A young Hayden Pike thought he had hockey figured out.
Having just attained the strength to consistently lift the puck and aim for the top corners of the net, Pike was primed for roller-hockey glory in his Lakewood neighborhood.
That was until 9-year-old Nicole Hensley, whom Pike recruited to play with him and other boys in games in the neighborhood cul-de-sac, put on her goalie gear and started snuffing out his top-level attempts with her left-handed glove.
“I remember thinking I was supposed to be able to score now with those shots,” Pike recalled. “That was a moment when I realized she was already existing on a different hockey plane than the rest of us.”
That plane has only elevated since, as Henley’s emerged as one of the most accomplished goalies in women’s hockey history.
After growing up competing against boys, first on asphalt and then on ice, Hensley transitioned to the girls game in high school. What followed were record-setting performances, two Olympics, six IIHF Women’s World Championships and now a spot in the Professional Women’s Hockey League.
On Sunday, her journey comes full circle as her PWHL team, the Minnesota Frost, plays the Montréal Victoire at 1 p.m. at Ball Arena. If she’s able to play — the goalie’s been dealing with a lower-body injury — it will be Hensley’s first game in Colorado since high school in the first professional women’s hockey game in the state.
The showdown is part of the PWHL’s Takeover Tour — a slate of nine neutral-site regular-season games played outside of the league’s six cities. It’s designed to attract new fans to the second-year league, and beta-test interest in certain markets that could be under consideration for future PWHL expansion.
Hensley hopes the game inspires the state’s budding girls hockey scene, just as attending Olympic exhibitions did for her. She went to a U.S. vs. China game in 2002 at the then-Pepsi Center, and also attended a U.S. vs. Canada game at Magness Arena as a high schooler in 2010.
“When I was really little and starting to play hockey, I wanted to play for the Avs, and I wanted to win the Stanley Cup,” Hensley said. “That was all we could really see except for every four years at the Olympics.
“But those two games in Denver, I was able to see what was possible for me as a female athlete at the time in different points in my life. That’s what’s unique and important about the league going to different markets, is to show girls like I was that it’s possible to live out your dream as a female hockey player and you have something to look forward to. You don’t have to dream about winning the Stanley Cup; you can dream about winning the Walter Cup.”
Hensley’s Walter Cup moment
The Frost were the first to raise the Walter Cup in the PWHL’s inaugural season, after beating Boston 3-2 in the five-game Finals.
Hensley, who splits time in net with fellow USA Hockey goalie Maddie Rooney, started the final four games of the series and posted two shutouts with two total goals allowed to help Minnesota clinch the Cup.
“She had proven herself all year that she was solid and reliable, and that the team played well in front of her as she rose to the occasion,” said Frost coach Ken Klee, a 14-year NHL veteran who played for the Avs in 2006-07. “When she got her opportunity (in the Finals), she played outstanding. … She was a goalie who was rolling and getting into the minds of the shooters on the other team.”
Klee, who lives in Castle Rock, was Hensley’s first national team coach and has known the goalie since her days on the Foothills Flyers. Hensley played with boys on that club until her junior year at Green Mountain High School, when she migrated to a girls club with Colorado Select.
On that team, her coach Marnie Hill immediately noticed Hensley’s intangibles and elite raw skills. Her quickness, reaction time and ice vision separated her from her peers.
“I designed drills for scoring and for rebounds, and she destroyed all of my drills because she was so good at anticipating what should happen in front of the net,” Hill said. “I actually had to tell her to back off the pedal a little bit to allow the offense to develop during those drills, because her on-ice intelligence was on another level.”
But even as a standout on the girls club hockey scene, at the end of high school, Hensley didn’t get the attention from college coaches that she hoped for. She was initially going to go to Syracuse, but the school pulled back scholarship money late in the recruiting process, so she ended up at a Lindenwood program that had just joined NCAA Division I the season before.
The Lions didn’t win more than 10 games in a season during Hensley’s tenure as a four-year starter, but the lack of team success didn’t keep her from creating momentum. She got the attention of USA Hockey, earning her first invites to national team camps. That put her on a trajectory that led to her international debut in 2016.
“I don’t know how many times I had collegiate coaches (from major Division I schools) come to me and say, ‘I wish I would’ve taken her,’” Hill said. “Because she was the type of goalie who would’ve catapulted some programs into contention for the national title. Getting passed over by the established Division I’s galvanized her desire even more.”
Setting records at Lindenwood
Nicole Hensley of the United States looks on during a game against Olympic Athletes from Russia at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Kwandong Hockey Centre on Feb. 13, 2018, in Gangneung, South Korea. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
As the Lions’ keystone, she piled up saves at a record pace.
She had 90 saves in a triple-overtime loss as a freshman, shattering the Division I mark for single-game saves by 12. She then recorded 1,198 saves as a sophomore, leading Division I with the third-most in the classification’s history.
By the time she finished her college career, Hensley was the NCAA’s all-time leader in saves with 4,094 stops. That same year, she played on USA Hockey’s U-22 team in a series against Canada and proved that she could be much more than just a star for a struggling program.
“One of the first conversations I ever had with her was, ‘You’re not going to get 60 shots a game on the national team like you faced at Lindenwood,’” Klee said. “‘You’re going to get around 20, but I need you to be dialed-in, because you’re going to have to stop one or two point-blankers.’ She really took that challenge to heart.”
On the national team, Hensley has embraced a variety of roles from starter (on a gold-medal team at the 2017 world championship and a silver-medal team at the 2022 world championship) to backup (2018 gold-medal Olympic team) to third-string (2022 silver-medal Olympic team).
Along the way, her longevity has been underscored by the fact that Hensley is always ready for the moment, even if the moment isn’t quite ready for her.
As longtime teammate Lee Stecklein explained, “Even when Nicole’s not in that net, but you know she might end up there if something goes wrong with the starter, everyone trusts that she’s always ready for whatever comes.”
“She is not someone you want to see in the net when you’re playing against her — call the Canadians and ask them,” said Stecklein, who plays defense for the Frost and USA Hockey. “Playing on the national team for close to 10 years, that’s incredibly hard to do as a goalie, but there’s a reason she keeps coming back because she’s proved herself over and over again.”
Future for Hensley, women’s hockey
Nicole Hensley of Lakewood poses in her USA Hockey jersey on May 23, 2017, in Littleton. (Photo by John Leyba/The Denver Post)
Hensley remains on the USA Hockey roster, but whether she gets a crack at another Olympics for the 2026 Games in Italy remains to be seen. The 30-year-old is under contract with the Frost through 2025-26.
Whenever her playing career ends, she might want to get involved with the PWHL front office, which has given the sport a financially stable model and profile boost it previously lacked. Last season, the PWHL broke numerous attendance records for women’s hockey, with the pinnacle coming in April when 21,105 fans turned out for a game between Montréal and Toronto.
The league is owned by the Mark Walter Group, which features Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, tennis icon Billie Jean King and Dodgers president/CEO Stan Kasten. The PWHL’s predecessors, including the Premier Hockey Federation and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, paid tiny salaries or stipends. The PWHL’s pay structure, however, enables many of its players to focus fully on the game.
Hensley had to juggle her hockey career with jobs in coaching, private instruction and delivering groceries when she played in those leagues. Now she and her PWHL peers are getting paid enough to avoid side gigs. The PWHL’s minimum salary is currently around $36,000, with the league’s highest-earning players making about $80,000 annually.
“The PWHL has completely surpassed both of those entities I played for,” Hensley said. “It’s a truly professional league. Before, it was impossible to just play hockey and not have another job as a way to support yourself. Being able to just focus on hockey was always the goal, and to finally be at that point is huge and it’s showing in the product.”
Hensley, who took the Walter Cup around Denver last fall as part of her day with the trophy — including eating Little Man Ice Cream out of it and trips to the state capitol, Edge Ice Arena and Red Rocks — is proud to be Colorado’s face in the new chapter of women’s hockey.
“It’s pretty special to have started playing hockey in the street, and ended up here,” Hensley said. “… (The PWHL) is something where we always knew if you built it, they will come, so it’s been amazing to be a part of it coming to fruition.”
PWHL Takeover Tour
What: First professional women’s hockey game in Colorado
When: 1 p.m. Sunday
Where: Ball Arena
Who: Montréal Victoire vs. Minnesota Frost
Tickets: Still available via Ticketmaster