The Brooklyn Park native won NCAA championships with Minnesota in 2004 and 2005 and earned silver at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games and bronze at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Today, the wife of former NHLer John Pohl makes frequent appearances on FOX Sports North as an analyst and coaches a 10U A team in Woodbury.
Wendell will also make the "Let's Play Hockey!" call before the Wild faces off against Edmonton at 1 p.m. Saturday.
The contest highlights a weekend dedicated to girls and women's hockey and will feature several elements celebrating the sport. Girls and women's hockey players will be featured in the youth starting lineup and various intermission activities, and proceeds from the Wild's game program sales and the "Split the Pot Raffle" on Dec. 16 will benefit the Minnesota Whitecaps, the first and only women's professional-level hockey team in the State of Hockey.
Girls' Hockey Weekend is presented by Schwan's Home Service, Inc. in conjunction with Minnesota Hockey, USA Hockey, the WCHA and the Minnesota Whitecaps.
A total of 300 girls will take part in sold-out dryland training sessions and on-ice clinics at Xcel Energy Center Saturday and Sunday, including 120 8U, 100 10U and 80 12U players. Minnesota Whitecaps players and Minnesota Hockey personnel will help lead the weekend's clinics.
Wendell will be the second women's player to skate with the Wild. Her former Gophers teammate Natalie Darwitz
did so last year
at the inaugural Girls Hockey Weekend.
