Manon Rhéaume became emotional when she watched the inaugural Professional Women's Hockey League draft online and heard Taylor Heise's name called first in 2023.
"I was so interested to see how this whole thing's going to unfold and I started having tears in my eyes," Rhéaume recalled. "That moment when she got drafted, to me, that was real. That was not trying to make something happen. It was happening.
"That really made an impact on me at that moment."
The 54-year-old from Lac-Beauport couldn't have imagined it growing up in Quebec, where she was the only girl she knew who played hockey, and who wore her goalie helmet walking into the rink so people didn't know there was a girl in goal.
The hiring of Rhéaume as the first general manager of the PWHL's expansion team in Detroit draws a full circle for her in many ways.
She's lived in Michigan and worked in hockey there for over 20 years, including 11 as girls' division director of the Little Caesars AAA Hockey Club in Detroit. Some of the players Rhéaume helped develop are eligible for this year's PWHL draft in Detroit on June 17.
But among the women's hockey history firsts that grabbed people's attention and became a brick in the foundation for the PWHL, Rhéaume contribution holds rarefied space.
She's the first, and only, woman to play in an NHL game. Rhéaume was invited to the Tampa Bay Lightning's training camp in 1992. The teenage goaltender played a period of a pre-season game, which she did again for the Lightning in 1993.
That breakthrough remains evergreen because parents in arenas nudge their kids and tell them about it, which in turn sends youngsters to online search engines, Rhéaume said.
"The kids would come up to me because their parents knew about me," she said. "I realize more now than back then that my story impacted people in different ways, especially when they came up to me and say 'I remember seeing what you did and it inspired me to go after my dream.'"
Rhéaume went on to appear in 24 men's minor pro games before backstopping Canada to a silver medal in 1998 when women's hockey made its Olympic debut.
"When I got invited to the Tampa Bay training camp, it was all about I wanted to push myself at the highest level that I can and that's why I did that," Rhéaume said.
"I never thought that moment would absolutely change my life, that I would go on and play some pro hockey and continue with the national team, went to the Olympics and stay involved in the game pretty much the rest of my life.
"I would probably still be in Quebec. I would have gone to university and been a school teacher if I would have not taken that opportunity."
Her two sons raised in Michigan, and who played in USA Hockey's national team development program there, also tie Rheaume to the state.
Dylan St. Cyr, born a year after the 1998 Olympic Games, was a college and minor pro goalie. Dakoda Rhéaume-Mullen is a defenceman at the University of Michigan.
In addition to her work with girls' minor hockey in Detroit, Rhéaume was also part of a recent wave of women hired by NHL teams to work in hockey operations and player development.
Rhéaume spent the last four years as a hockey operations and development advisor for the Los Angeles Kings before the PWHL came calling.
The league will expand to 12 teams in 2026-27 with the addition of Detroit, Las Vegas, Hamilton and San Jose, Calif.
"When this opportunity came about in Detroit, it's almost like everything I did in my entire life led to this," Rhéaume said.
"Hockey brought me so much along the way. It's really cool today to be part of this."
