BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider

MADISON, Wis. — Hilary Knight is one of the most accomplished women in the world, her 33 years crammed with weighty, impactful, ground-breaking feats.

She's a four-time Olympian and a gold medalist for the U.S. women's hockey team, one of the most productive players in the history of the program. She's an international activist for equality and social change. She's a cultural brand who has no problem straddling the line between genders and mediums. She's a legend in her sport whose prowess dates back to when she was in second grade, authoring and illustrating a book called "The Magical Hockey Stick."

Given all that, Knight must feel fulfilled, right?

"I don't know," she said. "I've done everything I could possibly do, but I still wake up and I'm hungry to win, even hungrier to get better and learn more."

Pause.

"So, no," Knight said, finally answering the question as she made her way through Los Angeles traffic to a summer hockey camp earlier this month.

LA is one of three places Knight calls home these days. The others are St. Paul, Minnesota, where Team USA trains, and Sun Valley, Idaho, where her parents, Cynthia and James, live.

"The suitcase is probably the best place to call my home base," she said with a laugh.

Actually, Knight has another cherished retreat, one she'll be visiting later this summer. She spent four unforgettable years in Madison, starring for the six-time NCAA champion Wisconsin's women's program. It will be a memorable journey.

From 2008 to 2012, Knight helped the Badgers reach four NCAA championship games, winning in 2009 and 2011, on the way to becoming the all-time leading scorer in program history.

She owns 12 school records overall, including career goals (143), points (262) and shots (986) over 161 games. She also scored five goals in one game and finished with nine hat tricks.

Those accomplishments help explain why Knight, a two-time first-team All-American who graduated with a degree in history, is part of the latest class of inductees into the UW Athletic Hall of Fame.

"I was surprised," she said of the honor, making her the sixth player in program history to be enshrined. "I'm sort of stuck in time, I think. I forget that I've been playing for as long as I have been. Part of that is waking up every day and loving it.

"I feel like I graduated yesterday, which I know is not true at all. That's where my sense of time is really warped."

Knight was a standout, an anomaly, from the moment she arrived in Madison in 2008. She had the foundation for her 5-foot-11, 185-pound frame, a cutting-edge work ethic and the makings of a skill set that enabled her be a dominant force in any on-ice situation. After all, she's the Wisconsin career leader in power-play goals with 37 and ranks second in shorthanded goals with eight.

UW coach Mark Johnson said his favorite memory of Knight came in an NCAA quarterfinal game vs. Dartmouth at the Kohl Center in 2009. He recalled how she was one stride over the blue line when she unleashed a slap shot that was in the net before the goaltender could react.

"I looked over at their bench and they were like, 'Oh, my gosh,'" Johnson recalled. "They'd never seen anything like that before."

The moment, which came in the midst of a 7-0 victory, featured the four prime elements that set Knight apart from her peers even as a teenager: power, creativity, strength and velocity.

"That showed me how dynamic of a player she was," Johnson said.

Knight was more than a head-line maker at UW. She once led the Badgers in the selfless category of blocked shots. She readily changed positions, playing second-line center instead of first-line wing, because it made her club harder to contend with. Once, when credited with a record-setting goal, she implored the on-ice officials to give it to a teammate, insisting she didn't tip the puck past the goaltender. She once went seven straight games without a goal, but never pouted, complained or demanded that teammates give her the puck more often.

Blayre Turnbull has the distinction of having played with Knight at Wisconsin and against her in the last two Winter Olympics as a member of Team Canada. Turnbull, who was a freshman winger in 2011-12 when Knight was a senior, said Knight had a massive impact on her hockey career.

"Just from watching her train and what she was working on in practices and stuff, I was able to learn so much about what it would take to get to the next level," Turnbull said. "It was super helpful for me to witness everything she did day in and day out.

"I was fortunate to have her to look up to for guidance and motivation because I just learned so much. I don't know if I didn't have players like her to watch and learn from if I would have grown as much as I did as a player in my time at Wisconsin."

Turnbull emphasized that she wouldn't be a two-time Olympian — a silver medalist in 2018 and a gold-medal-winner in 2022 — had it not been for Knight.

"Dedication is the first word that comes to mind," Turnbull said. "She was so dedicated to her craft and constantly wanting to try new things to get better. When I play against her to this day she's still adding pieces to her game. She's had such a successful and long career, but it just shows that she continuously wants to get better and wants to learn.

"She absolutely dominated at the NCAA level. She dominates at the international level, too. She's obviously gotten better since college, but I think her strengths are still very similar to when we played together. Just her natural ability to find offense and produce. Her shot is easily one of the best in the world. You can always find her by the net and if it's a tight game she's going to be on the ice and be a player we have to watch out for because if she gets the puck it's going in our net."

Knight played with three of the five Patty Kazmaier Award winners at UW — goaltender Jessie Vetter in 2009, center Meghan Duggan in '11 and center Brianna Decker in '12 — but never was a finalist for the national player of the year honor despite her hyper-dominant resume. It wasn't for a lack of production or presence. Knight never seemed bothered by it. Others were.

"Obviously maybe she probably felt like she should have won it and a lot of people, including myself, feel like she should have won it," said Decker, a three-time Olympian.

"She was a great teammate," Turnbull said of Knight. "She was a leader, but a relatively quiet leader in the sense that she would speak up when the time was right. She wasn't someone to speak just to have her voice heard. She would speak when she had something we needed to hear."

Knight was also known for being a prankster, filling teammates' skates with birdseed, leaning buckets of water against hotel room doors and other gags. The only person who didn't get targeted was Johnson.

"Too scared," she acknowledged.

During the Winter Games earlier this year, 11 Badgers played for the gold medal. Knight was one of six on Team USA along with Decker, goaltender Alex Cavallini, center Abby Roque and newcomers Jesse Compher and Caroline Harvey. Turnbull was one of five on Team Canada along with winger Emily Clark, goaltenders Ann-Renee Desbiens and Kristen Campbell and winger Sarah Nurse. All were recruited by Johnson.

"If I didn't play for Mark, I wouldn't be where I am today," said Knight, who had her pick of colleges. "That's a lot to put on an external source, but he had such a big impact whether he knows it or not. Not only on my career and learning from him, but also the trajectory."

Turnbull said Knight always makes a point of catching up with her fellow alums, regardless of country, even though a heated rivalry exists between Canada and the U.S.

"Despite having the amount of success that she's had, she goes out of her way to stop and say hi and catch up," Turnbull said. "She's very genuine and respectful. She cares about her former teammates as people and doesn't just see them as rivals."

Knight embraces the notion of playing in five Olympics — the 2026 Winter Games will be held in Milan-Cortina, Italy — which would put her on a list of Americans that includes swimmer Michael Phelps, snow boarder Shaun White and swimmer Dana Torres among others.

In helping Team USA to four Olympic medals — silver in 2010, 2014 and 2022 and gold in 2018 — Knight has played in a record 22 Olympic matches for the Americans and currently ranks second in U.S. history with 27 points (12 goals, 15 assists) in the Games.

"As long as I still love doing this and I can still have an impact — a positive impact on the team on and off the ice — sign me up," Knight said. "I still have the hunger and the drive to want to go more."

Knight has been part of the Team USA system since she was 16. It's not easy to keep nudging the bar of attitude and effort skyward, but she's done it through her career at UW and USA Hockey.

"The one thing I admire about her the most is she is always game-time ready," Decker said. "There's a lot that goes into that. You can't be a clutch player without preparing to be a clutch player. She loves being in those moments of pressure."

Johnson, who coached Knight and the Americans in the 2010 Games, appreciates the consistent work she's put in to succeed.

"I give her a lot of credit because of the things she's done on the ice to keep herself in shape and really become a world-class athlete," he said. "People can talk about it, but she's done it and done it for a long time and put herself in position to break records. She's knocked a lot of pillars down."

Knight said she's most proud of the role she played in getting USA Hockey to compensate its women's team members at a level commensurate with the men. The women threatened to boycott the World Championships in 2017, which were held in the U.S. in Plymouth, Michigan, gambling that their unity and surging popularity would win the day. It did. For good measure, Knight scored the overtime goal that clinched the gold medal.

"That was the most empowering moment and genuine confidence I've ever felt from a collective group, to put everything on the line and say, 'We're the best of the best,'" she said. "To be able to drive change was something so powerful. That's something I'll always be most proud of. It wasn't easy, but it was definitely worth it."

Knight, who obtained her MBA from Boise State in 2017, admits to being an adrenaline junkie whose bucket list includes sky diving and someday hosting "Saturday Night Live." Her work as an NHL analyst for ESPN has piqued another risky undertaking.

"I want to own an NHL club, an all-women ownership," she said. "That's what really interests me, to make those decisions from that level. It's a lofty goal, but I think it's doable."

Knight enjoyed recounting her favorite non-hockey memories at UW.

"The Terrace and hanging out," she said. "Sometimes we'd stay at library all night just to watch the sunrise.

"The really neat thing about Wisconsin is that it's a huge school, yet it doesn't feel big at all because you have different communities of people that love and care about you. It goes by so fast because you're loving every single second of it."