FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Florida Panthers are looking to sign a high-scoring forward who has an Olympic gold medal and two world championships, hoping to finalize the deal in the coming days.
If it happens, she won’t play for the Panthers.
Sarah Nurse, the Canadian forward who scored a highlight goal against the New York Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin during Friday night’s NHL All-Star Skills Competition, has a chance to lead the Panthers’ new program aimed at getting more girls to play hockey.
Florida President Matthew Caldwell offered the nurse the job publicly — very publicly, at a lectern, with a microphone, in front of a crowd of onlookers Saturday morning. And he meant business.
“I’m going to embarrass you, but we’re going to offer you a job today,” Caldwell said to Nurse, who was sitting in the crowd. “We want you to be the face of our girls’ program at War Memorial. So are you in? On site? We don’t deal with agents, OK. I am a tough negotiator.”
The idea of hiring Nurse was first pitched to Caldwell by Melissa Fitzgerald. she is the one Director of the War Memorial, This is the two-rink facility that is being renovated by the team and will become their training center.
“We’ve been talking about this for a few weeks,” Caldwell told The Associated Press. “Our youth hockey team brought it to me as a joke, but I said, ‘Let’s think big. We’re building this huge facility. Let’s put our money where our mouth is.’”
The only part Caldwell didn’t take seriously about Nurse was that the Panthers don’t handle agents. After the event, he spoke to Nurse representative Thomas Houlton.
Houlton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He and Caldwell spoke about 15 minutes after Saturday’s event, which included NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Panthers stars Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, and dozens of kids who got to play ball hockey afterwards.
Nurse played for Canada’s world-winning teams in 2021 and 2022, along with Canada’s Olympic champions at last year’s Beijing Games.
She was one of five players from USA Hockey and Team Canada — the two most dominant women’s national teams in the world — to compete in Friday night’s Skills events. She wore custom skates that highlighted Black History Month and Black Girl Hockey Club, a nonprofit organization focused on getting more black girls and women into sports.
She used a move made famous by Hall of Famer Peter Forsberg when he helped Sweden win gold at the 1994 Olympics against Shesterkin, a goalkeeper who won the Vezina Trophy.
US star Hilary Knight felt Nurse’s goal shouldn’t have surprised anyone, saying: “She’s a top scorer.”
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