Kristin Della Rovere is still riding that Olympic high

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Five days removed from the closing ceremonies of her first Olympic Games, Kristin Della Rovere is still processing, still trying to find the right words to describe these life-changing Olympics.

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“Every day there was some amazing thing happening,” Della Rovere said of the past month or so in Milano/Cortina. “You meet some insanely cool athletes, some insanely cool people. You have people from all over the world and just a really special place.”

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A Canadian by birth, this Caledon, Ont. native’s path to Olympic participation wasn’t the traditional one.

Owning both Italian and Macedonian heritage on account of her mother and her grandparents, Della Rovere wound up representing Italy in the hockey portion of the Games, only she didn’t just represent, she led the Italian team in scoring and helped them to a quarter-final berth that exceeded both internal and external expectations for the National Italian women’s program.

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So how does a young woman who grew up in Caledon playing for the Caledon Hawks and later the Brampton Canadettes wind up playing for the host Italians at the Olympics?

In short, your play sparked interest in the Italian federation, which contacted Della Rovere back in 2022 while she was still a student (not to mention captain of the hockey team) at Harvard to see if she would have any interest in playing for Italy in the 2026 Olympics.

All it required was an eight-month term in Italy playing in the Italian league to cement her naturalization and make her eligible.

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Many hurdles popped up

At the time, Della Rovere, as much as she was intrigued by the idea of competing in the Olympics, wasn’t sure hockey was going to be a path she took coming out of university.

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When she did decide hockey was going to be her focus, more hurdles popped up.

Initially, she signed to play in the PHF, but that league folded almost immediately to make way for the PWHL. Della Rovere persevered and was selected in the inaugural PWHL draft by the Ottawa Charge.

Then, a season-ending injury in Year 1 of that league, which required surgery, shook up her plans again.

“Everything was constantly changing, but (playing in the Olympics for Italy) was always in the back of my head,” she said.

It was coming out of that injury when Della Rovere made the decision to go to Italy and play in the Italian league rather than focus on her professional career in the PWHL.

“That was the start of my Olympic journey,” she said.

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Flash forward to the 2025-26 season and Della Rovere jumped at the chance to go to training camp with the Toronto Sceptres, as close to a hometown team as the Caledon forward could find professionally, where she earned a spot on the team’s reserve list.

That role was ideal in that it allowed her, with plenty of cooperation between both the Italian team and Sceptres management, to take part in Italy’s pre-Olympic centralization.

Della Rovere said the importance of those camps — two-month-long camps in Montreal followed by another camp in Italy just before the Olympics — were instrumental in setting up the Italian program for success in Milano/Cortina.

“That was crucial to the Olympic experience for us,” Della Rovere said, noting the makeup of the team was so diverse, including players from the Italian league, a few naturalized professionals like herself, as well as some from the NCAA ranks and even a couple from the Canadian USports ranks.

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“That centralization and building those relationships and chemistry was a big part of the Olympic experience in general and I’m just grateful that I got a chance to be a part of that and had the support I did from both the Sceptres and the National team,” Della Rovere said.

Memories from Olympic tournament

The Olympic tournament itself started out in almost perfect fashion for the Italians as they got a win over France in the first game to set themselves up to meet that goal of qualifying for the quarterfinals.

“My top memory I keep replaying in my head is after we won that first game against France, we skated a lap around the arena and just hearing the cheering and the support and that feeling of pride, I can’t even describe it properly,” she said, “but it was definitely one of the highlights of the Olympics for me.”

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Italy would go on to post a 2-2 record in their preliminary round and earn a date with the eventual gold-medal champion U.S. squad in the quarter-finals.

Della Rovere said the Italians were very much aware of what they were up against in that quarter-final, calling the Americans the “deepest women’s roster probably ever assembled,” but she was very proud of the fight she and her Italian teammates put up.

The Americans had a 1-0 lead going into the second period before the game opened up a little and the U.S. started to pull away.

“We knew going into that game that we were facing the best hockey team in the world,” Della Rovere said. “We knew they were incredibly skilled … We knew it would be tough, but we didn’t want to make it easy for them.”

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Time with Italy far from over

With the Olympics over, Della Rovere is back in Canada practising with the Sceptres, but her Italian National team experience is far from over.

She will head out to Budapest in April for the Group A and B World Championships, looking to maintain Italy’s Group A status and maybe, just maybe, earn a promotion to the Premier Group, which includes the likes of Canada and the U.S.

The Olympic experience with Italy though, has cemented one thing for Della Rovere. This proud Canadian is both willing and expecting to remain a member of Italy’s national program.

“It’s hard to say where things will be in three or four years, but I plan on sticking around (with Italy) for as long as I play hockey and I know there are a bunch of girls from that team that are in that same boat,” she said.

mganter@postmedia.com

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