Ever since the U.S. women's ice hockey team won gold in Pyeongchang in 2018, Hilary Knight couldn't wait to do it all again.
"As soon as the game was over, I was like, 'I want another one,'" the now four-time Olympian told E! News before she took off for Beijing, where the U.S. women are set to face off against Czechia in the quarterfinals Feb. 10 (8:10 p.m. PT/11:10 ET). "It was just a 'Great, When can we play again?' kind of thing. That team is so special for so many different reasons, whether it's what we went through in 2017 together that really galvanized us, to all the extra stuff that we had to put up with during 2018. And finally, in spite of all of it...incredible. Just incredible."
The turmoil Knight referenced centered around their ongoing quest for better playing conditions in North America, a problem not unique to women's hockey but which is especially pervasive in that sport.
Being paid $6,000 in an Olympic year and nothing the rest of the time, the U.S. women threatened to boycott the IIHF Women's World Championship being held in Michigan in March 2017 unless they were given more equitable compensation. It was a risky move that rested on all the potential substitutes USA Hockey tried to get to play saying no. Which they did.
The team signed a new contract promising players at least $70,000 a year and won their third straight title and seventh in nine years. But the drama and the pressure trailed them to Pyeongchang in February 2018, Knight and the others feeling they needed that ultimate victory to really cement the legitimacy of women's ice hockey in the hearts and minds of Americans.
And she knew all too well what it took to devote one's life to the sport.
The Red Bull athlete, who first laced up her skates and declared her Olympic intentions when she was 5, still gets a kick out of seeing the mite level games—not least because it reminds her of being a kid herself hustling out on the ice in Illinois (with mostly all-boy teams, which was how it would be until she got to college).
"Sticks are flying, bodies are flying," she told E!. "It brings you back to that joy, that sort of out-of-body experience trying to skate, and not being good enough to skate, and then trying to hit a puck and not being able to do that, and swinging and missing and whatnot. What an incredible game to be a part of."
Now the most famous face of women's ice hockey, an eight-time world champion and an Olympic gold medalist, it's hard to believe that Knight wasn't always a natural.
"I was terrible," she recalled. "I actually could not lift the puck until maybe right before high school."
She certainly made up for lost time, moving on to play for the University of Wisconsin and leading her beloved Badgers to the NCAA championship in 2009 while earning her degree in history. She first played for the national team at 17 and when she made her Olympics debut in Vancouver in 2010, she was the youngest member on the team at 20 years and 217 days old. (She's now the oldest and in a six-way tie for most Olympic appearances with four.)
"So the irony is, a lot of people know me for my shot, right?" Knight, who broke the World Championship scoring record in 2021 when she thwacked her 45th goal, said. "I remember my coach used to put a Big Gulp on top of the net, and he said, 'I will buy you a soda if you can hit this drink off.' And I was never able to hit the drink off the top of the net. I just wanted to so badly!"
But she didn't get too discouraged. "I took it as a challenge," she explained. "And I just really wanted to lift the puck, and so I did more reps and whatnot. It just showed, certainly to me personally at a young age, that if I set my mind to something and I set these little goals and work at it, then anything's possible."
After Pyeongchang, it was right back to squaring off against their sport's governing bodies, including the National Women's Hockey League.
Knight left the Boston Pride, part of the still-fledgling NWHL, to join the Montreal Canadiennes of the now-defunct Canadian Women's Hockey League, but in 2019 she joined more than 200 fellow players in vowing not to compete for any professional league that short-changed them on pay and working conditions.
The mass organizing led to the formation of the Professional Women's Hockey Player Association, which Knight sees as a key step in the future of their sport (which ideally, in her eyes, would just be hockey, no "men's" or "women's" qualifier needed). "We're trying to build something that's bigger and better than what is currently out there," she told Just Women's Sports in April 2020. "Not only for ourselves but also for the younger girls who dream of playing professional hockey."
When she found herself with an unexpected break from competition during the COVID-19 pandemic, Knight built a gym in her garage and also took the opportunity to get her MBA from Boise State, knowing that one day, when her playing career is over, she's going to want to combine her entrepreneurial spirit with the countless lessons hockey has taught her.
For instance, the 5-foot-11 forward told E! News that she ultimately benefited from her pre-game ritual requiring getting acclimated to the place she was playing at on any given day, since she and her compatriots have no home ice, as NHL teams do. It fell on her to develop a routine and trust her instincts.
"That breeds confidence for me," she said. "So wherever we are in the world, I will piece it together slowly as we get closer to a puck drop or a tournament start. And traditionally, it's a lot of listening to my body. But I do comfort things, you know, having sort of blander meals on a game day, having my pregame nap. When I get to the rink I have a playlist that I usually listen to that has a mixture of music that's super pump-up to very mellow, depending on where my headspace is at."
Admittedly, hockey being a full-body sport that requires every inch of a person to be in the game, it can be difficult to unwind.
"I just try to chill and hang out," Knight shared, noting that she'll usually go for a long walk and try her darndest not to look at her phone and check email.
"It's hard to not feel that guilt of being like, 'Oh, I need to answer this person.'" But her me time is essential and she has to set boundaries. "After a game, it's difficult [to decompress], but I found success in different breathing activities to really mellow myself and center myself—and I can't say it always works, but it definitely helps."
She can, however, devote herself to some solid TV time, her favorites ranging from Succession to Andy Cohen and his stable of Bravolebrities. "I definitely rely a lot on my algorithm," she said with a laugh, revealing that she'd just binged the second season of Cheer and was hoping she'd be able to download Netflix's Inventing Anna once she was in Beijing.
Not in her queue: "I cannot watch any of these contagion shows!"
When she Zoomed with E!, she was, in fact, in an ad hoc bubble in Minnesota with her teammates, their first combined goal of these Olympic Games being not to have any positive tests.
But at least it was a singular bonding experience.
"We've been extremely fortunate to have a great setup here, obviously, in the state of hockey for us," Knight said. "It's little abnormal, how we've gone about the last few months, but we figured out a way."
Of the team that won gold in Pyeongchang, 13 were on the 23-woman roster for Beijing—and Knight, now the seasoned veteran—couldn't wait to get into competition to show off the team's skills.
"We have a good mixture of first-timers and repeat Olympians," she said, "and it feels like everybody has been there before. Obviously that's not the case but I just have loved how our team has navigated adversity, how we always find a way to figure it out and are ready to adjust and adapt."
"I'm really excited to do all-gas, no-brakes," she continued, "and really showcase the talent of our team. I think that's what's really exciting for me is seeing some of our younger players and seeing how skilled and talented they are. And I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I just can't wait for you to take the world stage!'"
And whether you're a first-timer—"running around like a little kid in the candy shop to do everything and try everything and just be fascinated by the whole experience," as she was in Vancouver—or a four-timer, Knight said, "The Olympics always hold a special place" and "not one feels greater or lesser than the other. They're equally just special."
This will be her first Olympics, however, with just her team and assorted coaches, trainers, etc. because attendance is limited due to the pandemic, but she knows watch parties will be taking place at her family's home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
After the Olympics, Knight will be headed to ESPN as an NHL analyst, broadcasting one of the off-ice skills she's added to her arsenal in recent years and a way in which she can still be part of her sport down the road. Talking about hockey is "a great, great job," she said happily.
But, reminiscent of the strides made in recent years in women's soccer, what she's really hoping to see in the near future is the establishment of a professional league in which players "earn at minimum a livable wage," so that "a young girl who falls in love with the game can see it all the way to its fullest."
"It's something that the sport so desperately needs," Knight said, "and I'm one of many in a position to help facilitate, whether that's through conversations or standing up and leveraging my platform to say 'this is right' or 'this is wrong,' or 'we need to do better.'"
"A handful of us are in a unique position to shape the future of the game, which is really incredible," she continued. "And not to say that the women who came before us didn't do it, because they did. We're just kind of standing on their shoulders and doing our part and piecing it together. You know, another piece forward."