Maria Dennis is a Yale Bulldog, through and through.
Dennis (Yale, '88) skated with the Bulldogs women's hockey team for four seasons. While there weren't an abundance of post-collegiate opportunities for women's hockey players, though, Dennis' career in hockey is far from over. Since graduating, she has skated for Team USA, works as an associate counsel for the NHL Players' Association (NHLPA), skated at Rogers Place in Edmonton during the 2019-20 Stanley Cup Playoffs, received USA Hockey's Distinguished Achievement Award, and chairs the joint NHL/NHLPA Female Hockey Advisory Committee.
While her lifetime of achievement betrays her grit and tenacity on and off the ice, hockey wasn't always the easiest — or most welcoming — path for Dennis. As a young girl growing up in South Windsor, Connecticut, in the 1970s and '80s, she didn't have a lot of women's hockey influences to look up to — or even hockey influences, period, outside her father, Tony, who she credits with being the influence in her life that shaped her into both the hockey player and the person that she is today.
"I'd say [my dad] would be the person that had the most influence on my hockey career because he coached me and a few of my teams growing up," said Dennis in a sit-down with ECAC Hockey this month. "He was a very even-keeled, logical, non-screaming, non-yelling coach, you know, one of the good ones. One of the positive coaches that you always hope your kid will get when they're playing youth sports."
So even-keeled was Tony Dennis that his daughter, who had both loved and excelled at hockey from the moment she first skated, often turned to him when she had questions about her life, playing career, and future.
"I applied to a bunch of different schools when I was a senior at prep school," said Dennis, "and my father gave me the best advice. He said, 'You know, Maria, you should choose your school not based on hockey. Because, God forbid, what happens if you break your leg and you can't play hockey? What school would you want to go to?'"
Dennis took her father's advice to heart, and, naturally, picked the school with one of the worst win-loss records at the time: Yale.
Laughing, Dennis recounted the decision. "Of course, I went to the school with a struggling program and went to Yale, but I never regretted it. I had the best four years of my life."
Despite the lifelong relationships she formed, playing women's hockey at Yale in the middle of the 1980s, not fifteen years after Title IX was enacted, was not always the experience a young athlete dreams of. During Dennis' four-year tenure as a Bulldog, the women's hockey team cycled through three different head coaches and finished with a 34-42-1 record, including a 5-14-0 campaign during Dennis' junior year.
There were bright spots, though. As the team's leading goal- and points-scorer during each of her four seasons with the program, Dennis caught the eye of Yale men's hockey head coach Tim Taylor, who had admired her work ethic and passion for the game and invited her to skate with his team in their informal captains' practices at the start of each season.
"It was the best challenge I could have possibly been given," recalled Dennis.
Dennis also credits the drive and passion of her own teammates with making her experience a positive one.
"All the women who were there were passionate. They were passionate about hockey and they wanted to play and so that's what made the program what it was."
The passion of players like Dennis, her teammates, and the players that came both before and after her, is what has made Yale women's hockey into the ECAC and national powerhouse program that it is today.
Dennis admits there wasn't strong support for the women's hockey program in the early years, "But that's why I'm so happy to see the women's team succeeding right now and doing so well and being supported and going to the [Frozen Four]. I mean, that was the best possible news. It's…you know, to quote a famous hashtag, it's about time."
In 2019-20, Mark Bolding took over as the Susan Cavanagh Head Coach of Women's Hockey, leading the Bulldogs to a top-6 finish in the ECAC for the first time since the 2004-05 season and a winning record for just the second time in almost 15 years. In Bolding's third year as head coach last season, the Bulldogs skated to their best single-season record (26-9-1), earned an at-large bid to the NCAA postseason, won their first NCAA postseason game, and skated in the program's first ever Frozen Four.
"It just makes everything that we went through worth it," said Dennis, beaming. "Because without the class behind me, without the work of Heather Gold fighting the Title IX issue, there wouldn't be a women's program for these women to play in right now. So it makes everything that we struggled through and everything that we fought for worth it.
"And I'm really proud that they're doing so well, wearing that Yale crest, succeeding on the ice, playing so well together as a cohesive unit, and getting the coaching that they deserve…everything they deserve. I'm just so proud of them as players, but I'm proud of the program as a whole."
Even beyond Yale, Dennis is impressed with the way women's college hockey has evolved. Though she competed in college before the American Women's College Hockey Association's national championship games and before the National Collegiate Athletics Association sanctioned women's hockey, she credits the intensity of competition and the passion of the athletes, coaches, staff, and administrators with getting the sport to where it is today.
"There are so many opportunities to play at whatever level a player is at because there are so many more teams, so many more divisions and conferences. The future of women's hockey, I think, is very solid and secure right now."
In 2022-23, the NCAA currently boasts 42 women's hockey programs at the Division I level across five conferences, with two additional teams added or returning for the 2023-24 season. There are more than 65 programs competing across eight conferences, along with teams operating independently, at the Division III level, and countless more teams competing under the umbrella of the American College Hockey Association (ACHA) at the club level.
Even beyond the knowledge she gained from her own days at Yale, Dennis is an expert on the current success and the potential of women's hockey, too.
As the chair of the jointly-commissioned NHL/NHLPA Female Hockey Advisory Committee, Dennis is responsible for making recommendations on how to increase the participation of girls and women in hockey at all levels in the sport.
"It's very important that women all over give back to the sport and become involved in all of these roles at all these different levels, because that normalizes it," said Dennis.
The first time anyone sees a woman coach behind the bench of an NHL team, Dennis argued, it might be a little shocking. But the second time, the third time, the fourth time, it becomes more and more normal until it's something people don't think about.
"We want to reach that level where it's not a big deal. It's no longer newsworthy that women are in these positions or in these roles, because if you know hockey, it doesn't matter what you identify as or what your gender is. It just matters if you have the skills to do your job."
Dennis has spent her career on and off the ice advocating for hockey players. Whether she's behind her desk in the NHLPA offices, on the ice with future NHL stars, teaching a girls' clinic, playing shinny hockey with NHL referees at Rogers Place, or on a panel at high-energy competitions like last week's Rivalry Series between the United States and Canada, Dennis' passion for growing the game and getting girls and women the tools they need to succeed on and off the ice is almost tangible.
When she was awarded USA Hockey's Distinguished Achievement Award this past summer, Dennis recognized the people in her life who have shaped her into the hockey player and person she is today. From her father, Tony, to her teammates at Yale and the incredible trailblazers who came before and after her, to the women representing their countries on the ice in international tournaments, Dennis continues to be impressed — but not surprised — by the impact, momentum, and forward movement of women's hockey.
"There are so many opportunities today for girls and women to go to college, study, and play the sport that they love. So that's just enormous."
Beyond that, there are even more opportunities for women to keep playing in domestic leagues like the PHF and organizations like the PWHPA, and stay involved in hockey through coaching, volunteering, and administration. All of it, Dennis said, is part of a larger movement to normalize women and girls in hockey and in sports, to make the occurrence so commonplace that no one thinks anything of it.
"The day that that happens," Dennis said, "will be the day that we've accomplished our goal."
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