From retirement to Olympic training camp: How Daryl Watts found her way back to hockey

Three summers ago, Daryl Watts looked at her phone and felt a pang of envy.

She saw videos of friends on the ice at hockey practice. Meanwhile, Watts, who'd won the coveted Patty Kazmaier Award for the top player in women's college hockey a few years before, was working at a summer internship in commercial real estate in downtown Toronto.

That job in the summer of 2022 was supposed to be the start of a new chapter. Watts didn't see a future or a career in hockey. After her time in college came to an end at the University of Wisconsin, she hung up her skates.

But hockey wouldn't let her go. Watts put her skates back on 10 months after she retired.

"I'm just so grateful and happy that I'm playing hockey because I feel like that's what I was meant to do," Watts said in an interview with CBC Sports. "It's my first love."

Watts is competing for a spot on the Canadian Olympic team, something she's dreamed about since she was a little girl. The 26-year-old was one of 30 players named to Hockey Canada's training camp roster earlier this summer. That will take her to Calgary next week for the team's first training block.

Back in 2010, a 10-year-old Watts was cheering in the stands in Vancouver, her face painted red and a Canadian flag in her arms, as the Canadian women won Olympic gold. It was a family trip, and for a self-described "super fan," the women's hockey final was the most anticipated event.

Now, she has the chance to write her own Olympic story.

"I'm so happy to see her being part of that centralization camp," said Canadian captain Marie-Philip Poulin, who Watts cheered for in Vancouver in 2010.

"She has so much talent. You see her from year one to year two, how much she has grown as a person, as a player. She's confident. She's skilled. She sees the game. She can snipe in important moments."

As she's worked to get here, she's kept a piece of wisdom from her trainer, former NHLer Gary Roberts, close to her heart: "Keep working until it's undeniable that you deserve an opportunity."

Watts may not be here today if it wasn't for the Premier Hockey Federation, the league that was shut down in the summer of 2023 to make way for the PWHL.

The Toronto Six lured Watts out of retirement when the league increased its salary cap to $1.5 million US per team. The contract she signed was due to pay her a then-record $150,000 in 2023-24.

Watts won a championship with the Six before the league disappeared, along with her contract.

She was drafted by Ottawa in the sixth round of the PWHL's inaugural draft in September 2023.

As she worked to get back into hockey shape after her time away, Watts turned to Roberts and his staff at Gary Roberts Performance. She credits his team with changing her lifestyle, from re-creating nearly a year's worth of lost muscle to changing the way she ate.

WATCH | Watts Mic'd up with the Sceptres:

"They kind of built my body from not having any hockey muscle to three summers later and I feel like I'm stronger and more conditioned than I've ever been," Watts said. "They've taken my game to a whole other level."

In her first season in the PWHL, Watts led Ottawa with 10 goals in 24 games. It earned her an invitation to the national team's September camp in 2024.

Last season, with her hometown Toronto Sceptres, Watts took another step. She was part of the best power play in the league, and finished the regular season with 27 points in 30 games, behind only Sarah Fillier and Hilary Knight.

She also made her Rivalry Series and world championship debut, logging top-six minutes along the way.

Historically, it had been hard for a player to make the national team if they didn't make it out of college. Watts wasn't one of the players chosen to try out for the senior team ahead of the 2022 Olympics.

The PWHL has changed that. With the best players in the world competing in one league, players like Watts, Sophie Jaques and Kati Tabin have forced themselves into the Team Canada conversation.

"You're playing with some of the best players and against them," Watts' teammate, Natalie Spooner, said on CBC's Hockey North earlier this year. "Getting to see Watts and how she's excelled in the PWHL, every time she's on the ice, she's a threat."

Watts isn't the biggest player, standing only five-foot-six, but has always had skill in spades. Since college, she's also developed more speed, which helps her evade pressure on the ice. It's something she attributes to her summer workouts with Roberts and his staff.

That led to Watts being one of the Sceptres' protected players in this past spring's expansion draft, over veteran forward Sarah Nurse and top 2024 draft pick, Julia Gosling.

"I don't think Daryl is replaceable here moving forward," Kingsbury told reporters after her team's protection list was revealed. "I don't think there's a Daryl in this draft or a Daryl available in free agency. I think Daryl brings a very unique skill set, an offensive skill set that we're just really excited and eager to continue to grow with and try to stretch her as much as we possibly can."

In some ways, Watts considers the season a failure, even if she excelled. The Sceptres were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

But she has a long list of things she wants to improve upon going into her third PWHL campaign, including tweaks on the power play to better defensive-zone coverage.

Three years after she left the game, Watts couldn't imagine what might have happened had she not come back. The thought doesn't run through her mind because she can't picture being anywhere else.

That comes from a love of the game, one she's had since she was a Leafs-obsessed kid growing up in Toronto, and a desire to push herself and see how far she can go.

For Watts, the hope is she ends up in Italy in February, going for gold.

In the dog days of summer, a few days before leaving for her first pre-Olympic camp, Watts noted that it had been three months since she'd played a meaningful hockey game. Far too long.

"If I could, I would play a hockey game every single day," she said. "Fundamentally, that's kind of what drives me. I love to do it. It's what I love to do the most."