When did you first see a woman wearing hockey equipment on a TV, movie or computer screen? If you grew up in Canada in the 1980s, you might recall the 1984 CBC TV movie Hockey Night. It tells the fictional story of a young female goaltender – portrayed by Anne of Green Gables actress Megan Follows – on a boys’ hockey team.

However, in 2020, viewers all over the world have a much wider selection of high-quality non-fiction women’s hockey programming to enjoy. Often, it’s just a click away on YouTube or other online outlets.

Especially in the last decade, women’s hockey documentaries have exploded. If you’re missing this incredible sport, now is a good time to catch up on your viewing, from 10-minute featurettes to full-length specials. You can even hone your language skills, with women’s hockey documentaries in English, French, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, and other languages.

So let’s dive into some of the best women’s hockey documentaries, sorted by countries. Please note that all these documentaries are from official sources. Some videos may not be available for viewing in certain regions. The IIHF does not endorse all the content in every video.

Canada

The last time Canada’s women won Olympic gold was absolutely unforgettable. At the 2014 Olympics, Marie-Philip Poulin was the heroine with her overtime goal. Relive the 3-2 comeback victory over the Americans with RDS’s “Miracle à Sotchi”. The French-language documentary offers more than 45 minutes of heart-pounding action and nostalgie with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Learn about IIHF Hall of Famer Hayley Wickenheiser’s life after hockey in a 2017 interview with the CBC’s Wendy Mesley.

Another CBC report from 2015 offers a flashback to the then-budding rivalry between the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) and the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL).

Or go even further back with Les Stars, a 2014 documentary about the Montreal Stars, the original CWHL incarnation of Les Canadiennes de Montreal.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Shannon Szabados spent parts of four seasons competing against men in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL). CBC spotlighted the Canadian veteran’s time with the Columbus Cottonmouths.

If the future of professional women’s hockey is on your mind, don’t miss Montreal journalist Kevin Raphael’s Gap Year, below in three parts:

Another film heralding the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) is The Dream Gap, produced by ex-Markham Thunder forward Ailish Forfar. It debuted at Toronto’s Paradise Theatre in January. Check out the trailer:

TSN’s Engraved on a Nation: On the Line is a compelling look at the Canada-U.S. rivalry. Canadian viewers can find it on Crave Canada, and the trailer is available here:

Angela James, who made history when she was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame (2008) alongside fellow Canadian Geraldine Heaney and the U.S.’s Cammi Granato, narrates a short overview of Canadian women’s sports since 1948.

The 1998 Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team earned a silver medal at the inaugural Winter Games tournament in Nagano, Japan. That team is immortalized in The Game of Her Life, a National Film Board documentary by director Lyn Writer.

For something completely different, Lace Bite (2013) documents how a group of Vancouver-area women set the then-world record for the longest hockey game (243 hours and 5 minutes). This fundraiser for cystic fibrosis included goalie Danielle Dube, who won gold at the 1997 Women’s Worlds in Kitchener, Ontario. Watch the trailer or get the full 50-minute documentary on Amazon Prime or DocuBay.

Finland

The 2019 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship captured the imagination of Finnish fans. The home team won an historic silver medal in Espoo amid drama, controversy, and heroics, with a TV audience of 2.5 million for the final in Finland alone.

To learn more about the Lionesses’ on-ice skills, off-ice lives, and personalities, check out short movies about Ronja Savolainen, Nelli Laitinen, Tanja Niskanen, and Isa Rahunen.

Savolainen, who scored twice in Finland’s 4-2 semi-final win over Canada last year, has also produced her own videos with long-time Lulea teammate Rebecca Stenberg. Find out what it’s like for the two friends to train and travel with the Swedish club to Stockholm on an SDHL road trip, or to New York for the Champions Cup against the NWHL’s Metropolitan Riveters.

Also, check out the trailer for Jaansarkija (“Icebreaker”), a soon-to-be-released documentary about Susanna Tapani. It covers her life from 2015 to 2019, as she stars not only in ice hockey, but also in ringette and inline hockey.

Wondering what it’s like to attend an IIHF High-Performance Women’s Camp in Vierumaki, Finland? Catch a glimpse of the young athletes and their instructors coming from all over the world and get pumped up with these retrospectives from 2014, 2016, and 2018.

Russia

With host Daria Mironova, the Russian Women’s Hockey League (WHL) offers a wealth of material to entertain and educate its fans. A feature on the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays’ 2020 championship victory over Agidel Ufa is a perfect example.

Do you want to know what China-based snipers like Alex Carpenter and Leah Lum think about visiting Russia? Do you want to see WHL players taking a cooking class? It’s all waiting for you.

The WHL also has documentaries on homegrown talents like forwards Olga Sosina, Lyudmila Belyakova and goalie Maria Sorokina.

United States

In 2019, Kendall Coyne Schofield put the spotlight squarely on women’s hockey when she became the first woman ever to participate in the NHL All-Star Skills fastest skater competition. Her 14.346-second lap was the genesis for As Fast As Her, produced by the Chicago Blackhawks.

Fans of U.S. college women’s hockey will relish The Best Kept Secret. It’s a look inside the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers program under coach Brad Frost. It was produced during their record-setting 2012/13 campaign with 41 straight wins, courtesy of Hannah Brandt, Megan Bozek, and Noora Raty.

European players often benefit from NCAA scholarships, and 2016/17 was a big season for Aneta Ledlova. Not only did the Czech forward finish seventh in Women’s Worlds scoring with six points in Plymouth, Michigan, but she also helped Robert Morris University qualify for the NCAA national tournament for the first time. Relive the Pennsylvania team’s journey in Together We Can.

Other Countries

The Unified Korean team sparked hopes for world peace with their gutsy run at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang. You can read about it in books like Beate Grupp’s United – The Story Behind and Seth Berkman’s A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History. You can also watch the official 37-minute Olympic Channel documentary, We Are One.



Hockey in the Himalayas? Yes, that’s a thing. The short outdoor skating season in the Ladakh region runs from December to February, but that hasn’t stopped the Indian women’s national team from competing in the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s Challenge Cup of Asia. See how both girls and boys are learning the sport from Czech trainers in this 2019 documentary from Pixel Challenger Studios.

In Underdogs (2018), the recent internal and external struggles of Swedish women’s hockey are showcased through the eyes of long-time national team members Johanna Fallman and Emma Eliasson. See the trailer online.

On a more uplifting note, you can take a trip down memory lane with Malin Moin’s music video for “The World Is Mine,” the official song of the 2015 Women’s Worlds in Malmo, Sweden. It features backing vocals from the Damkronorna.