Bringing a wealth of experience and her alumni status, Morgan McHaffie has been named head coach of the Queen’s Women’s Hockey team for the 2023-24 season.
McHaffie was born in Woodstock, Ontario, a town she said provided no real opportunity for girls to play organized hockey at the time. Around the age of ten, McHaffie and her family moved to Guelph, and she soon began making her way through the minor hockey circuit.
Eventually, McHaffie worked her way onto the Cambridge Fury of the Women’s Western Hockey League, where she played a total of 64 games and achieved 91 points over two seasons. From there, she came to Queen’s to pursue a degree in physical health and education while playing for the Gaels.
At Queen’s, she was a stand out on the Women’s Hockey team, picking up 153 points in a 128-game career. McHaffie secured two OUA gold medals in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons, ending her career with the second-highest total points accumulated in Queen’s Women’s Hockey history.
McHaffie’s talent on ice was paralleled only by her capacity to see the game. This would later lead Matt Holmberg, former head coach of the Gaels, to reach out to McHaffie and offer her a spot as an assistant coach in the 2014-15 season. She has held this position over the last seven years.
Prior to her work with Queen’s, McHaffie devoted her hockey knowledge to assisting others. She helped coach various teams and ran training camps in and around the Guelph area, starting at the high school level.
Since McHaffie’s induction into the Queen’s coaching staff, the Gaels have steadily sat above an even win-loss ratio, except for the last couple of seasons. According to McHaffie, the Gaels will look to get back to typical form as playoff contenders this season.
With a decorated winner like McHaffie taking the reins, there will be a new look coming to the Gaels team.
McHaffie is looking at a fresh approach for the season, placing a heavy emphasis on how creativity will help the team be at the top of the competition come playoff season.
“Enhancing our creativity and hockey sense on the ice will help create an environment where we’re going to be able to beat some of those top teams,” she said in an interview with The Journal.
Aside from creativity, McHaffie hinted at the blue-collar approach touched on by various Gaels coaches in previous interviews.
“Creating more of an identity that we’re just going to be so difficult to play against, we’re just going to shut down time and space, suffocating the opponent in a way that they just can’t get the puck out of their end,” she said.
Fans can catch this new creative approach on Sept. 23 in an exhibition game at the Leon’s Centre against the University of Montreal Carabins.
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