Hilary Knight, the face of U.S. ladies’s hockey, is making ready to make the 2026 Milan Winter Video games her fifth and last Olympics, she instructed USA At this time on Tuesday.
“It is time,” Knight was quoted as saying.
“I’ve grown up on this program and it is simply given me a lot. I am at peace. I simply have this sense that it is time,” she added. “And I am grateful that — hopefully I can keep wholesome and every little thing — I can exit after I’d prefer to be finished. That’s such a privilege that solely a handful of opponents get.”
The choice comes as Knight turns 36 in July, whereas getting into her twentieth yr with the nationwide workforce since making her debut within the 2006 4 Nations Cup match as a 17-year-old.
Over that point, Knight has grow to be one in every of her sport’s most adorned and dominant gamers, together with being named the winner of the IIHF’s inaugural Feminine Participant of the Yr award in 2023.
Final month, she led the U.S. with 9 factors in successful her tenth gold medal on the world championships, a match by which Knight holds the profession document for many targets, assists and factors. On the Olympics, Knight received gold on the 2018 Video games in South Korea together with three silvers.
And he or she’s coming off a PWHL season by which the Boston Fleet captain completed tied for the league lead with 29 factors (15 targets, 14 assists) in 30 video games.
Although she’s retiring from worldwide play, Knight stated she intends to proceed her PWHL profession in a league she performed a job in serving to launch in the summertime of 2023.
The six-team privately funded league surpassed the 1 million attendance mark this previous season and final month introduced it was including enlargement groups in Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, for the beginning of its third season.
Knight’s impression on hockey additionally included her being on the forefront of the U.S. gamers’ risk to boycott the 2017 world championships on house soil, efficiently reaching their bid for higher pay and extra equitable remedy from USA Hockey.
“I understood what the game gave me, and I needed to provide that to different folks. I needed different folks to have the identical alternatives that I had,” Knight stated. “Clearly, there’s tons of labor that all the time must be finished, however I believe we now have a profession path.”
