Longtime Alberta coach guides Canada’s men’s Para ice hockey team

Canada's Paralympic hockey team will start its quest for gold against Slovakia on Saturday. Evan Kenny has more on the team's Alberta connections.

A veteran Alberta hockey coach has taken his whistle and clipboard to new levels and all the way to Italy.

Boris Rybalka has gone national with the Canadian men’s sledge hockey team.

The longtime head coach and general manager of the junior A Camrose Kodiaks was named head coach of the para ice hockey squad last summer after serving two seasons as an assistant with the national program.

He and his staff will guide the men’s team at the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Milano and Cortina starting Saturday through March 15.

Rybalka, who left the Kodiaks in 2023 after five league championships and one national title in more than 25 years with the Alberta Junior Hockey League team, said he was hooked by the sledge variation of the game after watching athletes take part in a training camp three years ago.

Para ice hockey players take to the ice strapped into sledges, or sleds, and use their upper body for mostly everything in competition, from propelling themselves to stickhandling and shooting the puck with either hand. It’s also a physical game, with players needing to stay wary of incoming sleds while navigating the ice and handling the puck.

What impressed Rybalka from the start was the fitness of sledge hockey players.

“They are top-notch, world-class athletes ... they’re amazing hockey players,” Rybalka told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday, adding that the systems his team uses are the same as what you’d see in “stand-up” hockey.

“Other than our guys can’t skate backwards because they’re in a sled, our guys can shoot left- and right-handed because they can just slide the puck under their sled and let it go with either hand, a 100-kilometre-per-hour shot going with either hand.”

While Canada has a national women’s sledge hockey team, the Paralympics features just the men’s version. Players say they would like to see a women’s division added for 2030 in France.

Canada has won medals at every Paralympic Winter Games except 2002 and 2010 including gold in 2006. Para ice hockey, then called sledge hockey, was first introduced to the Games in 1994.

Eight teams – Italy, Canada, China, Czechia, Germany, Japan, Slovakia and the U.S. – will compete in Milano Cortina.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Kenny