Coyne Schofield says post-Olympic rise of women’s hockey ‘different’ this time

In NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Sitting Down with …" we talk to key figures in the game, gaining insight into their lives on and off the ice. This week, we feature Kendall Coyne Schofield, forward for the United States women’s team and for the Minnesota Frost of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). Coyne Schofield is also a player development coach for the Chicago Blackhawks.

Two-time gold-medal winner. It certainly has a nice ring to it for Kendall Coyne Schofield, who won her second gold with the Team USA women last month at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Her first Olympic gold came in the 2018 PyeongChang gmaes.

“It’s a surreal feeling. I think it’s really one that’s hard to put into words,” she told NHL.com last week. “When you look at the medal, you think about the team, you think about the experience that we had in Milan. Not even just Milan, but the four-year process leading up to Milan, how we came together as a group. It’s a fabric of so many memories that help create that moment.

“It’s definitely one I’ll never forget.”

Coyne Schofield is getting a rare bit of down time right now. The captain of the Minnesota Frost of the PWHL is out with an upper-body injury she sustained at the Olympics. But it won’t be long until she’s back on the ice showing why she’s one of the greatest women’s hockey players of all time.

The 33-year-old sat down with NHL.com at the Chicago Blackhawks game on Friday to discuss the Olympics, motherhood and the state of women’s hockey.

Your son, Drew, who was born in July 2023, was there to see you win gold. How much more special did that make this Olympics for you?

“I think it’s crazy to take a step back and realize I’m the first mom to win a gold medal for Team USA. Jenny Potter obviously did it with her two kids and took home a silver (at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics), which is an incredible accomplishment in itself. But just knowing the journey and what it took to come back and just some of the harder days and just having him here alongside the journey.

“I’ve said this before, but I think it was so important for me to know he wasn’t the reason I stopped playing hockey. He was the reason I continued to play hockey and there were so many people who thought having a child meant the end. For me, it was only a new beginning. He’s made me the best person I can be. He’s made me the best hockey player I can be. I just hope that he can look to his mom as someone who kept going and who, during the hard days and hard times, I was resilient through those and kept going. There were days, there were hard days, but I just had to come home and look at him and remember how blessed I was and how easy it really was to be able to experience this journey alongside him.

“I think the other thing, too, is seeing how much he loves coming to the rink, how much he loves my teammates. I was saying when we left the Olympics, he’s going to struggle not seeing his 23 aunties on a regular basis. The game ends and everyone’s like, ‘Drew!’ He’s been very much around our Minnesota Frost team since he was 6 months old. We came to the game here tonight and he said, ‘We’re going to mommy’s hockey game!’ So those are the games he knows and that’s what he knows. Even when Jack Hughes scored (the golden goal for the U.S. men’s team in the Olympics), he said, ‘oh, she shoots, she scores!’ because that’s what he’s been around in his young 2½ years of life. It’s been a journey to say the least, but it’s been so worth it and to be able to share it with him. It’s still pretty real and raw right now, but I know it’s something I’m going to look back on and just appreciate so much. Even the photos I’ve looked back on, it almost puts me into tears because it was so special to be able to do it with him.”

Your son went viral after getting that puck in the stands. He became a celebrity over there. Does he have his own agent yet? 

“It was crazy. Obviously, I wasn’t involved as much because we were in the village. But my husband kept saying, ‘Kendall, everyone is saying, ‘There’s the puck kid! There’s the puck kid! There’s the puck kid!’ and I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ Then we go to the Duomo (cathedral) on our day off, we’re at the top and someone says, ‘Is that the puck kid?’ Then we get to the bottom and we’re in the mass of people in front of the Duomo and someone else comes up to us and says, ‘Is that the puck kid?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s also my child.’ He had the time of his life, to say the least. Gelato every night.”

You were one of the first players to sign a contract with the PWHL. What’s it like to be part of this women’s league, which you were working to establish for so long?

“Aside from the Olympics itself this year, this is what I’ve been most excited for is the fact that women’s hockey wasn’t going to go silent. The last three Olympics I’ve played in and the Olympics before that I didn’t play in, after the games closed, you wouldn’t see a women’s hockey game for potentially eight months. Everyone would be like, ‘Wow, I just saw that incredible hockey, where can I watch them play?’ and there was no answer to that question. Now, you didn’t have to wait eight months. You had to wait eight days. Every single college player went back to school, every single pro player went back to the PWHL, and all those players you saw in that gold medal game are playing. You get to see them. You get to capitalize on the incredible momentum that the sport of hockey is seeing from these games.

“So, it’s just really exciting that I’m able to return to my day job as a professional hockey player. That’s something we’ve never been able to do as women and now, we’re here and we’re here to stay and the games since have been incredible. Seeing Madison Square Garden sold out (April 4) and TD Garden sold out (April 11), I said I wish I could be a fan in the buildings that night. Not playing in either of those games, but I’m just so proud of what the PWHL has done in the last 2½ years and it’s only going to keep getting better.”

What reaction have you gotten from other women, girls after the Olympics?

“It’s been an incredible amount of support. It felt different (this time). When I was on the plane from Atlanta to Chicago, they announced I was on the flight, which was really nice of them. People were asking, ‘You were on the hockey team?’ It just felt different. Like, ‘You were on that incredible team?’ People saw it, people loved it; 2018 was incredible too but I think with the double golds, hockey in the United States is going to boom from this moment in time.

“I look at the 1998 team. That’s when I boomed, from that moment. The 2018 team, there was a surge in the number of girls registered to play hockey. Last year, USA hockey saw its greatest numbers in the girls and women’s game in big part because of the PWHL. When we lost gold the other two times I was on that team, that was a part of it. I’ve seen the impact just be so far greater on gold than on silver, and it’s a bounce here and a bounce there but the impact is so far greater. That’s what I’m so excited about is to see the kids who were inspired by these moments and the double gold the last month, to then transcend into what they’re going to become in the sport, if they’re inspired by it.”

Speaking of USA Hockey, did you see their message on Friday that they’ve reached 100,000 females registered to play hockey now?

“I’m not surprised. I’ve got the chills. That number’s going to keep going and hopefully double and triple. Now, people are seeing a path. They’re seeing a vision, they’re seeing an opportunity, they’re seeing a pro league, they’re seeing equality in the sport, they’re seeing the dream that young boys can become and the dream young girls can become and that dream’s the same. There’s that common parallel between the men’s and women’s game and I think there are so many more people who are being inspired to try it and want to get into it and I would encourage them to because it changed my life in ways I never thought when I was three years old and put a pair of figure skates on.”

You’re always on the go. Have you been able to catch your breath since coming back from Milan?

“Yeah, I will say the injury has made me settle down a little bit more than I’m used to. As soon as they’ll let me get back out there, I’ll be back out there. For me, when I have a goal, I’m going to put everything I can into it to accomplish it and I’m not going to stop until I get there. That was my drive to help start the PWHL, that’s been my drive to want to win a gold medal. Everything I’ve done in my career, I’ve had this goal to do it and I’m going to do everything I can to do it until I accomplish it. So, it’ll slow down at some point, but not right now.”