BURNSVILLE, Minn. — Natalie Darwitz’s life has been turned upside down, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’ve spent more time on my phone in the last month and a half than in the last five years,” she told The Athletic in the midst of what has quickly become the most exhilarating yet overwhelming time in her storied hockey career. “I am losing sleep at night in a good way. I’m excited. I’m invested. I’m super zen-ish, but I just feel like everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for this role.”
There’s not a hockey person in Minnesota who doesn’t know of the heavily decorated Darwitz, the Eagan High School, University of Minnesota and USA Hockey legend and now the first general manager of the newly launched Minnesota-based Professional Women’s Hockey League franchise.
This is a two-time national collegiate champion; a three-time gold-medal winner and five-time silver-medal winner at the world championships; a three-time Olympian, with two silvers and a bronze; and, of course, a U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer.
Nobody in the history of Minnesota high school girls hockey has more goals than her 316 or more points than her 468, scored from 1997 to 2000 at Eagan. Nobody in the history of the women’s program at University of Minnesota has…
