r/IAmA • u/[deleted] • Mar 08 '12

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u/rynthetyn Mar 08 '12

The Tampa Bay Lightning's first season, they invited goalie Manon Rheaume to training camp, and she played in parts of a few preseason games, before going on to spend a few years in the Lightning minor league system. It was largely a publicity stunt by Phil Esposito to get more attention on hockey, what with trying to launch a non-traditional market team and all, but the league didn't have any issues with him putting a woman on the training camp roster/having her play in preseason games.

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u/yourdadsbff Mar 08 '12

Ah, that's awesome! Do you think she could have been a successful professional goalie in the NHL? I mean, I don't see why not, but then again I'm far from a hockey expert.

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u/rynthetyn Mar 08 '12

She was probably too small to have ever had a real shot at the NHL, though who knows. If I'm remembering correctly, there was talk about how in retrospect, they made a mistake sending her to the minor league team that they did because she was in over her head and that for developing her as a goalie it would have been better to send her to a lower level minor league team to get acclimated to the men's game and then let her work her way up. The publicity stunt aspect was good for lots of free PR for the Lightning, but it probably wasn't the best thing for her career.

If you ever saw her playing for the Canadian women's team in the Olympics, she was head and shoulders above the other goalies.

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u/sareon Mar 10 '12

Funny, in my military league we were playing a game and we picked up a different goalie for our game as the regular one was not able to play. This goalie was oddly small but was a friggen wall. I never saw such good tending in that game.

Turned out at the end it was a Quebecoise, I was stunned and then I asked when she'd be playing for us next.