Kati Tabin’s unexpected but earned journey to the Olympics

On Thursday afternoon, Kati Tabin received the call of a lifetime.

The Montreal Victoire defender received the news on a Zoom call with Team Canada’s coaching and management team. The person breaking the news was her PWHL head coach Kori Cheverie, who is also an assistant with the Canadian national team: She was going to the 2026 Olympics.

“I think my first words were ‘holy shit’,” Tabin said on Saturday, less than 24 hours after the roster was publicly announced.

“I think that she was excited, surprised, elated, everything you can think of,” said Cheverie. “She’s been a cornerstone for us in Montreal, she’s played a lot of minutes for us. I don’t think we would be where we are right now without Kati.”

In the three years with the Victoire, Tabin has been a mainstay in the team’s top-four on defence. She provides a blend of physicality, speed, and puck skills that put her on Team Canada’s radar.

“The biggest thing is she owns her strengths,” said Montreal defender Erin Ambrose. “She’s now at the point where she knows that she has that capability to be a game changer every single night. She is one of the best defencemen in Canada and in the world, and I think that when Kati understands that, that’s when Kati’s at her best.”

“Her skating is something that separates her from a lot of players in our league,” Cheverie said.

Tabin is one of seven Canadian women named to the roster who will make their Olympic debut in 2026. Just because it was a surprise to see her make the roster, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t completely deserved. To understand Tabin’s reaction, however, is to understand just how unlikely that call was.

Including Tabin, 78 players have played or been named to Canada’s women’s hockey Olympic team since it debuted in 1998. Tabin is the ninth player to not have a World Championship under her belt at the time. Three of those occurrences happened in 1998, before the World Championships occurred every non-Olympic year. Three of the debuts, including Tabin’s, happened after the launch of the IIHF Women’s World Under-18 Championship in 2008. Tabin is the only one to not even represent Canada at that tournament. Goaltender Kayle Osborne also made her first senior tournament roster on Friday and will be heading to Milan, but is five years younger than Tabin and represented Canada at the U18 level.

The only defender to do it before Tabin was Becky Kellar in 1998.

Tabin, 28, played her first senior-level games in a Team Canada jersey during the past Rivalry Series, where Canada lost all four games to the Americans. Tabin played in the first two games in November, but was not named to the December roster. She said she didn’t really have concerns feeling she showed enough in her two games, and also had open dialogue with Hockey Canada about her chances throughout the process.

“We’re all human, you have doubt,” Tabin said. “I was really happy with how I performed, really happy with how I improved. Ultimately, just being happy with myself and confident allowed me to keep pushing and not worry about stuff I can’t control and just keep grinding.”

At 28 years old, Tabin is the second-oldest Canadian to make her Senior national team debut and excluding the inaugural 1998 Olympic team is the second oldest to make her Olympic debut (not counting alternates or reserve players).

There was a world where this call never would have come, and it isn’t that hard to imagine it. Tabin, in her third season with the Victoire, stepped away from hockey twice before even making her PWHL debut.

Tabin’s NCAA career at Quinnipiac ended without a real resolution because of the pandemic. She had to work and did some on-ice coaching when she re-discovered her love for the game. In 2021, she tried to return to hockey, but her time with the Connecticut Whale of the PHF ended after six games due to Visa issues. The next season, she returned to the game signing with the Toronto Six in the PHF while balancing a second job in the marketing department of Yamaha Motor Canada. She ended up winning the Isobel Cup and was the league’s top scoring defender.

“It’s crazy to look back at now,” Tabin said. “Even just thinking when I quit hockey. I’ve always just had this fire inside of me, to be honest. I’ve always wanted to be the best version of myself, push myself as much as possible and ultimately make it to the top.”

“This has been my ultimate dream forever.”

Then, for a third time, hockey was potentially taken away from her. The PHF dissolved and the PWHL would be born. She entered the draft, where Montreal took her in the fifth round. The rest is history.

“Obviously I wouldn’t be on this team without [the PWHL],” Tabin said. “It’s really cool that I’ve had the opportunity to play in the P-dub and show my skill.”

“I’ve seen more improvement in Kati over the past four months than I have over the three years, even though she’s certainly improved over the three years as well,” said Cheverie.

“She’s always been somebody that I think flew under the radar, whether that was in the PHF, throughout college and even the first two years [of the PWHL],” said Montreal defender Erin Ambrose. To see her finally get this opportunity makes me so happy for her. I was over the moon for Kati.”

Prior to this year, she had been named to one senior Canada camp, in the summer of 2019. That was where she became friends with Ambrose.

When Montreal took Tabin in the fifth round in the inaugural PWHL Draft in 2023, four rounds after they took Ambrose, she said that she turned to Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey.

“Holy f–k, we got a good one,” Ambrose said.

After Tabin got the call, she made sure to tell her close friends and family, and then word started getting around to her teammates that she would be joining them in Italy.

Ambrose was FaceTiming with Renata Fast about them getting the good news when she found out about Tabin making the team.

“I FaceTimed [Tabin] right away,” she said. “I hung up on Renata, I said ‘sorry you’re old news, I gotta call Kati’. There were a lot of F-bombs dropped between the two of us.”

Ambrose, who has said she wouldn’t have won the PWHL’s inaugural defender of the year award without Tabin, wasn’t the only Canadian Olympian on the Victoire to be excited for her.

“She FaceTimed me and I jumped higher than she did, to be honest,” said Montreal goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens. “I thought I PB’d on my jump. She’s one of my good friends and I couldn’t be prouder of her.”

In total nine Victoire players are expected to be representing their country in Milan: Tabin, Ambrose, Desbiens, plus Marie-Philip Poulin, and Laura Stacey were named to Canada’s roster. Hayley Scamurra is on Team USA, Sandra Abstreiter will be Germany’s starter, and rookie Natálie Mlýnková was named to the Czech roster. Lina Ljungblom is expected to represent Sweden, who have yet to officially announce their roster.

The Victoire continue their busy month of January when they take on the Vancouver Goldeneyes on Sunday afternoon in Quebec City. Puck drop is at 2pm.