EP38 Hayley Wickenheiser - Hockey - Olympian

This is the Empowered athlete podcast, episode 38, Haley Wickenheiser. Simply put, a living Canadian athletic legend. She's led our national team in women's hockey to numerous gold medals in the Olympics. She's competed the Olympics in another sport, softball, and she had an international career that lasted 23 years. We welcome her to the podcast today and catch up with her two years into retirement, where she hasn't slowed down for a second. Currently in medical school and juggling work with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Hailey is going nonstop and full tilt. That's how she lives her life and we find out what makes her tick. The Empowered Athlete Podcast is thrilled to welcome Haley Wickenheiser.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast. And we are joined by none other than Haley Wickenheiser. Thank you for making the time and squeezing us into your busy schedule for a quick chat. Welcome to the show.

We're really excited to have you and you have such a decorated past that we don't even want to go there because it would take the entire podcast just to get through everything you've accomplished in your sport career, but also in what you've been doing in your life as well. So what I want to lead in with right now is everyone knows who you are as a amazing female hockey player, but right now, give us the inside scoop as to what's going on in your life right now.

Well, right now I just retired a couple years ago from hockey, and right now I'm actually currently in my second year of medicine at the University of Calgary. Hopefully one day I'll practice emergency trauma medicine, but still a long ways from that. And I'm the assistant director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs, so I spend much of my time on planes between Calgary and Toronto right now. But I'm loving the mix of hockey and medicine.

First of all, you say that with such nonchalant kind of casual comments, but juggling those two roles, how on earth do you do that? Number one, you don't like to travel that much and you've spent a lifetime of travel. Number two, you have a son and you're in medical school. So how are you balancing those two roles being in medical school and player development role?

Yeah, I think. I don't know. My son is 19 and he's currently at the University of Victoria. He just started his first year, so he's grown and gone, which is also a weird feeling, I guess, as a parent being an empty nester. But it frees up a little bit of my time. I don't have to worry so much about him on the day to day, I guess. So that. That's helpful. And then it just comes down to time management. I don't know.

Preach to the choir.

Yeah.

Paul. Paul knows as an athlete, as you guys know. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Like you live life in extreme unbalance, but it can still be balanced. I think it's just a matter of, you know, when I'm doing hockey for the Leaf, so I'm fully there and I'm doing that. And then I'll work on medicine at night or early in the morning when I get up before I go to the rink, and vice versa. And I think it just comes down to being extremely organized in terms of scheduling. I'm lucky that the Leafs have been very flexible around medicine. Medicine, not so much the other way, just because it's a much more rigid thing at the moment. But it's worked out well. And then I'm a good studier on planes. I don't waste a lot of time. And I think my life as an athlete really prepared me for life after, where, you know, you're just kind of drinking from a fire hose and having to manage a lot. But it's kind of what you did as an athlete as well. So the travel and the disruption and the louder balance doesn't really bother me. You just have to kind of mention.

That you retired just two years ago and your son's now leaving for school. How did you not balance? Because it's impossible. But how did you handle being a parent during those competitive phases of your life where, you know, you're on the road all the time? And how did you deal with those feelings? I know that's a big reason I retired was my twin boys were six. My little son was eight at that time, and just, you know, felt like I was missing them growing up.

Yeah. I counted the other day, out of 19 of my son's birthdays. I actually physically was only with him for five, I think. So it's, you know, the Worlds are. His birthday's April 5th. The Worlds are happening right now. I was at the World Championships, and the birthdays I was able to make were the Olympic years, when we didn't have a World Championship. So, you know, I think that it. Yeah, it takes a toll. It definitely does. I've had a huge amount of support through the years. My. My sister's helped me a ton. My mom and dad have been there to, you know, care for Noah when we've been on the road and things like that. And he's lived a life in ranks as well. I've. I drug him with me wherever I could. He. He. He now hates hockey because of it, but I remind him that it's given him a good life and lots of opportunities that he would have never. Parts of the world he would have never seen. Yeah, it definitely takes a toll. I. I don't know. I feel like at the end of the day, though, like, your kids will look back and they'll thank you for chasing your dreams and doing something that you love because it teaches them and shows them that they should do the same. And I don't think we should necessarily ever sacrifice everything just for our kids. I think there's a balance there, though. There is a balance of, you know, Our kids can experience what we can as athletes. And yes, we have to spend time away, but some of those experiences, it's so true. So I guess that's how I choose to look at it now.

Our oldest is the same age as Noah and same birth month as well. And she got to live in Turkey with us when we were there. And she has a different view of life than her peers and she's had different experiences in life than her peers. And the boys were either lived in Turkey at one point or were born in Italy. So it's just. It's a different. It's a different experience that you can't explain how that affects someone or how they see the world. And I really think that the world is getting smaller. And unless people world stage, then it's not going to help where our direction goes as a planet, as humanity, as. You know, if you stay in your one little neighborhood, in your one little town and you never experience anything other than that, it can really be a detriment to how you interact on a world stage.

Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, with Noah, he just turned 19. He just joined the military. He joined the reserves in Victoria. And that's, I think, a big part because we've traveled the world. He's had a chance to be. We were training on military bases throughout my whole career. And so I've spent personally a lot of time in the military or around the military. So I think that really influenced his life and he found something that he truly loves to do. So that is kind of where his life trajectory has gone. And I think that travel is the education of the world, something you can't get in institutions and universities. That gets a little overrated at times for me, even though I've spent most of my life chasing degrees.

But, you know, I think I always say that Paul has a PhD in World Studies because he's lived in so many different countries and. But when I was.

You need employers who recognize that.

Yeah, yeah.

Otherwise it's not that valuable.

Yeah, yeah. What do you think drew Noah to the military? Do you think it was the. Do you think it was the structure or the world travel or a combination of things like.

Yeah, I think for sure the, you know, the structure, that's a good thing you bring up because most of his life has been, I would say, a tad bit chaotic and unstructured in the sense that there's always change, there's always travel. Life as an athlete is not a 9 to 5 job. So he grew up with that. So I think he craves that structure in the routine. At the same time, I remember it was his 12th birthday. We were in Ottawa for a world championship, and I met some of the secret seesaw guys, and they said, would you want to come and have him shoot guns with us the next day? And I brought him out. It was. That was the rest. The rest is history. He saw the cadets training and. And, you know, since then, I mean, one of his mentors is a Navy SEAL who brought down bin Laden. One of the guys that was there that night that. So he's had the chance to be around some incredible high performers that are not necessarily athletes, but they're high performers in their own right. And that's what he loves to do. So I think that he just found his passion and through hockey, that he found it.

That's amazing, though, because so many people that age really struggle to find something or to try different things that might light their passion and light their fire, to really pursue and pursue with gusto. So that's. That's huge. Shifting gears here, we've. There's been a big announcement over the past week on the discontinuing of operations of the cwhl where. What are your thoughts on that? Was that a surprise to you? Did you know that was coming? You know, do you see this as a big step backward for women's hockey? What's it. What's there for you?

Yeah, well, actually, I. I knew this was going to happen. I. I didn't know when, and I had zero knowledge that it was going to go down the day it did or was going to happen this season. But the truth of the matter is, for anyone that is on, I think, inside the game, is that neither the CWHL or the NWHL is the answer for women's pro hockey. They were leagues that were established, the CWHL as a place, you know, incredible job for a place for women to play, play in in Canada and North America because no one was stepping up to do pro league for women's hockey, and the NWHL wanted to follow suit, and they've kind of become competitor, competitor, rival leagues. We've seen the best players in the American team move to play in the CWHL this year. That's just a fact. So I think that it said a lot about where the NWHL is. So for me, I actually saw it as a great day for women's hockey. Not to take away or put down the CWHL or any of the work that's been done, but the only way forward for women's pro hockey is One league with the best players in the world in one league. Yeah, no more than six teams. And it potentially might have to be starting in west eastern Canada in the U.S. just because of logistics and cost. But the also I think the only way forward is with NHL involvement. And I know for a fact that the NHL has a plan and they have said it in the media. I, I just can't understand why we can't read between the lines in women's hockey. The NHL all but said as soon as there ceases to be pro women's hockey leagues, we will step in and do one. So for me as a player, I'm thinking if I'm the players in the world right now, currently in the game, get everyone together, say enough is enough, we're not playing in either league. Go to the NHL and fold the league and say we want our, we want a professional league done right. Because neither of these leagues have been able to do it right in terms of being able to pay the players and really have a thriving league. And I don't understand. I think what's keeping women's hockey back is the women in hockey that are running these leagues and the players have to be brave and step up and say we want to change. It's very simple.

But sometimes too. And one of the things that Paul has seen and I've seen across national level sport in Canada, unlike the only sport that's run really well at the national level is hockey in Canada. Most of the other, and that's, you know, I might get slammed for saying that, but most of the other national level sports are run like they're kind of these volunteer organizations with not real business sense, without any of that professionalism that goes with it. And that's how I think of the CWHL as well, is that there's not that level of running it like a business looking at all of the logistics and all of the numbers in a way that says this is how it has to be done. And you know, money talks, fans talk, the quality of players, all of those things have to be standardized in a way that otherwise it makes women's hockey look forward foolish if it's watered down, if the quality is poor, why would the fans go and follow that if it's not, if it's not top notch, best quality play that you can get and you know, you've got all these up and coming athletes who have been developed better and better over the years, who have all these opportunities to get scholarships in the US play decent quality hockey development with a national team, but then what? They've got nowhere to go. And there's not, you know, there's not a lot offered in Europe. So, I mean, that's. That's just my opinion. I just think that like many other sport bodies, it ends up being run with love instead of with a business. A business. And nothing wrong with, you know, putting heart behind it. I believe that in that fully. But there also has to be the business sense, the structure, the, you know, everything planned out. And if certain cities and certain schedules aren't going to work or certain teams aren't going to work, then they just don't exist in that league.

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the. One of the stumbling blocks that's been going on here is that the Canadian Women's Hockey League is more than willing to fold and allow the NHL to come in and. And create a league, a professional league. I think the NWHL was far less willing, has been far less willing to do that. They've not played nice in the sandbox, so to speak.

Sorry, Canadians.

We're the nice ones.

Yeah, sorry.

We want to do what's right for the game. I think that generally. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's been difficult. So the CWHL has said, well, we're not going to let the NWHL take over. I guess we'll just keep going. And then there's this sort of internal struggle for players. And, you know, the. The NHL gave a hundred thousand, now 50 to each league, but now 100 to the NWHL. Well, that's a cup of coffee. And they don't want to have to support these leagues, but they're kind of in a tough spot where they will be seen to be doing nothing if they don't in the meantime, waiting for them to fail. So it's a. It's a difficult thing. I find it really sad for the state of women's hockey. I think we could be progressing and moving ahead so much quicker if more intelligent, cooler heads could prevail and do the right thing for the women's game. I don't think that the intentions are necessarily in the right place, particularly on the American side in this. So I. Yeah, I've been frustrated. I'm quite removed from it now with just my life and where. Where it's gone. I'm not in the women's game. So from watching from afar, I just cannot understand why we can't get this figured out. And to me, the most important piece here is the players. As soon as the players collectively on both sides of the Border stick together and say, we're not playing in either league until you guys have a solution and get to the nh.

It's so true for anything in life or the world that until people unify to see the bigger picture, then it's, it's always going to be, you know, this dichotomy of nitpicking and tit for tat and then nothing will work. But until people unite to go, okay, we're going to do this together to make it better than the sum of our parts, then it's going to be mediocre at best.

Yeah. And I think right now it's just very mediocre all around. And that's not what the game deserves or what it has to offer. I think it could be a very good product with six teams of the very best in the world. And right now with two leagues, it's a watered down product.

On a personal level now, you've had such an incredible career, you've overcome so many things, so many challenges. Is there a struggle or a challenge that you have experienced lately that you can share with our listeners that you've overcome or that you're working on right now?

Well, I think med school in general was a challenge. You know, I can tell you a funny story. I just finished my first year and we have to, we have to do these physical exams and procedural skills where someone is in the room watching you do something on a patient. And I had to do suturing on a rubber arm basically. And I got in this room and I got into the suturing and I had to do this, this mattress, horizontal mattress stitch, which is not a simple stitch, not a hard one. But anyway, I found myself in the middle of this get real nervous. My hand started to shake and I actually started laughing at myself inside. I said to myself like, good Lord. Or even a real army Olympic gold medal final. This is just a simple stitch. Yeah. You know, it's not even a real arm. We're not even like, like, what is the problem here? And I laughed, actually I laughed out loud while I was doing it because it was such a ridiculous moment. And you know, sometimes we like get so hyper focused in life that this is the most important life or death thing that could be happening. Whereas if you just take that 30,000 foot view and you step back, you start to laugh at the situation. You're like, it's not the end of the world. And yes, it is incredibly stressful. You know, you need to know 18 physical exams and they're only going to ask you four. But you got to be able to know everything within a time limit of 10 minutes. So there's a lot of stress there. But. So the point of the story is that I found myself overwhelmed for a few minutes there, and I kind of got it back on the rails and everything went fine. But in life, in medicine, it can get really overwhelming with the amount of information that's thrown at you. And some days you just think, I think I'll never get through this. And looking back on my first year, you know, it wasn't all that bad. I survived. So I think I draw a lot on this experience I have in sport and being on a team and learning.

Yeah, I love the snapshot of your internal dialogue, you know, like, because that's not everybody's internal dialogue, you know, so that's awesome. And you know that. I mean, I think you've wanted to go to medical school for a really long time. How long has this been. Been a dream for you?

Honestly, since I was a kid. Like, I remember I got this Harvard sweatshirt given to me when I was 10, and it was my dream to play for the other and go to Harvard Med School. I wasn't sure how I was going to do both of those, but that was what I wanted to do. And I got it in my head. And I look at my life now and I'm like, well, I'm kind of doing both. I'm working for an NHL team. I'm going to med school. So I guess I had this vision very young that that's what I was going to do. And I really, like, truly believed I could do it. And I. I stuck with it through the years. Even when people said I was completely crazy to do it, even when starting med school at 40 was a why would you ever do that to yourself? Kind of thing. That even my own mom was like, are you out of your mind? You know, like. But I just think, like, age is such, like, it's such a number now. If you, you know, you guys see this and you take care of yourself, you. You live a healthy life, clean life. Like, people live a long time and can do a lot of things. And even as an athlete, people would tell me I was 35, you're too old. And I was like, whatever, you know, like, you're just never too old. If you. If your mind and more mostly your soul and your spirit are still willing to do what needs to be done, I think, you know, we can.

You knew, obviously, that you wanted to become an adult.

Always had that dream.

This after Retiring. But I want to ask about the retirement itself. Did you or how did you mourn the loss of hockey? I had a terrible time, you know, letting go of volleyball and finding my way afterwards, but I didn't have the clear direction. You did of the next step. Did you? That being said, how did you deal with the loss of hockey?

Well, probably what helped me, Paul, is that I did have a next step. Like, basically, medicine was like, are you coming or not? And I was like, yep, I guess I am. So I knew that that's what I was going to do. And I suppose for me, I guess, coping might be. I moved on real fast. I. You know, I retired from hockey in February. I started medicine in. Well, actually, I took a year off. I shouldn't say that I took a year off. What I decided to do was I deferred another year in medicine. And I travel. I went to the Olympics. I traveled. I went into places like North Korea and India, and I went and saw hockey in the most craziest, remote parts of the world. And I did a lot of things I knew I wouldn't be able to do once I started medical school. And so probably that helped me transition at the same time falling right into medicine and then working with the Leafs. I'm still in the game, but medicine is consuming, so I don't have a lot of downtime to think about it, to be honest. But I also felt like I accomplished everything that I could do in the game that I wanted to do and I was looking for. In some ways, I think I was also excited about a new challenge, which I've always been like that my whole life. So I think that kind of saved me. If I had nothing. If I had nothing at the end of the day, I think I'd be in trouble. I even notice it now if I don't train. I still train as much as I can, the way that I used to. And if I don't train in a.

Day or two, I live with someone like that.

I have a hard time.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm very much that.

The amount of time.

Don't talk to me if I haven't worked out.

Yeah. Like, the amount of sitting you do in med school will make you go crazy. So you gotta have an outlet somewhere. And that's, for me, what. I actually built a gym.

That's what Paul wants. Paul wants our garage to be turned into that. The basement's not cutting it anymore.

Yeah, no, it's.

Well, we avoid the physical gym because we just don't. It's hard to get as much done when we're at our own gym because there's distraction and work and, you know, things like that.

But.

Okay, so here's. I've got a couple more questions for you. We want to be really sensitive to your time and. But do you. And this may apply now, and it may be different for your past, but do you want to do your best or be the best?

That's a good question. Well, here's a good way, I guess, of putting it is that in hockey, it's, you know, we were the best in the world, being the best in the world for a long time. And in medicine, you're not the best. You're far from the best when you start. So it's one thing to be the best in the world, and it's, I think, a complete other thing to be the best for the world. And that's what I think serving professions are about. Medicine is one of them. And so now I see it as I want to be the best that I can be every day, knowing that I have so far to go and still so much to learn. I think I'm an expert in the game of hockey. I, of course, can still learn, and I'm learning every day, but it's very humbling. Every day I go to med school, I say, I don't know, like, 50 times a day. I don't know. What do you do? I don't know. So. Which I like because I like that steep learning curve. And so I know I'm not. I'm not going to be the best, and I don't want to be, but I want to do the. I want to be the best doctor I can be, do the best job that I can. And what motivates me isn't the marks, but it's the horrifying visual I get of not being able to help somebody that needs my help that would just be a failure. Yeah. And so that's what I think I strive for. And. And then, of course, in the game of hockey, you're always still learning.

And what do you see if you look way, way, way off and you're long gone and maybe your. Your son maybe have grandchildren are living. But what do you see as your legacy that you've left behind?

Well, I. I started a festival called wickfest. It'll be 10 years this November that we've been doing it, and it's been in Calgary. It's. We've now expanded to Surrey. We're going to be in Halifax, Tampa and Toronto. In the next couple years. So what it is, is a festival. So I believe in like holistic development of the athlete. Not just developing a hockey player or a volleyball player, but like really developing good athletes. And so we've touched over 30,000 kids now in 10 years and they come and they get five games guaranteed in a hockey tournament. But also what happens in the same weekend is they get basically a professional development weekend where they sign up for sessions from Olympic athletes and psychologists and educational experts and nutrition and fitness and anything you want. It's, it's there for these kids so that when they leave they're not only had a hockey experience, but they're better at, better educated to become better athletes and more successful people. So yeah, so it's actually really, it's wickfest.com and we have a, actually we had 110 teams last year and we've got a 100 team waiting list to get teams from all over the world. We had India, China, we had teams from Mexico. Yeah, we've got a big, big range from age 5 to 18. So all minor hockey in every level, single A to triple A. It's quite a, quite an event. We had the prime minister show up this year and lots of cool guests next year. Our 10th anniversary. Not sure what we're going to do to top, to top it, but I'm pretty proud of where we've come with it. And it's, it's all not, not for profit. It's not a for profit event for myself or anyone else. So it's just our way. It's just sort of my way of giving back to the game.

That's fantastic. And we'll put that in the show notes as well so people can find it quickly. We don't, we usually end with some personal questions, but those are you, you cover those really well with a little Wikipedia on your personal website. So we're not going to dive into those. But is there anything that you want to be asked that don't. You typically don't get asked? Is there a question that you're like, oh, I wish somebody would ask me about, blah. Is there something like that? Or it can also be like a unique thing that most people don't know.

I don't know if there's any question, I guess. I mean, I know your podcast is about, you know, empowering athletes and things like that. I would just say I always thought of my retirement. Like people would say, oh, you're retiring? And I'd say, no, I'm graduating. Like I always Felt like it was a graduation, you know, like I've. I just feel like in. On the other side, life after sport, like there's still a long life to be lived and there's so much to still do and, and be when you're not an athlete anymore. So if I could encourage anyone that's listening, who's in there maybe still in their careers, that while you're in your career as an athlete, line yourself up for the next life after. You know, it's not a. It doesn't take away, I think, from your performance as an athlete to be doing that and be thinking about those things. I know a lot of NHL players right now who are, who are doing online degrees and who are taking business courses and they're thinking about life after. And I think they do say, like, I found that it actually helped me relax and get rest away from the ice because I wasn't thinking about hockey all the time. So there's anything I could really encourage is, is then it's not so scary and you're prepared for it. And then just not being afraid to say, like, I'm not. I'm not okay. Like, I don't do well if I don't train every day. I fully admit it, maybe I need some help, but I, you know, that's like how I cope and it sometimes is just about coping. So, you know, we all kind of struggle.

Yeah.

Makes it easier.

Well, we are extremely grateful to have you on and I know this will impact a lot of people, people who get to tune in and you've been such an influence on so many, so many hockey players, but just so many people in general. And now to have you go on to help people and save lives, that's.

That's huge.

So we are, we're very grateful and it's been a pleasure to have you on.

Yeah, no, thanks a lot for having me. All right.

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