WELLESLEY — Wake up, head to the rink, eat breakfast with the team.
Stretch, lift, video, on-ice drills. Some extra skill work afterward.
See the trainers for any repairs. Refuel with protein and carbs. Go home and walk the dog.
It’s the life of a pro hockey player. Hilary Knight fought for it, for herself and others, even though people kept insisting they already had it.
They have it now — for real. In the days before the Monday launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, 157 players on six teams were concerned about little other than performing their absolute best. Backed by billionaire ownership, they signed an eight-year collective bargaining agreement that provides living wages, benefits, and a high-caliber training environment.
It’s a dream come true, sans involvement from a fairy godmother.
“We built it,” Knight said.
Knight, the centerpiece of a Boston team set for a Wednesday debut against Minnesota at Tsongas Center in Lowell, is arguably the best American women’s player ever. A national team fixture since 2006 — when she was a Globe All-Scholastic at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut — Knight is a four-time Olympian (gold in 2018, silver in ‘10, ‘14 and ‘22) and the career scoring leader at the Women’s World Championships (101 points).
At 34, the former Hanover, N.H., resident is the reigning IIHF Female Player of the Year, if you’re wondering how much she has left in the tank.
“She always is that go-to, clutch player when the US needs a goal,” said former Team USA and Boston College forward Haley Skarupa, now a head women’s scout for USA Hockey. “She is still that big-moment player. She’s a freak athlete who takes great care of her body. She keeps evolving and getting better.”
All the while, she has been the most vocal and visible pioneer in her sport.
In 2017, Knight and other US teammates threatened to boycott the Women’s Worlds — being held in Michigan — over lack of equal footing with the men. Both genders received $6,000 for playing in the tournament, but the men had professional opportunities women did not. USA Hockey increased women’s training stipends to $70,000. The Americans won gold, then followed with Olympic gold in Pyeongchang.
Fed up with a lack of leadership and resources in existing pro leagues in 2019 — the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded, and the National Women’s Hockey League was, in Knight’s words, a “glorified beer league” — she and other elite players started their own barnstorming tour, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. They tried pitching their own league to sponsors.
“We got laughed out of some rooms,” Knight said, describing some responses as “‘we’ve done this study, and women’s hockey isn’t going anywhere.’ They just continued to push it down the line. Guess we’ll just go build it ourselves. Maybe people will latch on when it’s built.”
In June, billionaire Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter bought out the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly the NWHL) and negotiated the CBA with the players. The PWHL was born.
Salaries in the new league range from $35,000 to $80,000, and are set to rise by 3 percent annually. Teams are required to have a minimum of six players signed to three-year contracts at the highest figure. They have bonuses for performance and playoff success; health, dental, vision, and life insurance; long-term disability, a retirement plan, parental benefits, and relocation allowances.
“We have around-the-clock care,” said Boston forward Gigi Marvin, a US Olympian in 2010, ‘14 and ‘18 who also played in the CWHL and NWHL. “Before, we’d train at 9 p.m. after everyone’s 9-to-5 job was over. You had to go to Pure Hockey to get your skates sharpened. You had to find a physical therapist, a gym, a private skills coach, extra ice, a group of players. You had to be your own director of operations, your own equipment manager, your own GM. You couldn’t just be an athlete.
“Now we have trainers, strength staff, skills coaches, goalie coaches. We’re on the ice whenever we want. I used to think my little cousins, the 10Us, 8Us and peewees, got more ice time than I do as a professional.”
Walter, who recently spent more than $1 billion combined on baseball stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, also owns the WNBA’s LA Sparks and is part-owner of the LA Lakers and Chelsea FC. His group has a 10-year business plan for the PWHL that includes expansion. They know women’s hockey won’t immediately be a cash cow.
“We’re prepared,” said PWHL advisory board member Stan Kasten, the Dodgers team president who used to run the Atlanta Braves, Hawks, and Thrashers. “We think of all those amounts of money not [as] expenses or losses. We think of them as investments in what we’re building.”
From a talent standpoint, the PWHL arrives as the best women’s league in the world. All of the best players from the juggernaut American and Canadian teams have signed up, as well as several European stars like Northeastern product Alina Müller (Switzerland).
She was drafted third overall by Boston, which also has Team USA’s Megan Keller (Boston College) on defense and Aerin Frankel (Northeastern) in net, plus reigning Patty Kazmaier Award winner (top NCAA women’s player) Sophie Jaques on defense.
“We did so many mock drafts,” said Boston general manager Danielle Marmer, “and not one of them ended up better than the actual draft.”
The league itself remains under construction.
None of the six teams — Montreal, New York, Ottawa and Toronto are the others — have nicknames, and they will wear basic uniforms with city names. The process to create those identities is ongoing; the NHL, with all its resources, needs about 18 months to make even minor changes to a team’s uniform. The PWHL is six months old.
Thirty miles north of Boston, Tsongas Center in Lowell could be a challenging commute for a 7 p.m. game. But it does offer a suitable capacity (up to 6,500), a TV-ready setting, and ample back-of-the-house space, all of which Warrior Ice Arena (where the PHF’s Boston Pride played) could not.
The PWHL will use mostly AHL officials and the NHL’s rulebook, with some alterations. There is body contact in women’s hockey — puck battles are fierce, particularly when Americans and Canadians square off — but open-ice hitting is disallowed.
“I hope it works,” said Karyn Bye, the former New Hampshire standout and alternate captain on the 1998 US gold medalists (she won silver in 2002). “I’m happy they got it down to one league. I hope people go to the games. If you can get them in the door one time, they’ll see it’s a phenomenal product. It’s physical, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a clean, pure, finesse game.”
Gloucester’s Ben Smith, the Team USA coach in ‘98 and ‘02, was eager to watch the top players on TV. He also foresaw more growing pains. Even the NHL, he reasoned, took several decades “to get on solid footing” after it was established in 1917.
In Knight’s view: So what?
“The men had two leagues for how long, in every sport?” she said, alluding to the history of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. “You have to start somewhere, and we’re like, a century behind.”
Knight, wearing a black PWHL Boston sweatshirt, was standing near the team’s practice rink at the Boston Sports Institute. Behind her, several teammates were cooling down in a sprawling weight room.
Down the hall, in an office overlooking the practice rink, across from a green and black rendering of the Boston skyline, Marmer was making final preparations for a 24-game season that will be broadcast on NESN. Team services director Izzy Germain was sorting through the league’s travel deal with Air Canada and some player paperwork.
A few staffers hung out in the player lounge, watching a TV showing the US men at the World Junior Championships. Bailey, the golden retriever of forward Taylor Wenczkowski, was asking visitors for head pats.
“I’m grateful to be able to enjoy the league,” said Frankel, 24. “I only had to wait one year post-college. I know a lot of girls in college are looking at us now. It’s going to change the game forever.”
If so, it will be part of the legacy for Knight and the other elite women — Kendall Coyne Schofield, Marie-Philip Poulin, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, and Monique Lamoureux-Morando among them — who sat out and demanded better.
“We’re all learning something from Hilary Knight,” said Marmer, who was on a college coaching track as a Bruins player development assistant before this. “She was a driving force behind this league. They put it on the line and risked a lot.”
Once the deal was struck, Knight sold her house near St. Paul, Minn., where Team USA trained. She sent one shipping container east, and one west to her parents’ house in Sun Valley, Idaho (her couch cushions, unfortunately, did not travel in the direction she wanted). Bane, her 5-year-old bullmastiff, made the 20-hour drive with her to Boston.
The overnight oats are her daily breakfast grab. They’ve got chia seeds, blueberries, strawberries, and slivered almonds on them. They fuel her training.
They taste like hard-won success.
“The biggest thing we want to promise the players was the professional experience,” she said. “That’s something we never want to fail on. If the players are treated the right way, the product’s going to be great, you’ll have fan buy-in, and all the other stuff. But the product has to be the best, and that comes from player treatment.”
This is what they wanted: someone to realize the inequality and, by investing in them, let them focus on playing hard all the time.
To see what happens then.
“It’s magical in many ways,” Knight said. “I feel like I’m living a Disney story. You go through all these hardships, and there will be more along the way, but to get to this spot is incredible. I won’t fully understand the magnitude for years, I’m sure. But I’m excited for puck drop. I’m ready to go, like everyone else is.”
Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com. Follow him on X @mattyports.