Taylor Heise says the opportunity to be a part of Gift of the Game (GOTG) — a training platform which sees high-level athletes work with filmmakers to create bite-sized video lessons for prospective hockey players — fell into her lap.
The 25-year-old two-time Walter Cup Champion says once her agent explained what the program was all about, she jumped at the opportunity.
"Anything that I can do that I didn't have when I was a kid, I'm happy to work with," Heise said. "Growing up in Southern Minnesota… I didn't have as many things as my friends in the city."
That meant growing up, Heise would teach herself skills in her garage in Lake City, Minn., in between occasionally seeing her shooting instructor once a week or so. But she says with the PWHL being a focus for aspiring hockey players, it's important for her to make things like GOTG possible for young girls.
"I want to make sure that anyone in this world – especially women in hockey – can get what they want,” Heise said. "Anything is possible – it's not just a dream, it's a reality.
"I'm someone that is out in the open and someone in the public eye," Heise continued. "I'm able to talk to a lot of young girls and people who want to learn things from me, and now you can watch a few videos and understand where my head is at — what made me so good as a kid."
Joining the GOTG program meant flying to Calgary. The filmmakers focused on her snapshot technique, backhand toe drag, and the choices behind her shot selection. The days consisted of being on the ice from 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., in video shoots.
But in the end, she says it was worth it.
" Anything that I'm able to do to give back is important, “Heise said. “It makes me happy."
Thinking back to growing up in Southern Minnesota, Heise admits that something like GOTG may have hindered her creativity, but says the program would have provided insight into how others think.
" Something that I think hindered me a little bit when I was young was that I thought that I was right and everything that I learned was going to be how I was going to do it," Heise said. "That's the only way I knew. I didn't have anyone to teach me."
Heise says she and her parents learned the game of hockey at the same time, such as understanding icings, offsides, and what a shootout was. For her, Heise believes that knowing there were other ways to do things would have been valuable to learn at a younger age.
" When I was a kid, sometimes I felt in over my head because I didn't have anyone to look up to," Heise said. "I didn't have something like this or something where I could look at it and be like, oh, this is how they do it, let's try it that way."
Breaking down barriers
One area GOTG prides itself on is its accessibility, and it hopes to break down barriers as it provides insight from high-end athletes. For Heise, a barrier she faced growing up was getting ice time. She says to play with the best required driving over an hour and a half into the city.
Nowadays, she feels that one of the barriers aspiring players face is the sheer number of things taking up their time.
"I've seen kids running from soccer to softball to hockey, to tennis, to a lesson, to this, to that," Heise said. "I think as a parent, it's tough to figure out. You see Johnny down the street doing 75 things, and your daughter or your son is not doing as much."
But Heise says sometimes not doing so much is better.
"You don't need to do 57 things," Heise said. "I was very blessed to be able to have amazing parents that didn't overwork me, but we worked hard… nowadays some kids want to hold back a little bit because they have three or four other practices that day.
"That's just something I've seen personally."
Olympic Dreams
Looking ahead, Heise hopes a pitstop in Milan, Italy interrupts her third PWHL season.
"It would be a dream come true," Heise said on making the U.S. 2026 Winter Olympic Roster.
Should Heise make the roster – which feels like a given — it would be her first time representing the United States on that level as she missed out on the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing after being cut from the roster.
However, she says that getting cut may have been for the best.
"It honestly ended up being one of the best things that happened to me," Heise said. "In the sense that I got to understand what failure is like,understand when people don't want you and when you don't fit into a specific role, how you bounce back from that."
She says she's put herself in a great position to make the 2026 roster, and it's easy to understand why, given all she's accomplished internationally and in the PWHL since.
"It's the last thing on my totem pole, at this point," Heise said. "Then you look to make that totem pole higher, it's important to me, and if I were given the opportunity, I would take full advantage of it."