Meet the first Maryland native selected in the PWHL Draft

When she was 14, Lacey Eden found herself playing for the Washington Capitals Bantam boys travel team as it faced the Toronto Junior Canadiens.

With the Little Caps clinging to a one-goal lead in the final minute, Eden got pinned against the boards with the puck at her feet in the defensive zone. Three Toronto players swarmed her — the only girl — digging, shoving and punching at her to force a turnover.

Eden held firm. The Little Caps won 3-2.

“You can’t teach that. You can try and coach it, but that comes from inside,” Eden’s coach during that game in January 2017, Tom Morrissey, said. “Her heart, her determination, her grit.”

Nearly a decade later, Eden, an Annapolis native, became the first Maryland-born player to be selected in the Professional Women’s Hockey League draft when Las Vegas chose her with the fifth overall pick Wednesday.

As Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations Jayna Hefford announced her name inside Detroit’s historic Fox Theatre, Eden embraced her family. Her loved ones were excited, but none of them was particularly surprised.

Since she was 14, Eden has had one goal: becoming the best player possible.

At that time, the National Women’s Hockey League — which existed from 2015-23 — was in its infancy, and the PWHL didn’t exist. In fact, the 2026 PWHL draft was just the league’s third. And Eden’s new team, PWHL Las Vegas, will be heading into its inaugural season as an expansion franchise.

She’s accustomed to breaking down barriers — and starting over somewhere new.

While there were some all-girls hockey teams in Maryland when she was younger, they were rare. Eden grew up playing on all-boys teams. According to her family, that didn’t faze her. At practices, she was on the quieter side, preferring to let her play speak for itself.

“She was so locked in, so dialed in,” Morrissey said. “And she didn’t care who she was playing with. She would just come in and do her thing.”

When the boys she was playing with finally hit their growth spurts during her first two years of high school, Eden moved on to the next phase of her plan.

At 16, she told her parents she needed to move over 1,000 miles away to attend Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Faribault, Minnesota.

At first, her mom was bewildered.

“I’m like, ‘What’s boarding school? You’re not going to boarding school,’” Karen Eden said.

But, ultimately, both parents agreed.

“Bill and I, we really didn’t have the plan. She had the plan,” Karen said. “She told us what the plan was, and we followed her lead.”

In two seasons at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, Eden scored 75 goals and recorded 100 assists.

After Eden committed to Princeton University, the COVID-19 pandemic canceled what would have been her freshman season. That December, she applied to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which hadn’t canceled its season. She joined the Badgers in January 2021.

Eden immediately played a contributing role on the way to her first of four national championships with Wisconsin. She finished the season with eight goals and seven assists through 15 games to earn a U.S. College Hockey Online All-Rookie Team nod.

That year, Eden made her international debut for the United States women’s national team at the IIHF Women’s World Championship. Since then, she has become a fixture in the program, earning spots on every world championship roster and helping the United States capture gold in 2023 and 2025.

Yet one goal has remained out of reach.

Despite her success at the collegiate and international levels, Eden was left off the U.S. Olympic roster for the 2022 and 2026 Winter Games.

“She took it very hard, as we all did,” Bill Eden said. “We got together as a family unit and talked it through. … She could just close up shop and say ‘hell with it’ and take a hike, or we could say, ‘Let’s get it back together again.’”

Eden chose the latter.

Returning to Wisconsin for a fifth season, she had her best year yet. As a team captain, Eden led the nation in scoring with 29 goals and 48 assists and guided the Badgers to another national championship. Eden’s four championship titles are the most of any player in NCAA women’s hockey history.

“She’s always been the type of person who won’t take no for an answer,” her brother Liam Eden said. “Even when things didn’t go her way, she came out of those situations working even harder with a new chip on her shoulder.”

For her family, Eden being drafted in the first round was a validation of years of hard work and sacrifice. For the Maryland hockey community at large, it was something more.

“To see other girls have that kind of success out of an area that’s not a hockey hotbed, it helps your dream,” Morrissey said.

Liam sees that impact firsthand. As a coach for the Tri-City Eagles based in Laurel, he’s seen how his players light up whenever Eden returns home to help with camps and practices.

“This will be the third year that Lacey’s been running an all-girls camp,” Liam said. “We’ve had hundreds of girls come out over the last three years. Everyone is just really excited to be a part of Lacey’s journey and see what they can accomplish in hockey themselves because of Lacey.”

Yet, for those who know Eden best, the draft is not a finish line.

“Ultimately, this is a draft — it’s a stepping stone to get an opportunity to play and to prove yourself,” Liam said. “And I think she’s gonna do what she’s been doing her entire life, which is playing with a chip on her shoulder.”