Canada’s reigning Olympic women’s hockey team is riding a four-game losing streak to its American rivals. And last April, on home ice—in the nation’s capital, to boot—the Canadians lost 3–2 in the world championship final to the U.S. One of the chief causes of the Canadian heartbreak: Amanda Kessel. The younger sister of speedy Toronto Maple Leafs winger, Phil, was the subject of a Sportsnet magazine profile following Team USA’s world championship win. Thirty-three days out from Sochi, and with the American team officially announced on New Year’s Day at the Winter Classic in Ann Arbour, let’s get re-acquainted with the little blonde sniper that will again be a thorn in Canada’s side come February.
All Hayley Wickenheiser can do is chase. The longtime Canadian captain is at the mercy of Team USA’s lightning-fast right-winger, who tears around her and picks up the puck she chipped neatly off the boards to herself. No. 28 has been manufacturing chances for the Americans since the start of this world championship gold-medal grudge match in Ottawa, and now she’s looking at a 2-on-1 in the third period of a tie game. She picks her corner. Then she unloads a laser-beam wrister, top shelf. The Gatorade bottle atop the net protected by Canada’s goalie Shannon Szabados is airborne. The Scotiabank Centre is silent, the air sapped out, never to return, after the goal that seals a 3–2 USA victory. And the dagger comes thanks to the brightest young star in women’s hockey. But even after the biggest goal of her career, the sniper with the infectious smile has to answer questions about big brother Phil.
It’s impossible to not draw comparisons between 21-year-old Amanda Kessel and her Toronto Maple Leafs–leading scorer brother. Kessel is crazy fast; so is Phil. Their skating style is eerily similar: low to the ice, powerful, rapid, yet seemingly effortless. She has a hell of a shot, like Phil—though hers goes in more often. Both are shifty and have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But while he was one of the NHL’s top 10 in points for the second straight season, his sister has found a way to outdo him. Kessel is coming off a season that earned her a place in The Best Female Hockey Player on the Planet discussion. Weeks before she led Team USA to the world championship title on Canadian soil, she captured the NCAA’s top player honours after leading the Minnesota Gophers to a national championship and a perfect 41-0 record, the likes of which the NCAA’s top hockey ranks haven’t seen since 1970. The college game is the best women’s hockey in the world, so equate what Kessel did to the men’s side and it’s like winning the Stanley Cup and the Hart Trophy in the same year. “Her season couldn’t have gone any better,” says Team USA coach Katey Stone. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, Kessel is humble, likeable and funny—she’s marketable in a women’s game dying for relatable, good-looking stars. Add all that to the fact she’s Phil’s sister and Amanda Kessel is the best thing going in women’s hockey right now.
Her mom, Kathy, doesn’t want to boast, but she called that world championship game-winner before it went in. “It’s sad to say, but I expect it out of her,” she says, laughing, from the family home in Madison, Wis. “She’s been winning games all year for her college team.” In May, Kessel became only the fourth player in NCAA women’s hockey history to eclipse the 100-point mark in a single season, tallying 101 points—46 goals, 55 assists—in 38 games. And she did it with an injury. Kessel played limited minutes at the start of the season because she was recovering from surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right hip (“We used her sporadically on the power play, and she still had four points that first weekend,” says Gophers coach Brad Frost). Late in the season, she missed four games because the hip was acting up again—she took only four months off post-surgery, and recovery can take up to a year. Kessel averaged three points a game for most of the season; in a 6–3 national championship win over Boston University, she had two goals and two helpers. “As banged up as she was, she carried our team to the championship,” says Frost. “That’s the thing about Amanda. The way she plays in big games separates her.” Frost has been a part of the Gophers coaching staff for the past 13 years, has seen the world’s best in their prime, and coached the NCAA’s single-season points record holder, Natalie Darwitz. “There’s nobody I’d rather have up front on our team than Amanda Kessel,” he says. Gophers goalie Noora Raty, Finland’s national team backstop since 2005, goes one step further: “Next year, Kess will be the best player in the world. I played against Darwitz, [Krissy] Wendell, Wickenheiser, but the potential I see in Kessel, she will be a better player than those three were.” In other words, the best ever.
That she comes from a modern-day Sutter family only sweetens the story. There are tales for days about the competitive nature of the hockey-playing Kessels, a contingent that includes 24-year-old defenceman Blake, a sixth-round draft pick for the New York Rangers who plays for the AHL’s Adirondack Phantoms. Through a former babysitter’s confession, Kathy only recently found out (“I could have killed them!”) that her kids used to flood the garage with a hose in the summer and slide around playing mini-stick hockey. “It was do or die,” Kathy says of the daily battles between the three. “Nothing ended in a tie.” That fire hasn’t abated in the youngest Kessel, either. Raty says she “gets pissed and talks to herself” when she misses a shot in practice, or when she loses in what’s meant to be a friendly 3-on-3 game. Kessel, known to family as Mandy, laughs and says it’s in the Kessel blood. Getting her to chat isn’t easy—she’s like her oldest brother that way. “Blake will talk to anyone, but me and Phil are more quiet, shit-disturber types.” On the latter point, Kessel is the Gophers’ prankster; she puts clear tape on the bottom of teammates’ skates so they fall on the ice, sets up water cups that dump on their heads when they grab their helmets and sneaks pennies in the shafts of their sticks so they think they’re broken. Kessel’s Twitter handle: “NHL player for the Minnesota Gophers.” She’s poking fun at all the NHLers who do it.
In the days after Kessel scored that world championship game-winner, Phil’s phone lit up with text messages that said he has “a lot to live up to” thanks to his sister. “I actually felt a little bit bad because people were ripping on him,” says Kessel, who nearly doubled Phil’s regular season points production. It’s that protective sibling thing, even if she admits the constant questions she gets about Phil are “sometimes a little much.” Phil always says Amanda’s the No. 1 Kessel. “It’s pretty neat,” she says later, “that he gets asked about me.” It’s more than neat. To see Phil on national broadcasts talking about the sweet goal his sister scored, or tweeting congratulations to the Gophers on a perfect season, exposes a hockey-crazed audience to an oft-overlooked women’s game. It gets Leafs broadcasters talking about her, fans on Twitter saying Phil’s sister might’ve converted on that chance he had. Making fun of Phil has long been a pastime in Toronto, of course. Now it turns out it’s good for women’s hockey.
If all goes according to plan, Mandy Kessel will again light up the hockey world on the Olympic stage next February in Sochi and make herself one of the few household names in the women’s game. She was a late cut at 17 for the team that won silver in Vancouver, and four years later she’s a big reason the Americans are favoured to win gold. Phil will answer more questions about her. Then she’ll return to Minnesota to close out her college career with the Gophers, where she’s on pace to break the all-time NCAA scoring record, held by Canadian Meghan Agosta. A mere 73 points away from eclipsing the 303-point mark, it would require a career season from most—Kessel is one of only 14 players to earn 80 points or more in a single campaign. She’s done it twice. So, for the next big star in women’s hockey, a 73-point season would only ignite that Kessel fire. It wouldn’t be damn near good enough.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.
