the terms of its 62-page collective agreement, such as health benefits, maternity leave and meal per diems on the road.
“We’re just so proud of the package that we got in the inaugural CBA, with really no leverage other than ourselves,” Ms. Nurse said. “I hope that when the girls renegotiate it in eight years, they’ll have a great point to start from and they’ll be able to negotiate the moon, sun and the stars.”
Before their inaugural draft, each of the six PWHL franchises got to sign three players to begin their rosters. Ms. Nurse was among Toronto’s first trio. Other teams offered her more but she signed with Toronto anyway. She wanted to be close to her family (who are in Hamilton) but she also chose the city where she felt she could best promote and support women’s hockey.
“Sarah could be the highest paid player in the league,” Houlton said. “But she wanted to do right by her team and her teammates and make sure that everybody got a fair share.”
The PWHL league minimum is $35,000, its average is $55,000, and select top players make upward of $100,000, although individual salaries aren’t disclosed. They aren’t getting rich off the salaries, but it’s a far cry from the $2,000 stipend many players made in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League before it shuttered in 2019.
Another important facet of her efforts is outreach. She works to expand the sport’s availability to people who have not traditionally felt welcome or had access. In a collaboration with the non-profit Black Girl Hockey Club Canada, she established “Nursey Night,” where she brings young girls of colour to watch Toronto PWHL games, then visits with them backstage afterward and also plans to mentor them later. During the first Nursey Night, in February, girls watched from inside a suite at the sold-out Scotiabank Arena as Toronto faced Montreal. That night, Rogers presented a cheque to the non-profit for $50,000.
Contact with these young fans keeps her grounded and in touch with her purpose. At Mattamy Arena in March, Toronto won its 11th game in a row, topping the PWHL standing and celebrating with the team’s usual victory song, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5. But Ms. Nurse hadn’t been happy with her own play. After media interviews, she went to a private room to visit with the girls and their families, to take pictures with every girl and give each some Adidas sneakers.
“I was not really thrilled about my game that night,” Ms. Nurse later explained. “But then I went to meet the girls at Nursey Night and that completely reframed my mindset, because those kids don’t care how I played; they care that they got to see professional women’s hockey. Just seeing their faces light up, and chatting with them, it reminded me of the impact that our players are having every single game.”
Ms. Nurse shares abundantly on social media, unfazed that those platforms can be a cesspool of criticism for many athletes. Those who tout their interests outside of sport are often met by internet trolls trying to knock them off the pedestal, or admonishing them for their vanity, or telling them to get back to practice.
On TikTok, Ms. Nurse keeps her followers engaged with anecdotes about the world championships, discussing confidence, her makeup regimen, her clothes, her hair, the books she reads, her fandom for Formula 1 and the bio gel nails she wears (yes even in her hockey gloves). Some engage with her to talk makeup, and wind up learning about hockey.
One wonders if all that attention has impacted her hockey or ruffled any feathers with her team. Thus far, no, said Gina Kingsbury, Toronto’s general manager, but the team checks in with Ms. Nurse about it often, to monitor how it’s going.
“Sarah has managed this really well. She’s a great teammate and people have a tremendous amount of respect for her,” Kingsbury said. “If it was someone else, we would have more concerns, because I do think it’s taxing, always having to be on, with all eyes always on her. I think she really enjoys the stuff that she’s doing from the business side, and that makes it easier to spend energy on it because it gives you energy back when you actually like doing it.”
In 2023, before the PWHL even began, Ms. Nurse’s schedule was demanding enough that Dulcedo brought in senior athlete manager Phoebe Balshin to help organize things for her, and sharpen her brand focus. Ms. Balshin, who works with NHL players, too, helps protect that balance, pushing back if a sponsor asks something of Ms. Nurse they’d never ask of the men, like attending an appearance on a game day. Ms. Balshin is with Ms. Nurse for appearances and manages her daily calendar and to-do list, from her own social-media posts to branded ones, sponsor meetings and shoots.
Ms. Nurse keeps to a tight schedule. Dulcedo has had to turn down some deals offered to her, which creates opportunities for other women the agency represents.
“We are seeing these paradigm shifts in women’s sports, and just like we look at the success of the PWHL selling out arenas we’re going to look at these exemplars,” said sport marketing expert Cheri Bradish of TMU, Director of the Future of Sport Lab and Sport Initiatives.
Then Ms. Bradish pointed to Ms. Nurse’s large list of sponsors: “Her success I think is the wave of the future.”
Ms. Nurse went out in style for the red carpet at February's NHL all-star festivities in Toronto.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Ms. Nurse is important in the hockey world partly because she can grow the sport in many directions. She’s as comfortable walking the pre-game runway in a fashionable outfit or talking to young girls about their interests as she is appearing at a premier NHL event.
The NHL can potentially reach new viewers via the PWHL, and vice versa. Ms. Nurse moves between events in the two leagues nearly effortlessly. That skill was on display during the NHL’s all-star festivities in February, with the hockey world in Toronto. She was among those chosen for the PWHL 3-on-3 showcase that week, and the women dressed up to walk the red carpet at the fan fest to sign autographs alongside the NHL players. As per Ms. Nurse’s vision, her look was bold – decked in red, with a sequined skirt and gold heels, styled by Toronto-based stylist Coneli, who has worked with athletes such as Scottie Barnes, Mitch Marner and Penny Oleksiak.
Ms. Nurse had numerous sponsor appearances that week, too, some alongside NHL players, such as Auston Matthews for RBC. She and the other PWHL stars were invited to a private Justin Bieber concert, a celebrity guest at all-star weekend. The women dropped by to surprise girls hockey teams. Familiar to NHL fans, too, Ms. Nurse was a live guest on the popular hockey podcast Spittin’ Chiclets to chat with Paul Bissonnette, Colby Armstrong and Ryan Whitney. She addressed their curiosities about bodychecking and trash-talking in women’s hockey, and pontificated about possible PWHL expansion in the future.
“She’s comfortable and she doesn’t shy away from having an opinion,” Ms. Balshin said.
“She’s developed good relationships in and around the NHL because the league is always wanting her to be an ambassador. Sarah is smart and has used those opportunities wisely.”
She’d been invited on the ice during previous NHL all-star weekends, but this was a much bigger reception – more than 16,000 fans at Scotiabank Arena to watch the PWHL stars play 3 on 3. “It felt like a full-circle moment,” Ms. Nurse said.
Balancing life and work takes effort for Ms. Nurse, who has to leave behind her Pomeranian, Romeo, when she travels for games.Narisa Ladak/The Globe and Mail
Days off for the team are rarely quiet for Ms. Nurse. Sometimes she fits in a sponsor meeting, or drops off Romeo, her tiny white Pomeranian, with people caring for him while she travels to compete.
Ms. Nurse admits that it all can be a lot sometimes.
“I definitely struggle with a little bit of impostor syndrome,” she said. “Because sometimes I’m like, ‘Man, we’ve become so successful together, like, how did I get to be the face of this, or the face of that?’ But I don’t see pressure as a negative thing. I just look at myself, and I’m like ‘I just don’t believe that I can fail.’”
Recently, one of her brothers, Isaac, was in Toronto playing for the University of New Brunswick in the U Sports hockey championships. After one practice, she had raced from Ford Performance Centre to Mattamy Arena and caught the last six minutes of his game – the first she’d seen in his UNB career.
“I’ve been absolutely exhausted throughout this week,” she said. “But being able to see my little brother, who I never get to see, or my mom and dad, has made me exponentially happier and given me that extra jolt.”
Her social time is “pretty much cut down to nothing,” but after working this long to have a women’s pro league, Ms. Nurse says she’s not complaining. It’s a good sort of busy.
“This is what we asked for.”
Mark Blinch/Getty Images
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