OTTAWA — Nearly 6,000 miles away from her hometown in Hokkaido, Japan, Akane Shiga was being asked about the weather.
Mike Hirshfeld, general manager of Ottawa’s PWHL team, was sitting with Shiga and coach Carla MacLeod in the team office at TD Place Arena, speaking to the 22-year-old forward and Japanese national team member through her interpreter.
“She’s looking at me like, ‘What is he talking about?’” Hirshfeld said about the playful preamble to an important bit of news ahead of the PWHL’s final roster deadline.
Because what Hirshfeld really wanted to know was how Shiga felt about spending the winter in Ottawa, as a member of the newest pro team in Canada’s capital.
When he told Shiga that she’d made the team, “her face just lit up,” Hirshfeld said.
“I feel very honored to be given this opportunity,” Shiga told The Athletic through her interpreter, Madoka Suzuki.
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The moment was the culmination of a hockey journey that saw Shiga travel across the world for her chance to play professional hockey in North America. Despite her credentials — an Olympian and four-time member of Japan’s World Championship team — she was not selected in the 15-round PWHL Draft in September. Unswayed, Shiga flew to Ottawa alone in November, with no guarantee of a contract, to try out for the team.
Her skating ability, quick release and hockey IQ impressed Ottawa’s braintrust and earned Shiga a one-year contract.
Now, she is a historic player in a historic league embarking on a singular path: Shiga is the youngest player in the PWHL and the only Japanese-born player.
This season Shiga is adjusting to her first year as a professional hockey player, and simultaneously adapting to life in a new country and learning a new language.
“To know the courage it took for her to fly over here on her own and walk into an environment where she didn’t speak the language and she didn’t know anyone,” MacLeod said. “To know at that moment that she had gambled on herself and she earned her opportunity — that’s what sport is all about.”
Where Shiga grew up in Hokkaido — the northernmost and second-largest island in Japan — hockey is, at the very least, an option.
Some might call it Japan’s hockey hotbed, with most of the national team players coming from the northern region.
“If you want to play hockey, it’s accessible,” Shiga said through her interpreter. “But it’s not a sport that everyone picks to play like it is in Canada.”
In Tokyo, on the other hand, where Suzuki — who was hired to serve as Shiga’s interpreter in November and plays hockey at Carleton University in Ottawa — is from, “you’re kind of a weirdo if you’re playing hockey,” he said with a laugh.
According to the IIHF, there are only 1,281 registered female hockey players in Japan, with a national population of about 124 million. There are more indoor rinks in Canada (2,860) and registered female players in the state of Florida (1,517). Shiga is the star of the Japanese women’s national team, and in 2021 she became the first Japanese player to score against Team USA. (Dennis Pajot / Getty Images)