AOTW: Clair DeGeorge wins Professional Women’s Hockey League Championship with Minnesota in inaugural season

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (KTUU) - Clair DeGeorge has had plenty to celebrate as of late. The Alaska skater just celebrated her 25th birthday soon after hoisting the first-ever Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) Walter Cup.

The forward skated in all 10 games for PWHL Minnesota in the playoffs that ended with a 3-0 win in the final series over PWHL Boston.

“As our captain said, there is something about being the first team to win in the first year of the inaugural season,” DeGeorge said from Minnesota via Zoom. ”Thinking it is like the equivalent to all of those dreams of kids saying, ‘I want to host the Stanley Cup one day,’ hopefully now those little girls will be like, ‘I want to host the Walter Cup one day.’ But it was a lot heavier than people were expecting, I think it is 35 pounds.”

DeGeorge’s latest victory comes just two years removed from winning a NCAA National Championship with Ohio State.

The PWHL, backed by Los Angeles Dodgers Co-Owner Mark Walter and wife Kimbra with tennis legend Billie Jean King, is the lone pro women’s hockey league in North America — but the sport continues to grow globally, including in DeGeorge’s home-state.

”The strengths that I have seen growing in the past 10 or so years is the availability of girls teams, the more girls that are playing the more teams you can have,” she said of the growth of girls hockey in Alaska. “When I was growing up I was one of three girls playing when we were 10U so we had to play with the boys, there wasn’t a girls team, so that is a huge difference as that is pretty crazy.”

DeGeorge works as a Registered Nurse in the off-season, but hopes to balance the life of hockey and healthcare as long as she can.

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