Happy Hockey Friday! I’m LJ Bachenheimer from The Ice Garden, bringing you your weekly dose of women’s hockey stories and news.
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While NCAA hockey is now up and running and the PWHL is still about a month and a half away from kicking off, the NHL started its regular season earlier this week. In celebration, I wanted to share a little about some women who have played hockey on men’s teams. This topic was the theme of the latest episode of my podcast, Purple Posts, a show all about interesting and memorable moments in women’s hockey history.
My guest Geremy and I got a little too enthusiastic about the subject, and we didn’t get to talk about all the players I wanted to on air. Luckily for readers of The IX, though, all that info has a home in this newsletter! Stay tuned for the stories of some outstanding women’s hockey players who managed to break into men’s hockey, plus what you should be reading going into this weekend.
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Charline Labonté
Labonté was the second woman to ever play in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), a major development league for men’s hockey talent (the first was the legendary Manon Rheaume). Between 1999 and 2000, Labonté appeared in 28 games for the Acadie-Bathurst Titan. As groundbreaking as that was on its own, her play in the QMJHL garnered Labonté another unique accolade: one of the first women with a hockey card, as part of Upper Deck’s prospect series.
But Labonté’s brief foray into boys’ major junior hockey is one of the least interesting parts of her resume. She played 61 games for Team Canada between 2001 and her retirement in 2017, appearing at eight IIHF Women’s World Championships and three Olympic Games.
At the 2006 Torino Olympics, Labonté led all goaltenders with a 0.976 save percentage and 0.33 goals against average on Canada’s road to a gold medal, her first of three. She was also awarded Top Goaltender honors at the 2009 World Championships and picked up two golds and six silver medals during her career at Worlds. Not content with just racking up trophies in ice hockey, Labonté also won a gold medal with Team Canada in international roller hockey.
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Labonté’s collegiate and club history is just as extensive. From 2001 to 2006, she played for teams in Laval and Montréal in the first NWHL, a Canadian national league (not to be confused with the mostly-American league that later became the PHF). After that league folded, Labonté took her talents to USports, playing five years and 98 games at McGill University.
With McGill, she never posted a regular-season save percentage less than 0.940 and helped lead the Martlets to three Canadian national interscholastic titles in four years. Sticking around Montréal, Labonté played in the CWHL for the Montréal Stars and Les Canadiennes de Montréal from 2012 to 2017, finishing off her playing career by winning the 2017 Clarkson Cup.
Florence Schelling
Schelling was the first (and only) woman to play in Switzerland’s National League B, the second-tier Swiss professional men’s hockey league. She joined EHC Bülach for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons, winning 14 of 17 regular-season games she appeared in. Before that, she played for several men’s U20 teams in Switzerland.
Perhaps more notable than her time playing with men’s hockey teams was her time leading a men’s hockey team. Schelling was the first woman in the world to be named general manager of a men’s professional sports league when she took the reins in the front office of SC Bern in Switzerland’s top hockey league from 2020-2021.
Schelling’s career in women’s hockey is so extensive that it’s hard to summarize, including success at the college, club and national team levels. If you want to learn more about all she’s accomplished, I’ll direct you to my podcast guest Geremy’s great two-part series on why Schelling and Shannon Szabados should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Still, here are a few quick hits.
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Schelling was a four-year starter at Northeastern, posting a 0.940 save percentage and 1.73 goals against across her NCAA career. She is a two-time Hockey East Player of the Year and was the conference Top Goaltender twice. After college and her brief foray into Swiss men’s hockey, Schelling joined Linköping HC in the SDHL, where she played for three years in 84 games and posted a career regular-season save percentage of 0.948.
She was a member of the Swiss national team from 2005 until she retired from play in 2018, appearing at four Olympics and ten World Championships. Switzerland was not often an international contender, but Schelling still backstopped them to a World bronze medal in 2012 and an Olympic bronze in 2014, earning Best Goaltender awards for both tournaments. She was also named to the Swiss Hockey Hall of Fame — but the big HHOF invitation got lost in the mail, somehow.
Michelle Karvinen
She’s known as a Finnish legend, but Karvinen was born in Denmark and holds dual Finnish-Danish citizenship. That was how she started her career with Denmark’s minor league Rødovre SIK, playing simultaneously for both the club’s top men’s junior league team and the senior women’s team, with a handful of appearances for the second-tier men’s senior team. She even helped her hometown club win the Danish men’s U20 league championship twice, in 2010 and 2011. Did I also mention that Karvinen is a forward, different from most women who break into men’s leagues as goaltenders?
Karvinen has been a Finnish national team mainstay since she was a teenager, with eight medals at Worlds (one silver, seven bronze) and three Olympic bronze medals to her name. She’s played all around the world, from doing her college years at the University of North Dakota, to the SDHL, to a year and a league championship in Switzerland, to joining the Chinese team in the Russian women’s hockey league.
Since 2022, Karvinen has been a mainstay for Frölunda in the SDHL, but she’s now moving onto yet another team and locale to make her mark. Karvinen is still actively playing, and she just signed a contract with PWHL Vancouver after being drafted by them earlier this year. Time to see what her extensive experience can bring to the PWHL.
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Kim Martin Hasson
Martin Hasson is on this list for her time playing in Sweden’s top U18 and U20 junior men’s leagues. At the same time, she was getting her first taste of play on the world stage, as Martin Hasson made her international debut for Sweden’s senior women’s hockey team during the 2001 World Championships. She was 15 years old at the time (though she only played in two games).
Five years later, Martin Hasson was supposed to become the first woman to play in a Swedish men’s professional league when the Malmö Redhawks of the second-tier league offered her a deal, but the contract and games never actually went through. Blame it on NCAA eligibility rules. Martin Hasson was committed to the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and UMD did not want to risk its future starter suddenly becoming ineligible due to professional play.
That ended up being a pretty good call for both Martin Hasson and UMD. Coming off two European championships with AIK, Martin Hasson arrived in Duluth firing on all cylinders. Her collegiate career save percentage was 0.943 over 99 total games. In 2008, she led the Bulldogs all the way to the national championship, posting the second-ever shutout in NCAA women’s hockey championship history.

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She was a top-three finalist for the Patty Kazmeier Award and the WCHA Goaltending Champion. Her 67 career wins set a school record that still stands today. Martin Hasson finished her career with a year in Russia and three in Sweden, winning two SDHL titles with Linköping in 2014 and 2015.
Her international accolades require their own trophy case. At only 16, Martin Hasson backstopped Sweden to a bronze medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics after ending up in the starter’s net for the medal game against Finland thanks to a coin toss. That was Sweden’s first Olympic medal, but it wasn’t the last, as she stayed in goal for the 2006 Olympics to capture silver and earn Best Goaltender honors in the process.
When it comes to the World Championships, Martin Hasson played for Sweden in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008, earning bronze medals in 2007 and as a member of the 2009 team. Earlier this year, Martin Hasson’s achievements were honored when she was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame.
Mariah Fujimagari
Fujimagari is the most recent entry on this list as the first female goaltender to win a game in the ECHL since Manon Rheaume in 1995. In 2023, she was signed to a professional try-out agreement by the Kalamazoo Wings. When the starting goalie got hurt during a preseason game, Fujimagari took over the net during the third period and helped her team to a 4-3 overtime win. For the 2023-24 ECHL regular season, she was on the Norfolk Admirals’ roster, but never appeared in a game.
Prior to her ECHL appearance, Fujimagari was something of a journeywoman. She played four years at the University of Maine, mostly as part of a goalie tandem, and posted a 0.890 NCAA career save percentage. After graduating in 2017, she played for Slovakia’s ŠKP Bratislava in the EWHL and Slovak women’s Extraliga.
She returned to North America the next year, joining the CWHL’s Worcester Blades for 2018-19 and the NWHL’s Buffalo Beauts for 2019-20. As an NWHL rookie, Fujimagari earned the unique title of fastest-skating goalie at the 2020 All-Star Game. She served as the emergency backup goalie for all NWHL teams during the 2021 bubble season, then appeared in a few games for the Connecticut Whale during the 2021-22 PHF season. Fujimagari joined AIK in the SDHL for 2022-23, and after a few years off, she’s back to playing this season in Germany with KEC Frauen.
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Honorable mentions
The following players have some history in men’s hockey, but since they’re actively playing, they don’t have women’s hockey careers quite as extensive as the ones I’ve listed already….yet.
- Ève Gascon was the third woman to play in the QMJHL, after Manon Rheaume and Charline Labonté. The goaltender is currently a junior at Minnesota-Duluth, and recently came in at number 13 on The Ice Garden’s Top 25 Under 25 list.
- Annalies Bergmann became the first woman to play a junior men’s hockey game in the United States when she made an appearance with the NAHL’s Janesville Jets. She is currently a junior goaltender at Cornell and came in at number 25 on the Top 25 Under 25.
- Chloe Primerano was the first female skater drafted by a Canadian men’s major junior team, as she was selected in 2022 by the Western Hockey League’s Vancouver Giants. She never appeared for them, instead opting to stay with her club team and join the NCAA. She’s currently a sophomore defender for Minnesota and number eight on the T25U25.
Want more women’s hockey content? Subscribe to The Ice Garden!
In case you missed it, The Ice Garden is now part of The IX Sports family!
The staff of The Ice Garden has paved the way for women’s hockey coverage from the college ranks to international competitions. Of course, that includes in-depth coverage of the PWHL too.
What to read
If you want to hear all about what Geremy and I had to say in regards to several other women’s hockey legends who spent some time playing with men, you can find Episode 5 of Purple Posts, plus all of our other great audio content, on The Ice Garden podcast channel.
Earlier this week, there was some big news in the international hockey space, as the IIHF, in collaboration with the PWHL, announced that the 2026 Women’s World Championships will be held in Denmark in November, with future tournaments moving to the late autumn slot as well. Melissa Burgess broke down the announcement for The Ice Garden.
The Hockey News’ C Benwell spoke with Sarah Fillier at Team Canada’s training camp about her professional play and pressure to perform ahead of the 2026 Olympics.
Over at The Ice Garden, Rebecca Lim offered some predictions ahead of PWHL Seattle’s debut, and Dylan Nazareth discussed five Montréal Victoire players who need to step up for the 2025-26 season.
Nicole Haase offers up some fresh takes and highlights from the week in her “Stick Taps and Snark” column for The Victory Press.
And if you want to know all about how September went in the NCAA, TIG has monthly recaps for the WCHA, ECAC and Hockey East from our awesome NCAA writers.
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