Hilary Knight: Hockey star and women’s sports advocate

Hilary Knight has become one of the most accomplished and influential players in American women’s hockey history. She’s made her mark during international competition, and has also invested a lot of time and energy in growing the sport in the United States.

According to Team USA hockey’s website, Hilary Knight has played in four Olympic Winter Games, in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. She was a part of the gold medal winning American team in 2018, and the three silver medalists in the other appearances.

Knight was instrumental in the United States’ gold medal winning victory against Canada in 2018. According to the Olympics’ website, Knight got the scoring started for the U.S. by deflecting a Sydney Morin shot into the net during a power play.

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The final went into a penalty shootout. While Knight missed her penalty attempt, goalie Maddie Rooney stepped up to secure a 3-2 triumph.

“Finally. That’s something any elite athlete sort of obsesses over,” Knight told the Olympics’ website. That sort of end goal, the perfection, the trophy at the end, the sort of culmination of the work that allows you to get there.”

Knight’s introduction to hockey came very early on, at the age of 5. “I right away wanted to participate in the Olympic Games, even though women’s ice hockey was not there yet,” she told the Olympics’ website. “I would go to bed with my kit on, really excited about training the next day.”

The Athletic wrote in 2022, “For all the growth across women’s sports as a whole, women’s hockey…always seemed to lag behind, caught endlessly in the four-year cycle around the Olympics and unable to gain traction in between.” Knight was motivated to take a stand in the 2010s to prevent this pattern from continuing.

Knight and her USA hockey teammates decided to boycott the International Ice Hockey Federation Championships in 2017, to force the country’s hand in supporting the women’s program on an equal level as the men’s. “We were told we couldn’t do this by so many people, and then we did it collectively,” Knight told The Athletic.

Knight also raised her profile in 2014, as she and a number of male and female athletes posed nude for ESPN’s The Body Issue. She said about the experience “Women in general, we tend to shrink ourselves and not have as much confidence as we should in presenting ourselves and our body types. It’s OK to be fit and healthy and comfortable within your body.”

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Knight has just about done it all in International Ice Hockey Federation Championship play. She’s won nine gold medals in that space, accumulating a number of individual accolades in the process.

Knight helped found the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, which has been an integral group focused on improving access and opportunity for female hockey players in the United States.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League was launched in January 2024, which is a venture that Knight had a huge hand in. She told Fast Company “we just needed a fresh start. We wanted to build something substantial that had a lot of integrity with how we approach the future of the game.”

The league features six teams based in Boston (where Knight plays), Montreal, Minnesota, Ottawa, Toronto and New York. The regular season schedule spanned from January 2024 through early May.

Knight also appeared as a panel speaker at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. She and other hockey luminaries had a discussion about how the sport is using data to support in-game decisions and scouting operations.

The Ice Garden’s website believes that Hilary Knight has one of the best, if not the best Instagram account in women’s ice hockey. The profile showcases Knight’s professional training habits, as well as her downtime away from the ice.

Hilary Knight will be 36 years old by the time the 2026 Winter Olympics start in Italy. She was asked by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise whether she will suit up for the United States for that competition. “We’ll see,” Knight remarked.

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