PWHL star Natalie Spooner relishing 11th world championship after returning from knee surgery

Natalie Spooner had April 2025 circled on her calendar.

The reigning PWHL MVP missed the beginning of this season as she recovered from off-season knee surgery, the product of an injury she sustained during the Toronto Sceptres's first-round playoff loss to Minnesota last spring.

But Spooner knew she wanted to be back and up to full speed in time to help defend Canada's title as world champions. The Canadians begin play on Thursday in the Czech Republic, with Finland up first on the team's schedule.

"I'm glad I'm here," Spooner said in an interview with CBC Sports's Hockey North.

"I'm so excited to be here, grateful to be here and just looking forward to getting on that ice and representing my country again. It's been so much fun just to be back with the girls and this group. It's such an amazing group."

It caps off a whirlwind two years for Spooner, who not only returned to play in the PWHL's inaugural season about a year after giving birth to her son, Rory, but led the league in points and goals. She was also named the International Ice Hockey Federation's Female Player of the Year.

Then, she resumed play in February after recovering from ACL surgery. It didn't take long to return to her usual office: planted in front of the net, making life difficult for PWHL goalies.

"We are tremendously proud of the work she has invested in getting herself to this point," Toronto GM Gina Kingsbury said when Spooner rejoined the Sceptres's lineup. "This has been a long journey, and she has shown throughout this process just how elite of an athlete she is."

After more than a decade on the world stage, 34-year-old Spooner still gets excited to see the Canadian locker room, decorated to feel like home, and the ice where her team will compete. This year will be her 11th world championship, and she'll be competing alongside five teammates who will be having their first taste of the senior national team at worlds. 

It takes her back to the nerves and anticipation she felt back in 2011, at her first worlds in Switzerland.

A year later, she won her first world championship in Vermont. After getting trounced by the Americans 9-2 in the preliminary round, Spooner and captain Hayley Wickenheiser organized some team bonding in the form of a flash mob dance in the team meal room.

WATCH | Spooner previews Team Canada at the women's world championship on Hockey North:

When the Canadians met the Americans again in the final, the result was much different: a 5-4 overtime championship win, thanks to a clinching goal from Caroline Ouellette.

Spooner also thinks about a very different competition inside a COVID bubble in Calgary in 2021. After two cancelled tournaments, months off the ice and a lot of time spent alone inside hotel rooms, the Canadians became world champions for the first time in more than a decade.