Athlete Bios
Hockey
Jocelyne Lamoureux and twin, Monique, bring youth to U.S. squad
Last Updated: Monday, February 8, 2010 | 2:52 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Jocelyne Lamoureux, above, plays centre but her twin sister, Monique, is a right-winger. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)Jocelyne Lamoureux is the other half of the Lamoureux twins, women's hockey's answer to Vancouver and Sweden's Sedins - identical twins with virtually identical skills, identical statistics and identical importance to their team's hopes.
How identical? For fans watching the Olympic women's tournament, the trick will be differentiating between the two, something that has tripped people up before.
"I said, 'Nice goal, Jocelyne,' and she said, 'That was Monique,'??" said Brad Frost, their coach when they played at Minnesota as freshmen. "And I was like, 'Then nice goal, too.'??"
Here are some clues for telling apart the sisters: Monique, a right winger, wears No. 7 for the United States; Joceylne, a center, wears No. 17. Monique writes left-handed and Jocelyne right-handed. Monique's skates are a half-size bigger. Their mother says that Jocelyne's left ear is shaped like Monique's right ear.
Other clues, both as you watch the Olympics and when they finish their collegiate career at the Univsity of North Dakota: Monique scores a bit more (75 points as a Minnesota freshman vs. Jocelyne's 65), but Jocelyne might be a bit better at two-way play. She led the Gophers in plus-minus with a plus-58, and she won 56.5 percent of the face-offs she took.
And although body checking is prohibited in the women's game, if the going gets rough it is a good bet that Jocelyne or her sister will be there.
"Both of those kids are extremely gritty and competitive," said Brian Idalski, their coach at North Dakota. "Team USA over all has a good skill level, but I think they're missing some of the elements like toughness that they're going to need when they play Canada. The twins obviously bring that. They're not afraid of physical play or competing and battling for pucks."
Something Monique and Jocelyne learned, no doubt, playing with their brothers on the frozen English Coulee when they were kids in Grand Forks, N.D.
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