Manon Rhéaume continues to build legacy as a PWHL general manager

Manon Rhéaume became emotional when she watched the inaugural Professional Women's Hockey League draft online and heard Taylor Heise's name called first in 2023.

"I was so interested to see how this whole thing's going to unfold and I started having tears in my eyes," Rhéaume recalled. "That moment when she got drafted, to me, that was real. That was not trying to make something happen. It was happening.

"That really made an impact on me at that moment."

The 54-year-old from Lac-Beauport couldn't have imagined it growing up in Quebec, where she was the only girl she knew who played hockey, and who wore her goalie helmet walking into the rink so people didn't know there was a girl in goal.

The hiring of Rhéaume as the first general manager of the PWHL's expansion team in Detroit draws a full circle for her in many ways.

She's lived in Michigan and worked in hockey there for over 20 years, including 11 as girls' division director of the Little Caesars AAA Hockey Club in Detroit. Some of the players Rhéaume helped develop are eligible for this year's PWHL draft in Detroit on June 17.

But among the women's hockey history firsts that grabbed people's attention and became a brick in the foundation for the PWHL, Rheaume contribution holds rarefied space.

She's the first, and only, woman to play in an NHL game. Rhéaume was invited to the Tampa Bay Lightning's training camp in 1992. The teenage goaltender played a period of a pre-season game, which she did again for the Lightning in 1993.

That breakthrough remains evergreen because parents in arenas nudge their kids and tell them about it, which in turn sends youngsters to online search engines, Rhéaume said.

"The kids would come up to me because their parents knew about me," she