Cape Breton teenage hockey podcaster helping grow women’s game

Fourteen-year-old Fallyn MacIntosh who runs the Pass The Puck Podcast – meets a couple of her hockey heroes.

Fourteen-year-old Fallyn MacIntosh of Sydney, N.S., is as equally comfortable behind a microphone as she is on the ice.

“Pass The Puck is a teen podcast, created by teens for teens,” MacIntosh said.

The podcast is focused on the female game. On Thursday, MacIntosh and her friend Mabella Scott interviewed Hockey Hall of Famer Cassie Campbell-Pascall.

Other guests include several Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) players and Olympians.

“Honestly, I don’t know how I turn off being a fan,” MacIntosh said. “Like, when I saw Laura Stacey (of the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire) I was like, ‘Wow, this is real.’”

MacIntosh has traveled to Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto to interview her hockey heroes, but this week a couple of them came to her.

MacIntosh is taking part in a skills camp at the Membertou Sport and Wellness Centre run by Nova Scotian professional players Blayre Turnbull and Jill Saulnier.

“I think it’s really impressive,” Turnbull said. “There’s not many young kids with that kind of ambition or creativity.”

Turnbull has been featured on MacIntosh’s podcast and agrees it is helping to grow the women’s game, particularly off the ice.

“When I was a kid, you didn’t understand your future in sport outside of being an athlete,” Turnbull said. “So for Fallyn to be doing this and to be showing kids her age and even older that there’s opportunities to be creative and think outside the box.”

Later this month, the soon-to-be Grade 9 student will go back to Montreal where she hopes to chat with Canadian Olympic captain Marie-Philippe Poulin and TSN play-by-play commentator Kenzie Lalonde.

MacIntosh hopes to be a sports broadcaster one day and is already thinking about where she might study after she graduates high school.

“Play by play in the Olympics - that would be a dream,” she said.

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