Maggie Connorsâ parents couldnât keep her away from hockey.
Her introduction to dance classes was a disaster, her father Sean Connors remembers â akin to an allergic reaction. And figure skating wasnât any better.
She wanted to be where her older brothers were: At the stadium, out playing street hockey, or taking laps on the backyard rink.
âLike any good Canadian dad, I had a backyard rink,â Sean said. âIâd set everything up, and Maggie â we couldnât keep her in the house.â
âWe bought, kind of, the complete hockey kit in a box, Velcro skates, and we put them on her,â he said.
âWe looked at this little girl, and sheâs maybe three and a half at the time⌠and sheâs going around the ice doing all the things that weâve been teaching the boys now for a year and a half to try to do.â
Maggie had an instant passion for hockey â so it just made sense that when her hockey heroes came to town in 2010, sheâd be right there beside them.
Luck went her way: The 10-year-old won a contest to spend the day with the womenâs national hockey team. She lined up for the anthem, sat in the dressing room, and even did warm up drills with the team.
Thereâs a lot to remember about that day: Her mother, Susan Fagan, remarks how small her daughter looked out on the ice, next to superstar Marie-Phillip Poulin.
It all means a little bit more now that Maggie is once again sporting the red Team Canada jersey, as a full member of the National Womenâs Hockey Team.
Maggie played her first game with the team in February, during the last three games of the rivalry series between the Canadian and American womenâs teams.
She helped the group complete a reverse-sweep of the Americans â a full comeback from a 3-0 deficit to take the seven game series, 4-3.
Maggie had worn Canadian colours before, but this was her first exposure to the top levels of the womenâs game.
âIt gets much faster and you need to have decisions made before you even get the puck,â she said. We talk about something called â0.5 hockeyâ in terms of making decisions in less than a second.â
Maggie celebrated the moment in a photo, posed alongside Marie Phillip-Poulin and Natalie Spooner once again, this time as teammates.
She is the first Newfoundlander to play in the Professional Womenâs Hockey League, and the second-youngest player to play in the league this year.
She signed with PWHL Toronto, where she is teammates with Natalie Spooner â the very player she was paired with on her day with the womenâs national team in 2010.
The winger didnât relay that bit of trivia to Spooner, or the rest of the team, right away.
âMy first impression, I donât think, can be âHey Natalie Spooner, do you remember when I was 10?,â she said. âI was obviously, like, just kind of playing it cool.â
But word got out when a reporter uncovered the pictures from the 4 Nations Cup in Newfoundland in 2010.
âThey were awesome about it,â she said. âThe girls love the story now, so itâs fun.â
Now that sheâs near the top of the womenâs game, Maggie said she has a new appreciation for the experience she got when she was a 10-year-old girl in St. Johnâs.
âYou kind of learn, when youâre at this level, of how massive little fan interactions can be, and how impactful it can be on young players.â
Her father remembers one of the first things she said when she got home was how kind all the players on the national team were.
Maggie is dedicated to paying that kindness forward.
âAny time Iâm able to get back to Newfoundland and meet young girls and people that are coming up in Hockey N.L. and things, I try to stay involved as much as I can.â