Hilary Knight on Triumphs, ESPN, Red Bull and the Future of Women's Hockey

As the inaugural winner of the IIHF's new female player of the year award, Hilary Knight is unsure whether she needs to clear a space in her already-crowded trophy case.

"I'm wondering — is there, like, actual hardware affiliated with it?" Knight mused, not long after she received word of the honor from IIHF president Luc Tardif on the phone on June 1. "Hopefully I'll get some package randomly and be like, 'Oh, this is the award.' "

As decorated as she is, the accolade is meaningful to the 33-year-old winger, whose 101 career points accumulated since her World Championship debut in 2007 are the most in tournament history.

"Just having an award now for women's ice hockey is huge and instrumental," she said. "Then, also, the individual excitement of 'Wow, it's always nice to grab some awards.' 

"It's a team sport, so there is that weird, uncomfortable awkwardness — because I do play with amazing people, and I would not be winning that award without those amazing people. But it shows how far the sport has come and where it needs to go, and it's an exciting step for the future."

Wearing the 'C' for Team USA for the first time this year, Knight's hat-trick performance in the final game at April's women's World Championship in Brampton, Ont., helped the Americans beat Team Canada 6-3 and claim their first gold medal since 2019.

"I think there's a handful of U.S. veterans that were extremely determined to really turn the tide for ourselves," she said.

"We have a really, really strong leadership group in that room. And that's why I keep signing back up — because it's so intoxicating, in the best way. You just want to be part of that room."

Knight led all skaters with eight goals in seven games, including the tournament-winner as part of a four-goal third period where Team USA erased a 3-2 deficit to return to the top of the podium.

With that goal, Knight became the first woman in tournament history to record three clinching goals (also 2011 and 2017). She also tied the record of Canada's Danielle Goyette, with nine world championship golds, and Hayley Wickenheiser's record of 13 total world championship medals.

Knight is already sitting among the greatest female hockey players of all time. After settling for silver in Beijing in 2022, would she consider sticking around all the way through her fifth Winter Olympics in Italy in 2026?

"I don't know," she said. "I love it. And as long as I love it and I can make an impact, both on and off the ice, I will continue to sign up.

"The big thing around any Olympic year, when you sign up for a quadrennial, you have to stay healthy, and there's all these other variables. I've also really enjoyed my time with ESPN and doing their NHL coverage and learning what that analyst role looks like and all these other projects. But it's a fun sport. I don't see myself going anywhere in the meantime."

With ESPN over the last two seasons, Knight has been applying the same meticulous work ethic that has brought her success on the ice, being a sponge and learning all she can about how to perform at her best — and also how to prepare well, whether she's working in the studio or as a game analyst between NHL benches.

"I'm getting more comfortable, more familiar with my preparation," she said. "So when the light bulb does shine, I'm ready to perform and make sure that I'm getting the information that I want out to the viewers.

"It's been fun because I think it's so important to have more women on the broadcasts from a visibility standpoint. And also, I think we bring a different lens. It's been awesome to learn but also to have a little imprint on the sport of hockey at that level, and we're hoping that we can have something similar on the women's side pretty soon."

As a Red Bull athlete since 2015, Knight has realized the energy drink is an effective tool in helping with her broadcast preparation.

"Especially when I'm doing notes and stuff, it's sitting on my desk as I'm going through with the different colored markers and highlighting on my yellow pad," she said.

Knight also finds the drink useful for recovery after a workout or a morning skate.

"I'll drink some Red Bull, and then I'll nap," she said. "Then I'll wake up, and I get this awesome boost that I'm like, 'All right! I got my nap in, so that's great and now I'm recovered and I have energy.' I'm not coming out of the nap like, 'Uhhh. I just napped.'

"There's different ways to use it, but for me, my brain is just 'go go go' all the time. So it's really helpful to have something that helps me continue to be able to 'go go go.' "

This is one of the longstanding athlete partnerships that has helped Knight stay true to her dream of playing hockey full-time — something that was even more challenging earlier in her career than it is today.

When the possibility of the partnership was first presented to her, "I was really shy and sort of nervous," she said. "I understood what Red Bull is, and the whole ethos of the company, and the action sports and all the activations around these fun sports. And I heard rumors about how they support athletes and how awesome it would be to tap into those resources.

"When you combine that with the whole visibility piece and where women's hockey was at the time, it was like, 'OK, I need to get our messaging out, and I need to get this story out so people have more eyes on the sport and want to be involved with it,' " she said. "It was a perfect storm, and I just knew, from a partnership standpoint, it made so much sense."

The pandemic and the demise of the CWHL in 2019 stalled some of the momentum that the women's game amassed after the United States won gold at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Knight said she believes the steady evolution of the PWHPA has the sport on the right track in terms of visibility and future growth.

"Every year for the last — what? — three or four years, has been outstanding," she said. "We came into this not knowing how much to sell tickets for, where we were going to play, how we were going to support our athletes, but knowing that we needed to provide programming and support."

This past season, the Dream Gap Tour bent the sport's traditional boundaries, turning rival U.S. and Canadian players into teammates. 

With rumors swirling that a new PWHPA league could debut this fall, "I can't say much other than I'm really excited about it," Knight said. 

"Talk about a group that will disrupt any industry? We've got that group, and we're really fortified in the right way that we're willing to change the game and establish a better future," she said.

"That's something that we've all been about since our first association meeting, so hats off to all the players that are involved. It's been a grind, but I think we're going to find women's hockey in the best place possible.

"That's just women in sport, right? We just figure it out."