Goaltender Kim St. Pierre is taking a year off from the Canadian women's hockey team to have a baby.
St. Pierre joins the growing ranks of female athletes who have become pregnant with the intention of continuing their athletic careers, including Canadian hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep.
St. Pierre's teammate Becky Kellar gave birth to two sons while playing hockey in world championships and Olympics.
St. Pierre, from Chateauguay, Que., is a three-time Olympian and has played for Canada's national team since 1998. She was Canada's starting goaltender in an emotional gold-medal win at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
There was a time when pregnancy spelled the end of female athlete's career, but no longer. St. Pierre, 32, intends to return to hockey for the 2012-13 season.
"I'm expecting in February so I'll have a few months to get back in shape and hopefully come back to hockey after that," St. Pierre said Thursday from Montreal.
"I guess probably before people were scared about coming back from a pregnancy, but I've read a lot of books and websites on the Internet. If you keep exercising through the pregnancy, I think it's going to be easier to come back. I really believe it's possible because other athletes have done it in the past."
St. Pierre said she and long-time boyfriend Lenny Jo Goudreau, a movie producer, decided after the 2010 Olympics they wanted to have a child.
"I'm 32 years old now and he's been very patient with me," she said. "He understood that hockey was my career so we waited a little longer to have kids, but for sure we wanted some. The timing was right this summer to announce the great news."
St. Pierre has appeared in nine world championships for Canada and won gold in five. She played for the McGill University men's team in 2003-04 and became the first female goalie to win a CIS men's game Nov. 15, 2003. Her club team is the Montreal Stars, who won a Clarkson Cup last season with St. Pierre in net.
Competition for spots on the national women's team is fierce and St. Pierre plays a position where there are only three spots available.
The starting job has rotated between St. Pierre, Charline Labonte and Shannon Szbados for the last three years and there is considerable pressure coming from younger talent.
St. Pierre says she's prepared to have to win her job back.
"That's a decision I made and whatever happens next season, I'll live with it," she said. "I know the competition is there. There's so many great goalies out there, plus Shannon and Charlie. We'll see what happens next September."
St. Pierre was a spokesperson for a vaginal contraceptive for a few months in 2007.
"That was a while back," she laughed. "It was useful then, but now I'm somewhere else."
So St. Pierre is not among the 40 players attending a national team camp starting Saturday in Calgary. Four goaltenders, a dozen defencemen and 24 forwards will practise and play two intra-squad games, as well as four exhibition game against local midget triple-A boy's teams.
They'll play four exhibition games against local midget triple-A teams. The players will be evaluated by head coach Dan Church and head scout Melody Davidson for possible inclusion on the Four Nations Cup team in November and the 2012 world championship next April.
Among the invitees are 14 players from the Olympic team that won gold in 2010, including forwards Hayley Wickenheiser, Meghan Agosta, Marie-Philippe Poulin, Jayna Hefford and defenceman Tessa Bonhomme.
Christina Kesler of Mississauga, Ont., and Genevieve Lacasse of Kingston, Ont., join Labonte and Szabados as the four goalies invited.
