Maddie Rooney, U.S. women’s hockey relish anniversary of Olympic gold
Members of the USA women’s ice hockey team talk about how they’ve treated their new gold medals and their emotions during the final shootout. (0:56)
If not for Maddie Rooney, this probably wouldn’t be an anniversary to celebrate for women’s hockey.
Had her desperation paddle save in the midst of a tense overtime of the 2018 Olympic women’s hockey final not gotten to the puck, had she not angled it perfectly, had she not held her ground with the game on the line in the shootout, Feb. 22, 2019 would have been just another Friday, with only tinges of regret to serve as reminders of what happened on the ice one year ago in PyeongChang, South Korea.
But Rooney did make that last-ditch paddle save that she still describes as “so lucky” on forward Rebecca Johnston, whose shock was illustrated by her half-raised arms that quickly dropped in disbelief. And after Jocelyne Lamoreux-Davidson scored on her iconic “Oops, I did it again” shootout move, Rooney displayed incredible calm waiting out Meghan Agosta, one of Canada’s best pure goal scorers, thwarting the final shootout attempt before casually sweeping the puck away from the net with her glove to touch off a celebration that seemed to last for months.
Although the U.S. lost the final two games, the series against Canada gave exposure to women’s hockey and gave American goaltender Alex Rigsby a chance to shine.
With youth participation growing and talent at the pro level on a major upswing, it appears that the state of hockey in the U.S. is as healthy as ever.
It was well-earned. Team USA’s gold medal victory at the 2018 Olympics ended a 20-year golden drought for the American women. It also soothed the heartbreak from four years prior when gold slipped through their fingers in Sochi in a stunning comeback win for Canada.
Though she and her teammates will be celebrated in various forms Friday, you’ll have to forgive Rooney if she’s not basking in the golden glow of her show-stealing performance in 2018. She’ll be busy in Mankato, Minnesota, trying to help the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs pick up a much-needed win against Minnesota State in the final series of the regular season.
After taking the entire 2017-18 school year off to train with the women’s national team in Tampa, Florida, and participate in the Olympics, she returned to the life she previously had been living — studying for a degree in business marketing and tending goal for one of the more storied programs in women’s college hockey.
The last year-plus of Rooney’s life flew by so fast, even she still struggles to believe it was real. Winning the gold medal is one thing, but Rooney became one of the breakout stars of that Olympics, having posted a sterling .945 save percentage over four starts and coming up big in the most critical moments of the tournament.
With it came a whirlwind tour that included being whisked away to segments on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Ellen,” countless other interviews and events, an Instagram shout-out from Justin Bieber, the ESPYs, standing ovations at various NHL rinks, first pitches and puck drops, a hometown parade, being named the Women’s Sports Foundation Team Sportswoman of the Year and so much more.
Rooney returned to Duluth as essentially the biggest celebrity on campus.
“I’ll be walking down the street in my college town and people will just be yelling at me from out the window of their car,” Rooney said. “I never would have expected people to pick me out of a crowd like that.”
Local celebrity or not, Rooney still had to get herself back into the routine of a student.
“The first month of classes was a little bit of getting used to studying again and getting used to having school consume your life,” Rooney said with a laugh. “But I liked it because the past year with the Olympics it was strictly focusing on hockey. I liked getting back to that balance of school and hockey and the college scene.”
With her new-found fame and the gold medal around her neck, it seemed like a given that Rooney would be able to dominate the college ranks upon her return — only if you ignore that such notoriety comes with unrivaled pressure.
While Rooney posted a respectable .923 save percentage, the junior netminder went 4-8-2 before winter break, ending the calendar year on a six-game winless skid.
“I think it makes a lot of sense where she started and where she is now,” Minnesota Duluth head coach Maura Crowell said. “Maddie is only 21 years old. I think that’s a huge, huge adjustment from being in Tampa, living with your teammates, playing hockey all day and then coming back and having to be a student and trying to get away from that spotlight a little bit.”
Rooney admits that she didn’t play her best hockey to start the season, but she found the solution to those early woes staring back at her in the mirror.
“I just started letting everything go and just playing for my teammates and just started to have fun,” Rooney said. “I took a step back and realized that I was dealing with some things on the mental side of the game. I just needed to let all of that outside pressure go.”
The Bulldogs have gone 6-6 with Rooney in net since Jan. 1, which included a huge conference sweep over Ohio State and a key road win at No. 2 Minnesota in which Rooney made 42 saves.
“The second half has been a lot more like the Maddie that she wants to be,” Crowell said. “It’s like playoff hockey now. From what I know about Maddie, that’s when she really elevates.”
That ability to elevate her play in key moments is part of what put Rooney on a path to being the Olympic starter. Yet, it was far from preordained.
Whether the powers that be at USA Hockey knew it or not, Rooney was charting her own path at 16.
It was at that age when Rooney made the difficult decision to try out for the Andover High School boys hockey team. She had played the previous two seasons with the girls team but wanted to challenge herself in a different way.
Andover boys coach Mark Manney could not guarantee Rooney a spot on the team, but he also could not and would not stop her from trying. However, if Rooney tried out for the boys team and got cut, she couldn’t simply go back to the girls team, which held their tryouts two weeks before the boys. Rooney was more than willing to take the risk. And it didn’t take her long to win Manney over.
“She’s got the right temperament for it,” said Manney, who made Rooney the team’s permanent starter after a few weeks. “She doesn’t worry about past failures. She gives up a goal and can move on from it. We’ve seen that has stuck with her.”
Still, Manney says he caught some heat for taking her on. Some wondered aloud to the Andover coach if playing with the boys was in her best interest to prepare Rooney for college hockey.
“My reply to them was, ‘Well, I don’t know that college is her ultimate goal,'” Manney recalled. “It seems kind of prophetic now, but back then she wanted to be the best goalie in the world.”
It really wasn’t until Rooney’s sophomore season at UMD that she thrust herself into the Olympic picture. As a 19-year-old for Minnesota Duluth, she was the undisputed No. 1 goalie and posted a .942 save percentage. She stood on her head in some of the biggest games of the season, including a memorable 62-save performance in a double-overtime win over Minnesota in the conference semifinal. There was no ignoring her after that.
Rooney was named to her first U.S. women’s national team ahead the 2017 IIHF Women’s World Championship in Plymouth, Michigan, that spring.
Just before the tournament, Rooney and her teammates became part of one of the biggest stories in women’s sports in the past decade. The players decided to boycott the tournament unless USA Hockey came to the negotiating table to work out fair payment and better promotion of the women’s game. Even with her Olympic hopes potentially hanging in the balance, Rooney stood in solidarity with her teammates.
“The younger generations were our motivation,” Rooney said of the boycott, though she was only 19 at the time.
After USA Hockey and the USWNT players came to an agreement ahead of the tournament, the Minnesotan appeared in only one game. She was still one of three goalies named to the pre-Olympic roster that May. At that time, she could not have predicted being the starter going into the gold-medal game.
“To be honest, I thought I’d be the third goalie,” Rooney said. “I didn’t have a high expectation of playing games. I just knew I was going to work hard and try to take advantage of the opportunities when they came.”
Like she always seemed to, however, Rooney quickly won over her coaches again. Head coach Robb Stauber, a former NHL goaltender, had a pretty good idea of how his goalie battle was shaping up among Rooney and the more experienced Nicole Hensley and Alex Rigsby.
“I was told I’d [be] playing the gold-medal game in November,” said Rooney, who had stood out in that month’s Four Nations tournament. “Anything can change. You have to earn it every day. I never took that for granted.”
Earn it, she did. After solid performances throughout the tournament, Rooney made 29 saves between regulation and overtime in the final. When overtime ended, the TV cameras caught Rooney smiling underneath her mask.
“I had the utmost confidence in my teammates, I knew they had confidence in me and that was all I needed,” Rooney said.
In the shootout, Rooney turned aside four of six shooters, including Marie-Philip Poulin, who had been a grim reaper of sorts for the U.S. in previous Olympics. It looked almost routine. No wonder Rooney was smiling.
That victory helped spark an unprecedented wave of momentum for women’s hockey in the United States, with Rooney as one of its newest faces.
“It still blows my mind that some girls look up to me like that. After one of my college games or USA games and some young girls will come up to me with these wide eyes and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe you think of me that way,'” Rooney said. “It’s super humbling and amazing to be looked at that way, I’ll never take it for granted.”
The Olympic champion has another year left at Minnesota Duluth before making a decision on her playing career. She says she wants to play as long as she can and is thinking about playing in the National Women’s Hockey League when her collegiate career ends. Her main focus for now, however, is on what’s happening at UMD, where her Olympic success continues to resonate.
“I sit in my office on game days and people are giving tours to little girls right out in the hallway,” Crowell said. “We have a picture of Maddie on our international wall, and that’s the name that everyone asks about. We’ve had big crowds this year because they want to see her.”
Rooney still has plenty to look forward to on the ice and off, but she has so much to appreciate and reflect on from the past year of her life.
“I think I’ll take away all of the memories and times I had with my teammates and all of the games,” Rooney said. “I’ll take away being humble. Experiencing what I did and coming back to college, a huge thing was to just be humble and to wear that wherever you go. No one is ever going to take this past year away from me, no matter what happens in my hockey career.”