Nicole Hensley Interview: Olympics & The PWHL

Today we have the incredible honor of sitting down with a goaltender who has an amazingly impressive resume.

This goalie is a three-time gold medal winning women's world goalie with Team USA, a gold and silver medal winning Olympian, a PWHL goaltender, and a two-time Walter Cup champion.

And to top it all off, she has some of the most stellar purple mask designs to ever exist.

If you guessed Nicole Hensley as the goaltender, you are correct.

Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Excited to be here.

Yeah, of course.

So I just wanted to get started with the first question.

So what was the moment for you that sparked wanting to become a goaltender?

That's a good question.

I started playing hockey when I was seven and I was a player at first.

And we had a goalie on our team, but they let everybody try it if you wanted to.

And I don't, I don't know exactly why, but I was like, yeah, sure.

Like I want to try.

And then I played one game.

I think I got scored on a bunch, but you know, I thought it was really cool to get to play the whole game.

I liked getting to wear the, you know, the special gear with the pads and helmet and the gloves.

And I just remember having a lot of fun in that first game.

And so from there, it kind of grew like the next year I skated out and was the team's backup goalie.

The year after that, it was like a 50-50 split.

And then it was after that I decided to play goalie full-time.

So it was kind of a gradual shift into the position.

I think as I got into it more, I realized I was a much better goalie than I was a skater.

So I think that also helped play into it a little bit.