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Jon Kuiperij Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports 33 | Friday, April 17, 2015 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com "Connected to your Community" Barb Tavares (left) and Monaghan's Sports Pub & Grill co-owner Claudio Serrao stand beside a display of memorabilia from the hockey career of Barb's son, New York Islanders superstar John. Monaghan's has made itself the Oakville headquarters for fans of John and the Islanders during the Stanley Cup playoffs. | photo by Michael Ivanin -- Special to the Beaver Ten local players invited to Hockey Canada camp Ten women with Oakville connections are among the 102 players selected by Hockey Canada to attend a summer strength and conditioning camp for its national women's program. Oakville residents Nicole Cece, Julia Edgar, Lindsay Agnew and Kristin O'Neill, as well as Oakville intermediate AA Hornets players Jaime Bourbonnais, Amy Curlew and Emma Maltais, are candidates for Canada's national women's under-18 team. Oakville's Melissa Channell, Kristyn Capizzano and Sydney McKibbon will attend the camp as potential members of the Canadian national women's development squad. The strength and conditioning camp, scheduled for May 6-10 in Hamilton, marks the first activity for the 2015-16 season for Canada's national women's program, and is a building block towards world championships during the season. Players selected for this camp are in consideration for the Canadian teams that will compete in three-game series against the United States this summer, as well as at the 2016 U18 women's world championship and 2016 Nations Cup, and with Canada's national women's team. Following the strength and conditioning camp, Hockey Canada scouts will continue to evaluate players at additional national team camps in August, and as they compete with their club and school teams at various provincial and national events, including the 2016 Esso Cup (the national female midget championship) and both NCAA and Canadian Interuniversity Sport competition. Cece, Edgar, Bourbonnais, Curlew and Maltais won an Ontario Women's Hockey Association title with the intermediate Hornets last weekend. O'Neill was part of the Provincial Women's Hockey League champion Stoney Creek Sabres, and Agnew played for the PWHL 's Mississauga Chiefs. Channell and McKibbon currently play at the University of Wisconsin, and Capizzano is at Boston College. Staking Oakville's claim to John Tavares by Jon Kuiperij Beaver Sports Editor Barb Tavares has heard the question many times. Where is her famous son, John, really from? "He was born in Mississauga," Tavares said of her firstborn, the New York Islanders superstar who came within nine seconds Sunday of winning his first career NHL scoring title. "But when we left the Mississauga hospital, we went to our Oakville home, and we're still there. "Maybe other people (are confused). But people who know us know that he was born in Mississauga but that he lived in Oakville. It's the same with my daughters (Laura and Barbara). They were born in the same hospital, and that was it." Read a story about John Tavares in a major daily newspaper or visit his player profile online, and Mississauga is nearly always listed as his birthplace or hometown. Technically, it may be correct. But it frustrates people like Rob MacDougall, a wellknown sports artist who is one of Tavares's former coaches in the Oakville Minor Lacrosse Association. MacDougall is doing something about it this spring. He has teamed with Monaghan's Sports Pub & Grill to make the Oakville bar the `headquarters' for Tavares fans in the NHL playoffs, beginning with New York's first-round matchup with the Washington Capitals that got underway Wednesday. Islanders playoff games will be prominently featured, with sound, on the Monaghan's televisions. Displays of memorabilia from both Tavares's days in minor hockey -- which started with the Minor Oaks Hockey Association before he left for the Greater Toronto Hockey League -- and in the OMLA are set up in the restaurant, banners of support are hung on the walls, and Tavares T-shirts designed by MacDougall will be given away. The menu has also been altered to include a few of John's favourite home-cooked meals that reflect his Portuguese and Polish background. Barb sampled the patyczki (meat on a stick), perogies, veal parmesan and cabbage rolls (John's favourite, barbecued sardines, did not make the cut) Tuesday to ensure they tasted up to her standards. "Patyczkies were easy to bring on the road. I always did them with pork," Barb recalled. "The trick is the marinating. And make sure you leave some of the fat in there." Tavares played up one age level in OMLA system MacDougall's Oakville Hawks lacrosse team was the one John Tavares always wanted to play on as a kid. Though the players were as many as two years older than John, they were polished (wearing new MacDougall-designed jerseys each season), they were organized (a trait Barb taught John to appreciate at an early age), and they were good. Several players from the team of 1988 and 1989 birth years went on to play professional lacrosse, and some have since flourished in other sports. "John worked so hard to get on that team," Barb said of her 1990-born son, whose uncle (father Joe's brother) John is the National Lacrosse League's all-time leading scorer. "He wasn't given any extra benefits. If anything, he got more kicks in the butt. He didn't ask for anything special, either. John was always the type that said `I want to work for it.'" John cracked the roster of MacDougall's team when he was nine years old. A few years later, Tavares would be named the MVP of the provincial championships, even though the Hawks finished third. MacDougall, who has stayed in touch with Tavares over the years, drove to Pittsburgh last weekend to watch the Islanders centre in action against the Penguins. During MacDougall's visit, Tavares signed jerseys and shirts that will be offered out as raffle prizes at Monaghan's during the Islanders' game nights in the playoffs. MacDougall also invites any former teammates of Tavares to contribute pictures or memorabilia to the displays, noting the items will be returned following the playoffs. "We'd also like to raise some charity money, so we'll be sitting down with Rob and Barb to determine the charity. This got thrown together very quickly," said Claudio Serrao, one of the co-owners at Monaghan's. "I think all (of John's) buddies and people who look up to him would love to have one of these T-shirts," he added. "Hopefully, this will establish his true residency."