Read full story at source

MILAN — After the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, where she won a gold medal and hit a career best in goals and points, Laura Stacey was ready for a career change.

Visit catcross.org for more information.

In the six years since graduating from Dartmouth College, Stacey had played a minimal role on Team Canada, either on the fourth line or as a spare watching from the stands. All those years bouncing in and out of the lineup had taken their toll. She left Beijing having achieved her childhood dream, and she was ready to move on to the next phase of her life — one without hockey at the center of it.

“I was not enjoying it, I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t smiling. I felt like it was the worst side of me,” Stacey told The Athletic. “It was very valid in my heart that I can’t keep doing this to myself. I can’t keep battling and grinding and not having fun and not being me.”

So she bought test prep books and signed up for classes to start working on her MBA.

Four years later, those books are office decor. Stacey is now an established star in the Professional Women’s Hockey League and a top-line winger beside her wife, Marie-Philip Poulin.

Stacey commands a larger share of attention being married to the greatest women’s hockey player of all time. With that attention has come a narrative — and for Stacey, a fear — that she’s gotten more opportunities because of her relationship.

But at the 2026 Olympics in Milan, Stacey has arrived in the spotlight as a star in her own right. She’s fast and physical, a relentless forechecker and a capable goal scorer. All of that makes Stacey one of Canada’s best players. It also makes her an ideal winger for Poulin. That’s exactly where Stacey opened the tournament, but with Poulin now day-to-day with a lower-body injury, Stacey has been driving play on her own line.

“To see what she’s been able to do, and how much she embraced how her role has changed over the years, it’s been amazing to see,” said Poulin. “Obviously I have a front-row seat to that and I’m pretty lucky.”

In her final college game as captain of the Dartmouth Big Green, Stacey broke both of her wrists.

She was able to avoid surgery, but spent her final semester of college with two casts up to her elbows and a sling. Her family had to spend two weeks on campus just helping Stacey get dressed every morning.

And yet, while other teammates and graduating student athletes were taking a victory lap and enjoying their last few months before graduation, Stacey was busy trying to stay in shape.

“Our house was a bit of a party house,” said Ailish Forfar, Stacey’s Dartmouth teammate and longtime friend. “And Laura every day would get up, she would go to physio, she’d be on the bike, she’d be doing water workouts, she’d be training with the team that is coming back next year. She dedicated all of her time to training.”

In the spring of 2016, Stacey had played for Canada’s national under-18 team and been on the under-22 development roster. But despite strong play in college, she had never been able to crack the senior women’s national team. Stacey felt like that fall’s training camp was her last, best shot.

“I bought her one of those beer hats with the two straws because she couldn’t even hold a Keystone Light,” said Forfar. “But that’s when I was like, man, she’s never gonna stop until she makes the Olympic team.”

Less than a year later, Stacey made her first World Championships team and had a breakout year in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League, winning rookie of the year. In 2018, she was named to her first Olympic roster and played a minimal role as Canada lost in the gold medal game to Team USA in PyeongChang.

The next four years, though, were “the hardest” of Stacey’s career.

The CWHL folded on the eve of the 2019 Women’s World Championships, which meant she no longer had a consistent place to play. And her spot in the Team Canada lineup was far from settled, and far from permanent. That much was on display at the 2021 worlds in Calgary, when Stacey was healthy scratched for all but one game. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tournament was played in a “bubble” and if Stacey wasn’t in the lineup, she had to stay away from the main roster players, including Poulin, whom she’d begun dating privately a few years earlier.

“It was extremely difficult because everybody on our team knew and I’m in the stands, super upset, not understanding why I’m not playing,” Stacey said. “And she’s the captain of the team and trying to support me, but also trying to win a gold medal for the team.”

She and Canada’s head coach, Troy Ryan, had many difficult conversations that year about Stacey’s role in the program. Ryan, who’s been the head coach since 2020, wanted Stacey to channel her speed and strength into quality fourth-line minutes. Stacey — the same player who trained every day with two broken wrists — was striving for more and figured that her time spent on the national team would have led to more chances further up the lineup.

“I remember specific conversations I had with her encouraging her not to think of the game as chasing stats and chasing status and chasing points and all those things, and just embrace who she is,” said Ryan. “She’s fast, she’s strong, she’s powerful and passionate. But she was fighting it.”

“I just couldn’t see his perspective,” Stacey says now. “And he couldn’t see mine. Or he could and he really wanted to help me find this place of owning (my game).”

That was around when Stacey became so frustrated that she started thinking about a life after hockey. Her plan was to make the Olympic team at any cost, win gold, and be done with elite women’s hockey.

A conversation with Ryan in the lead-up to the 2022 Olympics helped Stacey figure out how to achieve her goal.

“You can’t be good at everything,” he told her. “So what are two things you want to be the best in the world at?”

Instead of choosing to perfect flashy skills or stumping for a spot higher in the lineup, Stacey committed to being the best penalty killer and the best forechecker in the world.

In Beijing, Stacey played in all seven games for Canada, scoring four goals and six points en route to a gold medal. After the tournament, Stacey, Jill Saulnier and Emma Maltais got matching “4” tattoos to celebrate their role in the win.

“It was probably the best I’ve played on the fourth line because I just didn’t care,” Stacey said. “Nobody knows that in Beijing I barely played or was on the fourth line; they just know that I’m a two-time Olympian who’s now won a gold medal. And I think that flip of the switch for me was (important).”

After a sense of unrest about her career after the Olympics, Stacey had a change of heart and realized she could own her style of play on the fourth line and still be happy.

A few months later, at the 2022 world championships in Denmark, she moved up to the third line with elite forechecking forwards Emily Clark and Blayre Turnbull, which became one of the most important lines for Team Canada en route to a gold medal.

“That was probably one of my favorite tournaments ever on the national team and I literally just shoved my GMAT books aside,” Stacey said. “Marie still laughs at me like, ‘as if in the middle of hockey season you were just done.’”

Poulin and Stacey have been together for over seven years, but had long kept their relationship private for personal — and hockey — reasons.

“We’re relatively private people in the first place, so we didn’t really feel the need to share that side of our life,” said Stacey. “But I think the main part also was like she was the captain of the team; I was this player who was struggling to find my place. Then with the PWHL coming, there were just a lot of questions of, do we want people to know that we’re teammates who are together?”

The couple publicly announced their engagement on Instagram in May 2023. A few weeks later came the official announcement that a new women’s professional hockey league, the PWHL, would launch in January 2024. All six original franchises would start to build their rosters in September with three “foundational” signings followed by a 15-round player entry draft.

It was a formality that Poulin, from Beauceville, Quebec, would sign with the league’s Montreal franchise. But as Stacey began talking to interested teams, she wondered if those teams were only calling her to get to Poulin. Stacey became so anxious at one point that she decided she’d rather forgo the signing window and take her chances in the entry draft.

“I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t want (people) to think, oh, that team only signed Laura because of Marie versus what I brought to that team.”

When Montreal’s general manager, Danièle Sauvageau, called Stacey with a pitch, she picked up on Stacey’s fears and showed up at Poulin and Stacey’s shared home.

“Laura, I want you,” Sauvageau told her. “I’m not here to see Marie. I’m not here to create this package deal. I want you as a person and you as the player.”

Stacey signed a three-year contract with the Montreal Victoire and was blown away by the reception from fans.

“It felt like I was Laura Stacey more than just Marie-Philip Poulin’s wife,” she said.

The PWHL provided Stacey an opportunity to train and play full-time and grow outside of her national team identity. In Montreal, she still played a speedy north-south game and was relentless on the forecheck. But she also got more confident and creative offensively. Eventually, it became clear that she was an ideal fit to play on Montreal’s top line with Poulin. Team Canada agreed, putting Poulin and Stacey together on the top line for the 2025 women’s worlds in Czechia.

All the work she put in to be the best fourth-line winger back in 2021-22 is exactly what makes Stacey the ideal linemate for Poulin. She brings speed to the line and hunts down loose pucks to free up Poulin to get open in shooting lanes. She goes hard to the net and can score in tight or screen an opposing goalie.

“We do laugh a little bit, we never thought we were going to play together because we play differently,” said Poulin. “But I think that’s why it works.”

“I am an unconventional first-line right-winger,” added Stacey.

Their relationship — Poulin and Stacey tied the knot in September 2024 — has also helped both players grow. The two are always the last players to get off the ice at practice and stay late in the gym, always going for one more pass or one more rep.

“Sometimes it’s hard to finish a workout because somebody’s doing a little bit extra,” said Poulin. “We have that mentality of ‘one more’ and I think that’s how we push each other to be better.”

Stacey acknowledged that “obviously” living and training with the best player in the world has helped her on her journey. But she also believes going public with their relationship and sharing their marriage has helped them immensely.

“I think we’re better people and players because we were honest with ourselves, we told the world that we were together and we got that weight off of our chest,” she said. “We can genuinely go out and go to the rink and be ourselves completely and not have anything to hide.”

A sense of imposter syndrome — that her spot riding shotgun with Poulin is based primarily on their relationship, not merit — still nags at Stacey, just like it did when she was deciding on signing in Montreal. And during last year’s expansion draft process, when the Montreal Victoire used its three protection slots on Poulin, star goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens and Stacey.

In the weeks leading up to the deadline to submit protection lists, Stacey told Sauvageau she would take her chance in the draft if it meant protecting one of the team’s star defenders in Erin Ambrose or Cayla Barnes.

“It was another one of those moments of like, I really hope in the media people see me as me or people want me to be in Montreal because of the player and the person that I am,” Stacey said. “Versus they only want me to stay because of my wife.”

Stacey has spent 2.5 seasons in the PWHL proving she’s more than just Poulin’s wife.

With 23 goals and 48 points, Stacey is eighth all-time in PWHL scoring. She’s had a slower start to the 2025-26 season, but with a career-low 2.9 shooting percentage is bound to turn things around.

Regardless of stats, Ryan — who had no issue healthy scratching Stacey while she and Poulin were dating in 2021 — rejects the narrative completely.

“People always think that Pou is complementing Stacey, but we don’t want Pou grinding all the time. We want her to be able to be finishing some pucks,” he said. “So finding someone like Stacey that can be a right-shot player, that can retrieve pucks, go to the net and do some of those harder things, it frees up Pou to be able to play a little bit more offensively.”

He also wondered why tapping into off-ice relationships to make on-ice decisions would be a problem in the first place.

“With Toronto, I’ve put roommates together to see if you can get them out of a little slump at times,” he said. “(Stacey and Poulin) are able to actually help each other grow. As a coach, why wouldn’t you try to tap into that as much as you can?”

Stacey started the women’s Olympic hockey tournament beside Poulin before the latter was injured in the team’s second game. Shortly after Poulin left the game, Stacey scored her first goal of the tournament and made a statement that it was time for the team to support their captain.

“She’s picked us up so many times, she’s led the way,” Stacey said. “And it was our turn to pick her up.”

On Tuesday, without Poulin, Team USA blanked Canada 5-0. Stacey, back on a line with Turnbull and Clark, was the lone bright spot. She added two assists on Thursday in a 5-0 win against Finland and is now one of Canada’s top scorers at the tournament — and she’s done it in large part without Poulin.

“When she started to embrace who she was, she started to get what she wanted out of (her career) as well,” said Ryan. “And the cool thing is now that she doesn’t have to play any differently than she did when she was on the fourth line. She just seems to appreciate herself more.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Montreal Victoire, NHL, Olympics, Women's Hockey, Women's Olympic Ice Hockey, Olympics, Women's Olympics

2026 The Athletic Media Company

Read full story at source