Kaleigh Fratkin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Born | Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada | March 24, 1992||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 5 ft 8 in (173 cm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 154 lb (70 kg; 11 st 0 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Position | Defence | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shoots | Right | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PWHL team Former teams | PWHL Boston Metropolitan Riveters Boston Pride Connecticut Whale Boston Blades | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
National team | Canada | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Playing career | 2014–present | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
|
Kaleigh Fratkin (born March 24, 1992) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player for PWHL Boston of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). The second-longest tenured player and leading scorer among defenders in PHF history, she was the first Canadian player to sign a contract in the league, is a five-time PHF all-star, and is a two-time PHF Defender of the Year in 2020 and 2021. She was also a member of the Boston Pride roster that captured the 2021 and 2022 Isobel Cup, and was one of three 2023 PHF All-Star captains. Previous to the joining the NWHL, she won the Clarkson Cup in 2015 and was the first girl to play boys' midget AAA hockey in British Columbia. [1]
During high school, she played for the Vancouver NW Giants of the boys' BC Hockey U18 AAA league, the first girl in history to play on a British Columbian midget major boys' league, playing alongside future NHLers Sam Reinhart and Alexander Kerfoot. She finished third in scoring among her team's defenders during the 2009–10 season, despite missing fifteen games with an injury. [2] That year, the Giants won a provincial championship, and Fratkin was named a finalist for the BC Athlete of the Year award. She would also make a handful of appearances for the Aldergrove Kodiaks in the boys' Pacific Junior Hockey League.
From 2010 to 2014, she played for the Boston University Terriers women's ice hockey, accumulating a total of 66 points across 151 NCAA games. She scored 10 points in 38 games in her rookie collegiate season, notching her first goal on 11 February 2011 against Northeastern University. She broke out in the 2012–13 season, almost doubling her point production up to 17 points in 37 games, and picking up points in seven of the last eight games of the year. She was named an assistant captain for the team ahead of senior year, where she would go on to score a career-best 30 points in 38 games, being named a 2013–14 New England Division I All-Star and Hockey East First-Team All-Star. [3]
Fratkin was selected 20th overall, in the 5th round, by the Boston Blades in the 2014 CWHL Draft. After graduating from Boston University, she signed her first professional contract with the Blades. She put up eight points in 22 games in her rookie Canadian Women's Hockey League season, competing in all postseason games as the Blades captured the 2015 Clarkson Cup. [4]
After the end of the 2014-15 CWHL season, despite having just won the Clarkson Cup, Fratkin was cut from the Canadian national team development squad. The blow of the announcement, combined with the financial insecurity that came with playing as a non-national team player in the CWHL, originally pushed her into considering retirement. [5]
However, when the Premier Hockey Federation was founded that summer by Dani Rylan as the first women's hockey league to offer all players a salary, she decided to take a chance and sign with the Connecticut Whale. She was the first Canadian player to sign a contract in the new league and would be the highest paid Canadian in the league that year, with a $20,000 salary. She was named the assistant captain for the team ahead of the league's inaugural season. [6] On December 31, she was one of three Connecticut Whale players (including Kate Buesser and Shannon Doyle) who were loaned to the Boston Pride for one day to participate in the 2016 Outdoor Women's Classic against the CWHL's Les Canadiennes de Montréal, the first outdoor professional women's hockey game. [7] [8] She finished the year with 17 points in 18 games, leading all NWHL defenders in points and being named to the 1st NWHL All-Star Game, which took place on January 24, 2016, at the Harbor Center in Buffalo, New York. [9] [10]
In April 2016, she left Connecticut to sign with the New York Riveters. [11] [12] She was named to the NWHL All-Star Game for the second year in a row, however, her production dropped significantly during the season, receiving much more limited power-play time and occasionally even being used as a third-line forward by Riveters head coach Chad Wiseman.
Ahead of the 2017–18 NWHL season, Fratkin joined the Boston Pride, the third team in her NWHL career.
After the collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League in May 2019, Fratkin became the first player to re-sign with an NWHL team for the 2019–20 NWHL season, and became one of the first players to publicly criticise the newly forming Professional Women's Hockey Players Association, stating that:
"At the beginning, when I was approached about if I was going to join the movement or not and [asked] about my stance I had a ton of questions. I asked for follow-up, I asked when I would be getting those answers, and I never got them. I know that the [PHWPA] has had multiple phone calls and none of them have been directly sent to me...
I want to know if we're ultimately doing this for the salary, better resources, and to make it more sustainable, what does that look like? You know, do we have a [plan] that's already solidified? If there was something legitimate there, if there was some sort of contractual agreement that said, ‘Hey, this is the money that you're going to be making, these are where the teams will be, this is what it's going to look like,’ then I would be looking at it a little bit differently." [13]
During the 2019–20 season, her third season with the Boston Pride and her first serving as an assistant captain for the team, Fratkin notched a career-high 23 points in 24 games, helping the Pride finish the season almost undefeated and making the Isobel Cup finals before the season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. That year, she was named NWHL Defender of the Year. [14] She was also named to Team Packer for the 2020 NWHL All-Star Game, her third consecutive all-star game appearance. At the All-Star Game, she won the hardest shot competition with a winning shot of 76 miles per hour. [15]
She re-signed with the Pride for the 2020–21 NWHL season, returning as an assistant captain for the team. [16] She would win her second-straight Defender of the Year award as the Pride went on to win the Isobel Cup. [17] She would stay with the team for both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons in the newly-renamed Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), being named an all-star in both and collecting her second Isobel Cup in 2022. [18] [19] [20]
After going undrafted in the 2023 PWHL Draft, Fratkin signed a one-year contract with PWHL Boston prior to their 2023 training camp. [21]
Fratkin represented Canada at the 2009 IIHF World Women's U18 Championship, scoring four points in five games as the country won silver. She attended the Team Canada U18 development camp each year from 2006 to 2009, twice participating in the U18 Summer Series against the United States. With Canada's U22 Development Team, she earned a gold medal at the 2015 Nations Cup in Germany.
She was named to the Canadian senior national team roster for the 2014 Fall Festival and to the 2015 pre-World Championship training camp roster, but was ultimately cut from the team before the 2015 IIHF Women's World Championship. [22] [23]
One of eight original NWHLers still active in the league and a fixture on the top defensive pairing for the Boston Pride, Fratkin has been most often been described as an offensive defender with elite playmaking skills. [24] [25] She has stated that "What I've noticed from college to turning pro is that defensemen being very offensive is extremely helpful to the NWHL style of play." [26] She also been noted for the strength of her shot, her physicality, currently holding the NWHL's record for career penalty minutes, as well as her ironman streak, having only missed five games since the start of her professional career. [27]
She has worn the number 13 on her jersey since her days in youth hockey, picking the number after being advised by her father to choose one that nobody else wanted. [28]
Fratkin was born and raised in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and is Jewish. [29] [10] [30] Her parents are Ron and Marilyn Fratkin, and she has two brothers, Jesse (who played on the Brown University men's ice hockey team and on the Stockton Thunder of the ECHL) and Casey (who played on the Elmira College and Wesleyan University men's ice hockey teams). [31] [32] [33] She attended Burnaby Central High School, where she also played lacrosse and soccer, winning provincial championships in both sports. [31]
She obtained her bachelor's degree from the Boston University College of Communication, and her master's degree in sports leadership from Northeastern University. During the 2015–16 season, she served as an analytics intern with the New York Islanders. [34]
Fratkin got engaged to her longtime boyfriend Henry Lee, former Boston University Terriers men's lacrosse player, on January 15, 2021. The couple got married June 4, 2022, in Vancouver, Canada.
Regular Season | Playoffs | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Season | Team | League | GP | G | A | Pts | PIM | GP | G | A | Pts | PIM | ||
2014–15 | Boston Blades | CWHL | 22 | 1 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | ||
2015–16 | Connecticut Whale | NWHL | 18 | 5 | 12 | 17 | 40 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | ||
2016–17 | New York Riveters | NWHL | 18 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
2017–18 | Boston Pride | NWHL | 11 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ||
2018–19 | Boston Pride | NWHL | 16 | 2 | 7 | 9 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ||
2019–20 | Boston Pride | NWHL | 24 | 3 | 20 | 23 | 38 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | ||
2020–21 | Boston Pride | NWHL | 7 | 0 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | ||
2021–22 | Boston Pride | PHF | 20 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 34 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | ||
2022–23 | Boston Pride | PHF | 24 | 3 | 9 | 12 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
2023–24 | PWHL Boston | PWHL | 24 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 26 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | ||
CWHL totals | 22 | 1 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | ||||
NWHL/PHF totals | 138 | 15 | 71 | 86 | 202 | 14 | 1 | 10 | 11 | 14 |
Championships |
---|
2021 Isobel Cup Champion |
2022 Isobel Cup Champion |
Jessica "Jess" Koizumi (COY-Zoo-Mee) is an American ice hockey coach and player, currently serving as the associate head coach of the Vermont Catamounts women's ice hockey program. She won a gold medal as a member of the United States national women's ice hockey team at the 2008 IIHF Women's World Championship. During her playing career, Koizumi played with the Minnesota Whitecaps of the Western Women's Hockey League (WWHL), the Montreal Stars and the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL), and the Connecticut Whale of the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). She scored the first goal in PHF history in the league’s inaugural game, which featured the Whale facing off against the New York Riveters.
Jillian T. Dempsey is an American ice hockey player who currently plays for PWHL Montreal in the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). The former captain of the Boston Pride of the now-defunct Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), she holds the all-time PHF records for games played, goals, assists, and points, and is one of only two players to have won the Isobel Cup three times.
Brittany "The Otter" Ott is an American professional ice hockey player. As of 2021, Ott plays for the New Hampshire region team in the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association. She previously played two seasons for the Boston Blades in the Canadian Women's Hockey League and four seasons with Boston Pride of the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL). Ott played college hockey for the Maine Black Bears before declaring herself into the 2013 CWHL Draft. She is the first goaltender to have won the Clarkson Cup and the Isobel Cup in a career.
Rachel Llanes, also known by the Chinese name Lin Ni, is an American ice hockey player and member of the Chinese national ice hockey team. She most recently played in the 2021–22 season of the Zhenskaya Hockey League (ZhHL) with the KRS Vanke Rays.
Zoe Hickel is an American ice hockey player who currently serves as assistant coach to the Ohio State Buckeyes women's ice hockey program. She most recently played with Linköping HC of the Swedish Women's Hockey League (SDHL) in the 2019–20 season. Hickel played collegiate ice hockey with the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs program, a member of the NCAA Division I. She competed with the United States national women's ice hockey team at the 2015 IIHF Women's World Championship. In 2015 Zoe Hickel joined the Boston Pride of the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL).
Janine Weber is an Austrian professional ice hockey player and member of the Austrian national team, currently playing in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) with the Connecticut Whale. She previously played with the Boston Pride and the New York Riveters of the National Women's Hockey League, the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL), and the EHV Sabres Wien and Ravens Salzburg of the Elite Women's Hockey League (EWHL). With the Blades, Weber scored the game-winning goal of the 2015 Clarkson Cup.
The Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) was a women's professional ice hockey league in the United States and Canada that operated from March 2015 until June 2023. The league was established in 2015 as the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), comprising four league-owned teams. Over time, some teams gained independent ownership and the number of teams grew to seven; teams during the league's final season in 2022–23 included the Boston Pride, Buffalo Beauts, Connecticut Whale, Metropolitan Riveters, Minnesota Whitecaps, Montreal Force, and Toronto Six. The Isobel Cup was awarded annually to the league playoff champion.
The Boston Pride were a professional women's ice hockey team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They were one of the four charter franchises of the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). The Pride played at Warrior Ice Arena, which is also the practice facility for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League. The Pride won the inaugural Isobel Cup in 2016 and became the first professional women's ice hockey team to win three championship titles when they claimed consecutive victories in 2021 and 2022.
The Connecticut Whale were a professional ice hockey team based in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). They played in Simsbury, Connecticut at the International Skating Center of Connecticut. The team was established in 2015 as one of the four charter franchises of the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), which became the PHF in 2021. Their name and colors paid homage to the Hartford Whalers, a former NHL and WHA franchise based in Connecticut. The team folded along with the PHF in 2023 as part of the creation of a new, unified women's league, the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL).
The Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy Cup, often shortened to Isobel Cup, is the championship trophy that was awarded annually to the now defunct Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) playoff winner. The trophy is named after Lady Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, the daughter of Lord Stanley—former Governor-General of Canada and namesake of the Stanley Cup—and one of the first women known to play the game of ice hockey.
Blake Alexis Bolden is an American ice hockey player, and scout for the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League (NHL). On October 11, 2015, she became the first African-American player to compete in the National Women's Hockey League. She won the 2015 Clarkson Cup with the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL). In 2016, she won the Isobel Cup with the Boston Pride of the NWHL. Bolden is also a contributor and rinkside reporter for ESPN's NHL coverage.
Shannon Turnernée Doyle is a retired Canadian ice hockey player. She served as captain of the Connecticut Whale of the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF).
Hayley Marie Moore is an American ice hockey executive and former player, currently the vice president of hockey operations of the American Hockey League (AHL). She previously served as the deputy commissioner of the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL) from 2017 to 2019, general manager of the Boston Pride of the NWHL from 2015 to 2017, and president of the Boston Pride from 2019 to 2021.
Madison Packer is an American professional ice hockey forward for New York of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL)
The Premier Hockey Federation Players' Association (PHFPA), formerly known as the National Women's Hockey League Players' Association (NWHLPA), was a representative body for professional ice hockey players in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). The association was founded in 2015, the year of the league's founding, and disbanded in 2023 after the league was purchased and dissolved as part of the establishment of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). Former PHF players now playing in the PWHL are members of the PWHL Players Association.
Kaitlin "Katie" Burt is an American ice hockey goaltender, currently playing in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) with the Metropolitan Riveters. She was selected first overall by the Boston Pride in the 2017 NWHL Draft.
The 2019–20 NWHL season was the fifth season of the National Women's Hockey League. All five teams from the previous season returned: the Boston Pride, Buffalo Beauts, Connecticut Whale, Metropolitan Riveters, and the Minnesota Whitecaps.
Elaine Monica Chuli is a Canadian ice hockey goaltender currently playing for PWHL Montreal.
Mallory Souliotis is an American professional ice hockey defenseman, currently playing in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) with the Connecticut Whale.
The Toronto Six were a professional women's ice hockey team in Toronto, Ontario, playing out of Canlan Ice Sports – York. They were one of two Canadian teams in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) along with the Montreal Force, and the first expansion team to join the league since the collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) in 2019. The team was founded in 2020 with their inaugural regular season held in Lake Placid, New York, followed by the Isobel Cup playoffs in Brighton, Massachusetts.