The 2024 IIHF women’s World Championship is well underway in Utica, N.Y. One player who was a perennial star at the World Championships, Olympics and beyond is Hayley Wickenheiser.
In fact, the Canadian women’s hockey superstar is an all-time hockey great. And in this feature story from The Hockey News’ Feb. 21, 2006 edition (Volume 59, Issue 22,) writer Elizabeth Etue profiled Wickenheiser as she developed into a nearly unstoppable force and a Hockey Hall of Famer.
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Wickenheiser was just 27 years old when this story was published, yet she’d already made her mark on the sport, logging 13 years with Canada’s national women’s team by that point. Her determination to be a difference-maker and her ceaseless work ethic helped set her apart from her peers, but like all the true greats, she elevated her game when the games mattered most.
“Every day you don’t work out, someone else does,” Wickenheiser told Etue.
Now a medical doctor and assistant GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Wickenheiser retired from on-ice competition in January 2017. But one of her greatest achievements was being a pioneer – which she proved by playing parts of three seasons in men’s hockey leagues. The coach of one of those teams – Matti Hagman, the bench boss of Salamat in the Finnish elite league – gushed over what Wickenheiser brought to the table.
“I never thought a woman could be that good,” Hagman said. “Hayley passes better than 80 percent of the team, and her slapshot is harder than more than half the players.”
WICKENHEISER STILL A GO-TO GAL
Vol. 59, No. 22, Feb. 21, 2006
By Elizabeth Etue
Hayley Wickenheiser can’t part with a weather-beaten old t-shirt that’s now eight years old. It has far too much sentimental, and inspirational, value.
She picked it up at the NHL rookie camp of the Philadelphia Flyers in 1998, when she was the first and only female skater ever to receive such an invitation. It has a motto on it.
“Every day you don’t work out someone else does,” Wickenheiser recites. “I wear that sometimes when I don’t feel like training.”
At just 27, it’s hard to believe Wickenheiser is already in her 13th season with the Canadian national women’s team program.
It was almost half a lifetime ago she made her debut as a 15-year-old with immense skill and size. It wasn’t long before she became Canada’s go-to player.
Wickenheiser was named MVP at the 2002 Olympics and is Canada’s all-time leading scorer with 104 goals and 223 points in 163 games. She’s third in scoring this season with 20 points in 21 games.
An alternate captain, Wickenheiser leads on and off the ice. Players respect her athleticism, intensity and the way she uses every part of her 5-foot-10, 170-pound frame.
“I like to make plays at high speed,” Wickenheiser said. “I can play physical and finesse or power forward. It’s a thinking style of game with a physical edge.”
Wickenheiser also pushes herself to perform beyond her comfort zone.
In 1998 and ’99, she attended Philadelphia’s rookie camp not because there was a chance to make the team, but to get tougher mentally and physically. The workouts lasted six to eight hours a day and inspired her to greater heights.
But, she has always been a naturally gifted athlete. In case anyone doubted her ability, Wickenheiser also played competitive softball in the summer months. By 15, she’d won the top batter and all-Canadian shortstop awards at the National Women’s Softball Championship. She is only the second Canadian woman to compete in both summer and winter Olympics, playing softball at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Wickenheiser later broke the gender rules in 2003, clinching a spot on a men’s pro team, HC Salamat in Kirkkonummi, Finland. Her coach, Matti Hagman, praised her skills.
“I never thought a woman could be that good,” he said. “Hayley passes better than 80 per cent of the team and her slapshot is harder than more than half the players.”
She scored two goals and 12 points in 23 games in the second-best Finnish league and returned to Canada in 2004 with a new attitude.
“I have a much better perspective on the game,” she said. “I don’t try to do it all so much. Now I try to just play and not try and force things on the ice. I am maturing and I am better at reading the game. I know now when you get a chance, you bury it.”
Wickenheiser is clear about her priorities for this Olympics.
“I am always trying to find little things to work on, focusing on trying to really be ready for each game,” she said.
“I am always working on composure with puck and trying to make players around me better. I should be shooting more, but I like to find the simplest way to set up play. The best players play the game very simply, so I try to make simple passes and take what is there, trust the flow of the game and the players you have around you.”
Canadian coach Mel Davidson also is impressed with the work ethic of Wickenheiser and the rest of her team.
“The conditioning is impeccable and far and away the biggest improvement,” Davidson said. “We have tremendous talent, great depth in all three positions.
“We have to dominate in the forecheck, goaltending, low zone, specialty teams. It is a game of millimeters at this point. All the little details count.”
The Canadians and Americans dominate the women’s field because of speed and in past years, Canada remains ahead of its rivals because of a willingness to be aggressive, led by their leader, Wickenheiser.
“Canada is very physical,” says U.S. scoring ace Natalie Darwitz. “If you go into a corner they can push you around a bit more.”
“I use my speed and quickness to stay out of traffic, but I am not afraid of a big Canadian.”
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