TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving home from a recent PWHL Toronto practice when she got a bit of sage advice.
It wasn’t from a podcast or a friend on the phone. The advice came courtesy of a billboard on the side of the road in Canada’s most populous city, featuring her own face with the Adidas slogan “You got this.”
“I was like, yeah, I do,” Nurse said with a laugh.
The billboard she drove past is one of many across the country, including a massive advertisement at Yonge-Dundas Square — Toronto’s closest approximation to Times Square in New York City — that pairs Nurse with Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and World Cup champion Lionel Messi.
Nurse, 29, has had major partnerships in the past. In 2020, Tim Hortons and Mattel collaborated to make a Barbie doll in her likeness. In 2022, she was featured on a Cheerios box. But in the two years since her breakout performance at the Beijing Olympics — in which she broke a record for points in a single tournament (18) — Nurse has become one of the biggest faces in women’s hockey.
She became the first woman to appear on the cover of an EA Sports hockey video game with NHL 23. She was a key figure in the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League as a member of the player-led bargaining committee that…
