Gabriella Durante did not spend draft night staring at a screen, refreshing social media or waiting for her phone to ring.
Instead, the 2026 PWHL Draft found Durante with roughly 30 seconds left in the third period of a beer league game she was refereeing. Right before the game, she tucked her phone into her gear at the insistence of her refereeing partner. Durante thought the PWHL Draft had probably ended already.
Then her longtime goalie coach, Brad Kirkwood, called.
“No way. Shut up. There’s no way,” she remembered responding. Then reality collided with the game still happening around her. “I gotta go — thanks, but I gotta go. I gotta finish this game real quick.”
Seattle selected Durante with the 62nd overall pick, the second selection of the sixth round, in the 2026 PWHL Draft. The pick made the Calgary-born goaltender and Italian Olympian the first University of Calgary Dinos player selected in a PWHL Draft.
The beer league game was a deliberate distraction — Durante did not expect anybody to select her.
“When my name got called, it was kind of just utter surprise and shock, and an amazing feeling for sure,” Durante told The Ice Garden. “I didn’t really make a big deal out of it. It was very low-key.”
For a player whose career has repeatedly advanced when she’s stepped into situations without knowing exactly what would happen next, perhaps the surprise was fitting.
Before the PWHL, Durante was just trying to keep playing
Long before Seattle drafted Durante, a professional league felt far removed from the path in front of her.
Durante entered the University of Calgary while she was still finishing her final year of U18 eligibility. She didn’t have a collection of university offers waiting for her, but she liked Calgary, wanted to stay with her friends and didn’t want to stop playing hockey.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna play hockey. I’m gonna play at U of C. I’m gonna try to make that team,’” Durante said. “[I] basically just went up to the coach at the time and more or less begged to be on the team.”
That version of herself, Durante said, would have the hardest time believing where hockey eventually took her.
“I was just trying to keep playing hockey and didn’t really think I would go very far with it,” she said. “Honestly, [I] didn’t even think I would complete the five years. So that version of me would be absolutely shocked.”
And yet, Durante did far more than simply stick around.
Durante finished her university career with 73 regular-season appearances for Calgary, posting a .917 save percentage, a 2.35 goals-against average and 11 shutouts. She earned Canada West Second Team All-Star honors in 2022-23 and became a three-time Academic All-Canadian.
Another season with Calgary initially seemed like the obvious next step. Because of the additional eligibility granted following the COVID-19 disruption, Durante planned to return to the Dinos. Then, an Italian passport and an unexpected opportunity forced her to reconsider the plan.
A leap to Italy changed the trajectory of Durante’s career
The opportunity came with a catch: She had to leave immediately.
“The Italian coach was like, ‘You [have] to move to Italy right now if you want to make this team,’” Durante said.
Walking away from another year with Calgary meant leaving teammates, familiarity and a season she had been excited to play in. She said Dinos head coach Josh Gosling encouraged her to take the chance anyway.
“He was just like, ‘You gotta follow your dreams,’” Durante recalled. “‘Obviously, it puts us in a tough spot, but you just gotta follow your dreams.’”
Nothing guaranteed Durante an Olympic roster spot once she got there. She had also never lived away from home before. The way she practiced and trained changed, and the structure surrounding her did not always provide what she needed to develop. But instead of waiting for the environment to push her, Durante learned to push herself.
“It was a lot of resilience and trying to figure out how I can improve myself, even if the situation and the environment wasn’t necessarily pushing me to be better,” she said. “I had to push myself.”
The experience challenged something deeper, too. Durante had traditionally felt most comfortable when she could predict what came next, but Italy gave her no such luxury.
“That whole process of moving to Italy and having so much uncertainty showed me that I can actually thrive in those situations,” Durante said. “You don’t need to know everything all the time. If there’s a little bit of uncertainty, you’re still able to perform. You’re still able to succeed.”
On the Olympic stage, Durante learned to enjoy the impossible
Durante earned her place on Italy’s roster for its home Olympics in 2026. Her tournament included a 27-save performance in Italy’s 3-2 preliminary-round win over Japan, a result that helped put the host nation in position to reach the quarterfinals.
Then came the United States.
Italy entered its quarterfinal against an American team packed with some of the best offensive players in the world. The U.S. controlled the game and outshot Italy 51-6. Durante still stopped 45 shots as the Americans won 6-0.
On paper, 6 goals against hardly sounds like the kind of game a goaltender would remember fondly. Durante remembers it as one of the best.
“There wasn’t really any letting go. It was like, just literally have fun at that point,” she said. “It’s kind of nice being Italy in that situation because there’s really no expectations. It was like, go out and just do your absolute best.”
The scoreboard couldn’t capture what the game meant inside Italy’s dressing room. Durante watched her teammates throw everything they had at a vastly deeper opponent, and she did the same in her net.
“In the room after the game, it felt like we won that game,” she said. “Maybe that’s a hot take. Obviously, the scoreboard didn’t show that, but [we felt it] because every single one of us in that room persevered one way or another throughout that game and just played [our] best.”
Durante laughed at the contradiction.
“It was the most fun I’ve ever had playing hockey in my life, which is crazy because obviously you’re on the biggest stage, you give up 6 goals — like, that sucks,” she said. “But at the same time, it was just, like, the most fun.”
Durante is athletic when she needs to be, calm when it matters
Ask Durante to explain her goaltending without disappearing into goalie jargon, and she starts with one word: “Athletic.”
Durante played several sports growing up, and she believes that background still appears whenever a play breaks down or she has to reach for a save that should be out of range.
“I think that’s helped me make saves that I shouldn’t [be able to make] in games,” she said.
But Durante doesn’t want every save to look difficult. Her ideal game balances those explosive moments with a quieter presence in the crease.
“I really, really try [to] be calm as much as I can, too,” she said. “If you can make the game look easy, that’s when you know the goalie’s dialed.”
That calm matters beyond her own crease. Durante views goaltending as a position capable of regulating a team during a sport built around momentum and emotion.
“Sometimes you [have] to make the big save and look athletic, but [it helps] if you can be calm, just bring everybody’s emotions down a little bit because hockey is a really high-emotion game,” she said. “I feel like it’s a little bit of a roller coaster, but I like to oscillate between being calm and then super athletic.”
In Seattle, Durante is ready to learn and compete
Durante enters the next stage of her career without a guaranteed PWHL roster spot. Seattle currently has Hannah Murphy and Carly “CJ” Jackson under contract in goal. The Torrent retain Durante’s rights after drafting her, leaving the 25-year-old preparing to prove herself when training camp arrives.
Durante said she sees Murphy and Jackson as competition, but she also sees them as resources. Both can show her what surviving a PWHL season demands.
“First and foremost, I know we’re just going to have so much fun,” Durante said. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about those two from Sheldon [Goertzen], the goalie coach, but also just everybody I’ve talked to.”
She plans to watch how they prepare, practice and manage pressure. Durante also wants to pull pieces from their technical games into her own.
“Every goalie has a lot of tools in their toolbox,” she said. “I think Murph uses tools that I’ve never used before. CJ uses tools that I’ve never used before. So maybe even just pulling something I can that I think will improve my game from their game, I think that’ll be huge.”
The approach fits Durante’s broader philosophy. She wants to become better because improving herself can raise the level of the people around her, regardless of where she sits on a depth chart.
Her former teammates, she suspects, would describe that drive more simply: Durante cares. A lot.
“I want to win really, really badly,” Durante said. “I want to put everything on the line to win and make myself better for the team.”
That intensity once gave her tunnel vision. She joked that she has mellowed with age because her “frontal lobe’s developed a little bit more,” but the competitiveness remains.
“I want to be the best version of myself for the team, even if that means I’m not necessarily playing,” she said. “When you’re the best version of yourself, it just elevates everybody else around you.”
One uncertainty remains: Earning a spot with the Torrent
It would be easy to look at Durante’s last two years and start projecting ahead.
She left university for Italy. She earned an Olympic opportunity. She backstopped a win over Japan, faced 51 shots against the United States and turned an Olympic performance into broader attention. Four months later, Seattle called her name at the PWHL Draft.
But Durante is not interested in skipping ahead. Her focus sits squarely on training camp.
“November camp’s going to be really, really important for me,” Durante said. “I want to show up the best version of myself.”
The long-term questions can wait. First, she wants the roster spot.
“Once that’s taken care of, we can focus on other things,” she said. “But that’s my number-one focus right now, for sure.”
It’s another uncertain situation, but uncertainty no longer carries the same meaning for Durante as it once did. Each time, Durante found out what came next only after she took the chance — and now, she gets to take another one.
