Today in 1972, the birthday of Manon Rhéaume, who made hockey history as the first woman to ever play in the National Hockey League.
Rhéaume is a native of Quebec who grew up playing hockey in the backyard with her brothers.
It wasn’t long before she was playing goalie in boys’ junior hockey leagues, working her way up to a spot in the prestigious Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
It was there that she got attention from a new NHL franchise, the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Florida hadn’t exactly been a big hockey state up to that point, and the Lightning thought inviting a female goalie to their first training camp might get locals interested in the team.
Rhéaume accepted; as she put it, she’d already gotten a lot of no’s for being a woman, so it wasn’t a bad thing to get a yes for a change.
She played well enough in camp that for the team’s first preseason game, September 23, 1992, Rhéaume was the starting goalie.
And you could say that her performance definitely brought the team attention, especially the chants of “We want Rhéaume” from the crowd.
She made seven saves and gave up two goals, though that was partly because the Lightning started picking up penalties early in the game.
Rhéaume did not make the Lightning’s regular season roster, but she did get a contract with the Atlanta Knights of the International Hockey League.
That’s where, in December of ‘92, she became the first woman to play in a regular season professional game in a North American men’s sports league.
Rhéaume played in the IHL until 1997; she also won a silver medal in women’s hockey with Team Canada at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games.
She also made a second preseason appearance with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Rhéaume has been a coach, commentator, author, public speaker and advocate for women in sports.
She now has her own statue in Quebec City, and when the National Women’s Hockey League launched a few years ago, they brought Manon Rhéaume to one of the games on opening weekend.
Though in this case, she did a ceremonial puck drop rather than stopping pucks.
Today is National Tortilla Chip Day.
There are lots of ways to celebrate, like recreating the work of a Reddit user who, in 2021, made a prom dress out of old bags of Doritos.
Though the dress was a little too fragile to to her actual prom.
Manon Rheaume realizes her NHL debut was ‘not just another game’ (SportsNet)
I made a prom dress out of recycled Doritos bags from my school cafeteria (Reddit)
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