10 to watch: Hilary Knight hopes to bring gold back to U.S. hockey
Roxanna Scott
USA TODAY profiles 10 top American athletes to watch during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, which begin Feb. 9.
Before Hilary Knight was named to her first Olympic team, those who saw her play hockey caught a glimpse of what would make her one of the greats in the game.
Angela Ruggiero, a Hall of Famer and four-time Olympic medalist, remembers Knight as a teenager coming to skate with the Connecticut Polar Bears, Ruggiero's team at the time. "I'm like who the heck is this kid? She's jumping first in line. She's bigger than everyone at this point, almost as big as me," Ruggiero said of seeing Knight in action in 2005. "She's confident, not cocky. She was very shy but she was confident on the ice, and I was just super impressed with her. ... She just caught my eye."
Mark Johnson, a star player on the 1980 U.S. men's hockey team who scored two goals against the Soviets in the "Miracle on Ice" game, recruited Knight to play for him at the University of Wisconsin.
Johnson, who also coached Knight in the 2010 Olympics, says there are several factors that make her such a dangerous threat on offense.
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"Her size, her strength and her speed, some of the things she's able to do with the puck, whether it's stickhandling and beating somebody one-on-one, taking a quick snap shot and beating the goalie in a tough situation," Johnson said of what separates Knight's game. Strong and lean, Knight is listed as 5-11 and 172 pounds on the national team roster.
"I know a few times at Wisconsin she'd come down the ice and score on the slap shot; in our game you don't see it a lot," Johnson said in an interview in January. "You see kids take slap shots, but to beat goalies from distances and to beat them at (a) high-velocity slap shot can be quite intimidating. I think you put all those things together and you get consistently what she brings to the table."
Playing for the Badgers, she broke the school record for all-time goals scored during her junior season, a record held by her coach. Knight finished her career in Madison with 143 goals, including 30 game-winners.
Heading into her third Olympics, Knight has 101 goals and 78 assists in 152 games for the U.S. team, the most points of any current player. In world championship and Olympic tournaments, she is third in goals scored behind Cammi Granato, one of the players she looked up to growing up in Chicago (Knight also wears No. 21 like Granato), and Natalie Darwitz.
In the last three world championships, Knight, 28, has scored a combined 18 goals to help lead the Americans past rival Canada for gold in all three tournaments.
And it's the bitter rivalry with Canada that continues to drive Knight and her teammates as they prepare for the Olympics in Pyeongchang. They'll play Canada on Feb. 15 in the preliminary round, and the two countries are expected to meet again a week later with the gold medal on the line.
Canada has dominated on the Olympic stage, winning the past four golds. The disappointment of losing to Canada twice in the Games resonates with Knight and five of her teammates who were in Sochi in 2014 and in Vancouver four years earlier.
"We came so close last time; we beat ourselves. I think that was the most frustrating thing is when you have a lead and to give it up," Knight said last fall of the 3-2 overtime loss in Sochi. The Americans took a 2-0 lead, but the Canadians tied the score with 55 seconds left in regulation. "The most crucial parts of the game, to kind of have it fall through your fingertips, but to also have the opportunity four years later to potentially right the wrong so to speak with a new group of women on the world stage, it's so exciting. I can't wait."
Knight was 8 when the U.S. team won its only Olympic gold in Nagano, where women's hockey made its debut in the Games. She was at a friend's sleepover the night Granato, Ruggiero and their teammates beat Canada, but Knight's mom, Cynthia, made sure she'd be awake to watch.
"When I was 5, I'm like I'm doing this, whether there's women's ice hockey, men's ice hockey, whatever it was in my future," said Hilary Knight, who comes from a family of skiers. Her cousin, Chip Knight, is a three-time Olympian in Alpine skiing.
After the family moved from California to Chicago, Cynthia Knight looked for a way to keep her kids active. Hilary and her three younger brothers all learned to play hockey. She played on boys teams while growing up before moving to Connecticut, where she attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school.
"I just fell in love with the sport," she said. "If you asked me if I'd be able to travel the world, get an education and meet amazing people, I would have been, you're crazy. I just want to play a sport."
Her contributions to women's hockey go beyond the goals she scores on the ice. Knight is one of the most high-profile players in the game and has sponsorship deals with GoPro, Nike and Red Bull, among others.
She has nearly 72,000 followers on Twitter, which she leveraged to spread the players' message in their battle with USA Hockey for equal pay last year. Players threatened to boycott the world championships unless USA Hockey provided pay and benefits equitable to what the men's national team received. Days before the tournament began, the players signed a deal that guaranteed greater financial support and benefits and outlined opportunities to market and grow the women's game.
The experience has helped bring the team closer together, Knight said. "You can do as many team-building (exercises) as you want and try to build chemistry, but that was something that we all lived together," she said.
It was a defining moment for this team, but Knight says now her attention is singularly focused on beating Canada for gold.
"It's been 20 years since the women's hockey team won a gold medal, and it's time," she said. "Everything I do is for a gold medal for this country. I know if I look to the right or look to the left in the locker room, it's the same."
Contributing: Rachel Axon