Leslie siblings, Zac and Rebecca, pushing each other in pursuit of hockey dreams
By , Calgary Sun
You can always lean on family.
Including, in this case, when you need somebody to lean on you.
These siblings, like so many, sharpened their skills on a backyard rink.
Now, Rebecca and Zac Leslie are inching closer to realizing their childhood dreams — one shortlisted to represent Canada at the upcoming women’s world hockey championship, the other continuing his climb with the Calgary Flames’ farm team.
“We always skate together — that was always our thing,” Rebecca said. “We’d do power-skating together and even this winter, we got on the ice together before his season started and before I headed out to January camp with Hockey Canada.
“A lot of the times, I’m the only girl on the ice so Zac has to kind of remind the guys, ‘It’s OK, you can go a little bit harder on her. She’ll be fine.’ He shows no mercy when he is on the ice with me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I remember we did a skills session with a bunch of guys one year and there was one thing I really wanted to work on, which was puck protection in the corners. There was no guy that was really my size, so Zac was like, ‘I’ll stay on with you.’ It was funny and everybody was laughing, because he was just hitting me as hard he could into the boards. Everybody was like, ‘This is not really realistic for her, but it’s going to make her better.’ It was great.”
Zac, who is 27 months older, stands seven inches taller and weighs about 60 lb. more than Rebecca, chuckles at the memory of those one-on-one battle drills.
He’s quick to point out, however, it wasn’t just a family flex or some sort of sibling strong-arming.
“It’s as much about me understanding her skill level as it is me being her brother and being hard on her,” Zac stressed. “It’s just as much me knowing that they play a hard, fast, skilled game, just like the boys do, and there are no shortage of those little battles that happen in the women’s game, as much as in the men’s game. So yeah, it’s my sister and I’m probably not afraid to be a little harder on her, but at the same time, I understand that she’s more than capable of taking that battle, just as much as the boys would.”
The Leslies hail from Ottawa, but their puck pursuits brought both to the Stampede City. They just missed overlapping.
Rebecca, after a standout collegiate career with the Boston University Terriers, helped the Calgary Inferno capture a Clarkson Cup title in 2019 in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League. This was home-base for two seasons so she could be close to the national program headquarters, but the 24-year-old forward returned east due to the pandemic and has been training with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association cohort in Montreal.
Zac, meanwhile, made the move to Calgary this winter when the AHL’s Stockton Heat were temporarily relocated due to cross-border travel restrictions. The 27-year-old defenceman is an alternate captain for the Flames’ affiliate but is signed to a minor-league deal and would need an upgraded contract to be eligible for a call-up.
