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Linemates to Lifemates: A Hockey Love Story

Newlywed PWHL stars Laura Stacey and Marie-Philip Poulin navigate the complications of marriage and career

By Devin Heroux, CBC Sports, Nov. 21, 2024

When you walk into the Montreal home of Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey, one of the first things you’ll notice is that there’s not much to suggest the couple are two of the greatest hockey players in the world today.

They aren’t the type of people to boast about their long list of achievements.

Their two-storey abode, with a spiraling glass staircase, is tucked on a quiet suburban street, located off-island away from the hustle and bustle of downtown. Purchased three years ago, it’s the perfect place to keep a low profile.

There are no trophies, plaques or medals on display that showcase the Olympic and world championships they’ve collected. No photos or banners of their hockey triumphs. Those are reserved for Arlo, a golden retriever that is their pride and joy.

There’s an Arlo treat jar. An Arlo candle. At their wedding in late September the napkins at each table were adorned with Arlo photos. He features prominently on their social media

Their home, in many ways, resembles how these newlyweds and PWHL Montreal Victoire teammates have lived their lives. They’ve been intentional about hiding from the spotlight, hiding their love, and hiding the most intimate parts of their lives.

Over the past year that’s started to change.

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Sitting in their living room on an October afternoon just before they begin training camp for a second season, the two share what this has all been like, including now being part of a true pro women’s hockey league, something they wondered and many before them wondered would ever happen in their lifetime.

“Being able to say we're professional women's hockey players, it's pretty amazing,” Poulin says. “And seeing little girls wanting to be there one day is better than we ever expected. And we don't take it for granted.”

Nor do they take for granted the freedom they have to live their lives as they wish.

“This is probably the most myself I've ever been,” Poulin says. “Being myself, having the community, family and friends embracing me, embracing us, embracing this new team. And it doesn't matter who you love, it's who you are. And I think that's the best part about it.”

It hasn’t been easy for many who have come before them. Twenty-six years ago in Nagano when women’s hockey debuted as an official Olympic sport, some media coverage focused more on the sexual orientation of the players than the competition.

But relationships among athletes are slowly gaining a normality in women’s pro sports. In 2021, married couple Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot won a WNBA championship with the Chicago Sky, and they are just one of many couples in the league.

Women’s sports is undergoing a transformative expansion — new leagues, more money and investment, increased media coverage — and the story of teammates as couples is only going to become more common.

“I've always been the hockey player. But I have a wife and I can be myself. People are coming to the rink and saying thank you for allowing me to be myself,” Poulin says.

Stoic and composed in a hockey arena, Poulin’s eyes well up as she talks about their September wedding. Stacey sits beside her, Arlo on the couch. Tears are streaming down Poulin's cheeks and she hides her face under her black ball cap.

“She’s a crier,” Stacey says, rubbing her hand along Poulin’s back, filling the space between tears as Poulin tries to compose herself.

Poulin, 33, has kept who she really is buried for years, shoved away in the depths of all that she is. She was only going to let people know her as this great hockey player who comes up clutch in the biggest moments.

Poulin is the only hockey player in history to have scored in four Olympic gold-medal games. Her heroics in the 2014 Olympic final — tying the game with a late goal and then winning it in overtime against the United States to capture gold — put her in a category all by herself. She’s been seemingly unstoppable for years.

Stacey, 30, found a way to break through that tough exterior, to strike at the heart of all the things that matter to Poulin.

“She puts up that front of, ‘I'm the hockey player’. That's all people see and have seen of her,” Stacey says. “The world knows her as the best hockey player in the world, but they don't know her as the best person in the world as well.

“And I've been fortunate enough to see that but now for the world to see that too, it's pretty special.”

If Poulin has helped make Stacey a better hockey player, Stacey has assisted Poulin in living her most authentic life.

And in a lot of ways, they have become bigger than the game.

Their late-September wedding at Le Peaches and Cream in Low, Que., is described by many of the 192 family members and friends who were in attendance as the perfect day. Poulin and Stacey both call it “the best day of their lives” — an epic celebration of life and love, the culmination of a relationship that began in 2017 when they locked eyes while swimming at a Team Canada event at Blue Mountain in southern Ontario.

Stacey had just competed in her first world championship, Poulin a decorated champion many times over. They were teammates, but they didn’t really know a lot about one another.

“A few of us decided to go skinny dipping in the pool at 2 a.m.” Stacey says. “The two of us looked up into the sky at the same time and we saw a shooting star. Our eyes met and we asked each other if we just saw that. Nobody else in the pool saw it or knew what was going on but we saw it. For the rest of that night it was a weird feeling. I had a feeling.

“We always go back to that moment. Even in my wedding vows, that was the thing — that she was the wish I had always dreamed of and I didn’t realize it until now.”

Poulin, who’s happy to take a backseat to Stacey’s storytelling, jumps in.

“You should have seen the skyline the weekend of our wedding. It was so bright and magical. Stars everywhere. I believe in those little signs,” she says.

It was an idyllic setting for the two to share their vows, with vibrant, fall-coloured trees, expansive fields of lush green grass and breathtaking sunsets surrounding a barn-like building. There was a fire pit too, and on the eve of the big day, all of their friends gathered around the flames, sharing stories, drinks and laughs.

The crescendo came during the late-night dance party, when Poulin and Stacey had changed out of their stunning white dresses and into matching white pant suits, joyously leaping around to Celine Dion’s It's All Coming Back to Me Now.

With everyone surrounding them in a big circle, Poulin and Stacey jumped up and down, shouting, smiling. “Baby, baby, baby,” they sang, swept away in a moment that quickly went viral on social media.

It’s pretty remarkable considering Poulin and Stacey are the last of a generation that had to play on all-boys teams.

“I dreamed of playing for the Leafs because that’s all I knew. And that wasn’t possible but it’s the only thing I saw,” Stacey says.

No longer. They are now what young girls see — Olympic champions as teammates in 2022, twice as world champions — and working toward a championship as linemates on the Montreal Victoire.

Before they were even in this position the two had to navigate free agency ahead of the new beginning for the PWHL.

All six teams were able to select three players ahead of the league’s inaugural player draft on Sept. 18, 2023. Hometown hero Poulin was always going to Montreal — that was never in question. But would her then-fiancee and national teammate also be part of that deal?

And that was just it. Poulin and Stacey made it very clear throughout the entire process they were not a package deal — and didn’t want to be considered one.

“It was really, really hard on me,” Stacey says. “I had conversations with all of the GMs and stated that I'm only coming or only want to be drafted by you if you actually want me as a person and a player.

“Obviously there's always those thoughts that go through your head that they're only taking me or they're only asking me to sign early because they want her.”

Stacey even considered skipping free agency just so that she’d be part of a draft and not have to endure being favoured because she was Poulin’s partner.

“We did have those hard conversations, the two of us sitting here and seeing what was going to happen,” Poulin says. “There was no package deal. And that was something that we take a lot of pride in. I'm myself, she's herself.”

Enter Montreal Victoire general manager Dani��le Sauvageau. She’s been part of women’s hockey for decades and was head coach when Canada’s women won gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Sauvageau was deliberate in making sure Stacey and Poulin were treated like two separate players, with separate conversations with each.

“For me it was important that the choice was made individually,” Sauvageau says. “Is she going to think we value her because of the context of her private life? We had to ask that question. I wanted to do the exercise to show her that wasn’t the reason. I wanted to sign her.”

Sauvageau says their decision to pick Poulin and goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens was easy, but choosing their third and final free agent was a process. They had a five-player wishlist. Stacey was on that list — and they weren’t going to roll the dice on missing out on her.

“When you look at Stacey the last two or three years — the best line of Team Canada — she never gives up," Sauvageau says. “She brings a lot of energy. She’s a student of the game.

“We just didn’t want to lose her.”

Inside their home there’s a warmth and vulnerability the two share. But at the rink, it couldn’t be more different. Home is family. The rink is work.

“You're not going to see us fight or argue. We know it's business and we know we're going to get the best out of each other,” Poulin says. “When we train, we do our work. It's not about us being lovey dovey. It's us getting better, making people around us better.”

They have had to figure out how to give each other constructive criticism and feedback after their games — it’s still a work in progress.

“The first couple of games it was like, how do we do this?” Stacey says. “Do we just talk about it in the car? And then when we get home it's over? And I don't think that worked that well because I know for myself I just can't get over things that quickly.”

“So we did a lot of detours on the way home,” Poulin says, and they both laugh.

“We just kept driving. We just kept driving,” Stacey says.

Jill Saulnier, their teammate at the Beijing Olympics who plays for the New York Sirens, has been practising with the pair in Montreal ahead of the new PWHL season. During an unrelenting two-hour practice on a Thursday morning at the historic Verdun Auditorium, which is the training facility for Montreal, Saulnier is doggedly keeping up with her two best friends in dryland training and on the ice.

“They come to the rink. They’re married. It’s our job and it’s all business for them,” Saulnier says. “They’re able to separate the craziness.”

“I’ve known both of them for 15 years and they were wonderful individuals when I met them and they’re even more wonderful together. I feel that’s such a testament to a powerful relationship."

Erin Ambrose has also played alongside the two of them for years on the national team — and is getting ready to be their teammate on La Victoire for a second season.

“As their teammate and friend, if there’s ever been an issue you’d never know it,” Ambrose says. “It’s heartwarming to see two people lift each other up and genuinely two of the best people you could have in your life.”

Caroline Ouellette knows perhaps better than anyone how tricky it can be to find a balance between being in love and playing the game you love.

She won four Olympic gold medals and a handful of world championship titles with Team Canada between 1999 and 2018, victories that came at the expense of her American partner and now wife, Julie Chu, who starred for Team USA.

For Ouellette it was a question of legitimacy. She was scarred from the coverage at the 1998 Nagano Olympics when women’s hockey made its debut. She still vividly recalls a newspaper highlighting the sexual orientation of the women playing at those Olympics.

“It was front page in Quebec — a sexual orientation that makes people talk — that’s what it was about. The whole article was about maybe there being relationships on the team, maybe with the coach and players. It was so hurtful and negative to the game,” she says. “It was shocking and disappointing.

“It silenced me for years. I took the approach that it wasn’t going to overshadow the performance on the ice.”

For Ouelette it was less about people knowing her and Chu were together and more about keeping the focus on the talent on the ice.

“For me, I still felt I could be myself and be who I was with Julie. I think a lot of the media knew we were together and I’m grateful they didn’t make it something,” Ouellette says.

A lot changed for Ouellette and Chu in 2017 when they celebrated the birth of their daughter, Liv. For Ouelette, it was because there was no hiding anymore.

“We won the Clarkson Cup in 2017 with Liv in my belly. I thought that this was the coolest thing ever and I wanted to win that Cup so badly because I wanted to say we won with too many players on the ice,” she says with a laugh.

Ouellette was ready to share all the parts of her life and fully understands this place Stacey and Poulin have arrived at.

“They complete each other,” she says.

All of this almost never happened.

Six years ago Poulin’s and Stacey’s relationship was on again, off again as they, like many young couples, struggled with the decision of whether they wanted to be together. Poulin had just returned from the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang and was devastated after losing to the Americans in the final. She says it was one of the darkest points of her life.

“I felt like I let the entire country down,” she remembers. “I was one of the leaders. You take everything on your shoulders. I didn't want to see anybody and I was just really on my own.”

She sat in that sadness for weeks, but the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in April 2018, when 16 members of a junior hockey organization were killed, shook her to her core.

“You see parents losing their kids, kids losing their parents. I'm here in my bed and people lost their lives and I'm going to cry over a silver medal?” Poulin says. “That moment switched my perspective. That silver medal probably made me way better. It taught me that when there's hard moments, you get back up.”

That fall, Poulin and Stacey were playing on separate teams in the CWHL, the precursor to the NWHL, Poulin a member of Les Canadiennes and Stacey with the Markham Thunder.

“There was a lot. This is complicated. She was in Montreal. I was in Toronto. We were national teammates. We just stopped talking. I was not talking to her. I was good and ready to move on,” Stacey says.

Poulin wasn’t.

On Oct. 20, they found themselves lined up on opposite ends of the rink. Poulin’s Montreal team beat Stacey’s Thunder 5-1, and in a bold move, Poulin followed Stacey’s team bus back to her hotel after the game.

Poulin sent a text, imploring her to come out to her car to talk.

“She was serious,” Stacey says. “I didn’t know what to tell my roommate. I lied and said I needed to go see my family or something like that.”

Poulin finally convinced her to go for dinner, and the two now use that day as their anniversary.

And while there are many more championships the pair want to collect, they’re also starting to think about what could be next.

That’s where Arlo has picked up the assist.

“Ifwe have a bad practice or bad game, when we come home Arlo does not care. He's going to love us till the very end. And what's not to love about him?” Stacey says. “I think that's just opened our eyes to having a family and growing our family.”

“We've talked about having kids as part of our next project. We love kids. We have friends with kids and we love it. And honestly, it will be the next project for sure,” Poulin says.

There’s a practical part of that conversation — that one of them would have to take a backseat, at least for a bit, to their athletic career.

“And it's going to be interesting for us — two female athletes navigating how to have kids, when to have kids. It's definitely going to take some thought, some planning because it is brand new to us and it's brand new to a lot of people too,” Stacey says.

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