Kacey Bellamy was sitting on a panel at the Premier Hockey Federation’s All-Star Game in January when she was asked if she had thought about making a comeback.
Bellamy, 35, retired from hockey in May 2021 after a 15-year career as a top defender on the U.S. women’s national team. She went to three Olympics — won gold in 2018 — and won eight world championships.
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In the last 23 months, Bellamy had settled into retirement working as the director of athletics of a new athletic complex — Maples Crossing — in Amesbury, Massachusetts. And, in the last year, she had taken a scouting job with the PHF and worked as a player relations liaison for the league.
But when she was asked about playing again, she answered: “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it.”
That moment is what kickstarted Bellamy’s comeback, which was officially announced on Thursday afternoon with the news that she had signed a one-year contract — worth $122,000 with a $7,000 signing bonus — with the PHF’s Connecticut Whale.
The @CTWhaleHockey have made the first signing of 2023 PHF free agency with Isobel Cup Champion, 8x IIHF Champion, and @usahockey Olympic Gold Medalist Kacey Bellamy! One-year term, salary valued at $122K + $7K signing bonus.#PresentedByDiscover
✍️ | https://t.co/6Zgq25Z1L1 pic.twitter.com/TRx9Wg1JpO
— PHF (@PHF) April 20, 2023
Bellamy spoke to The Athletic on Thursday afternoon about her decision to retire, why she chose Connecticut and unretire, plus how she has “more in the tank” as a player.
Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Welcome back. How does it feel to officially be signed to play for the Connecticut Whale this season?
I feel very good about it. It’s been a long process, but a very good and positive experience. I started talking to Connecticut in, gosh, February when they first reached out. It’s been great and it was a great learning experience because I represented myself in contract negotiations. I don’t have an agent and that’s just the way I wanted it to be. I’m so happy with my decision in my heart and I’m so excited to get to Connecticut.
Can you take me back to February and how all this started?
I was at the PHF All-Star weekend in Toronto and I was up on the panel speaking about women’s hockey and the growth of the game and somebody asked me if I was thinking about coming back and putting the skates on. I was honest with them and I just said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it. I said, I miss the game, I miss the competition.
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Tobin Kelly, the owner of Connecticut, reached out to me two weeks after that and that was kind of the spark and motivation to come back and play.
Was there a specific moment that made you realize you wanted to play again?
I went and watched Connecticut play Minnesota in November. And my parents live 20 minutes from there, just a hop skip and jump away. That was the first instance where I thought, “wow, wouldn’t it be cool to play in Connecticut, live at my parents’, save some money, play locally, and grow the fan base there?”
Why did you choose Connecticut?
From the start, my heart was always leaning towards Connecticut just because it’s close to home. They had all the resources, and the professionalism that they showed from the start. Tobin drove to Amesbury, Massachusetts in a snowstorm and met with me face to face just to start the conversation, which went a long way for me.
The biggest difference was Connecticut had all of their training, strength room, resources all in one place. So for me that was a no-brainer just because I knew that the training was gonna be adequate and everything was all in one place and close to home. It was a win-win for me.
Did you have interest from other teams once they found out that you were potentially going to come back?
Oh yeah. Minnesota reached out to me a few times, but I knew I couldn’t go there because of work. Boston was definitely in the cards as well. I work in Amesbury and I’m still going to be a part of the career that I’ve been starting here with the athletic complex — Trevor Smith and Joe Callahan (two former NHLers) they’ve done nothing but support me and help me with my decision and I can’t thank them enough. If they didn’t support me and they said, “no, you can’t do this,” then I wouldn’t be coming back.
But Connecticut just kept coming up in my thoughts and my heart just kept leaning towards Connecticut and at the end of the day, that’s the decision I made.
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You worked with the PHF as a scout and player liaison over the last year. What did you learn about the league, and how did that play a role in your decision to play again?
That was one of the most important things. I took the scouting job in the spring and I just wanted to get a feel for the league, I wanted to see how it was run, the personalities involved, the professionalism and it just exceeded all of my expectations. Reagan Carey (the PHF’s commissioner) has done an unbelievable job with this league since she came on in the spring last year. I believe in her leadership, I believe in her passion. She does everything for the right reasons to grow the game of women’s hockey. And that’s why I wanted to continue my career with the PHF.
Note: Joining the PWHPA ahead of its potential league launch was not a thought Bellamy’s decision to comeback.
Players have a choice to be transparent about their salary in the PHF. Why did you make yours public?
I could have obviously kept it quiet, had people question what I was making but I wanted to put it right out there because it was better for the league.
In my opinion, the $150,000 salaries that have been given out, it’s too much to have a sustainable viable league for a long time. I just don’t think that you can do that year after year if you’re paying a lot of players that amount of money. I probably came in thinking, “oh, maybe I could make that much,” but I said I’ll take less because I think that if we’re gonna try to grow this league into the league, that salary is a great starting point. And I think when people see that a three-time Olympian signed for that much, I think the girls coming out of college or high-skilled players will understand that the $150,000, we can’t do that. If we want to be successful, sustainable, we have to make sure we’re doing everything the right way financially.
And, you know, 22, that’s my favorite number, so I had to put that out there.
Oh that’s right. Are you going to get to wear No. 22 with the Whale?
(Laughs) No, I think Kennedy Marchment has it and I think that that number is very important to her, and I would never ask her to give it up. I think it’s a new chapter for me, a restart to my career. So I think I’ll go with a new number.
Why is 22 the number for you?
My birthday is April 22nd. My mother had me when she was 22 years old. I was 22 at my first Olympics and I got my driver’s license when I was 22.
Is this the first time you’ll be making a livable wage playing hockey?
Yes. When I first graduated from college coming from University of New Hampshire in 2010 and playing in the CWHL, I was making $2,000 from the U.S. Olympic Committee, which was taxed, so you’re basically making $1,500 a month. I did that for seven years. At that time, if you wanted to play hockey, the sport that you love, you had to just stay on the national team to get paid. If not, then you had to work a full-time job and try to balance it all.
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Is re-joining Team USA, which just won gold at the world championships, an option for you?
I have no expectations right now of playing for the national team. I’m taking it day by day and to have this opportunity where I can just play pro hockey and enjoy the sport that I love, it’s one of the main reasons I came back. I’m just trying to enjoy the sport that I love. Whatever else comes along, I’ll take that and stride.
You retired in May 2021. Why was that the right time for you?
I made the decision to retire when we found out that the Halifax world championship was canceled. That was like April 21st. I decided on April 22nd that was done, I was retired. It was a long journey throughout the pandemic. As a women’s professional hockey player, I mean, that didn’t mean much at that time. When I look back at it, it’s just a sad state of affairs that as a women’s hockey player trying to play at the highest level, going through a pandemic like we did, we were not helped out at all, not even a little bit. And that frustrated me.
I think I was at an age where I was like, “OK, how much longer am I really going to play?” And when I started training for that Halifax World Championship, everything was getting canceled. Training camp would get canceled, a tournament would get canceled and you would still see the NHL trying to make it work and that was very frustrating on our side. Being a female, it’s a fight every single day. It was just really deflating to me. So I needed a mental break and I took it. I don’t regret it at all. I enjoyed the year-and-a-half, two years that I was retired but at the end of the day, I miss playing, I miss the competition and I still think that I can bring what I left with and more. That’s my goal right now is to be better than I was before.
All right. So when do the workouts start?
I started working out in January. I talked to my strength coach, Walter Norton and I said, “this is what the plan is. How do I need to get my strength back? How do I get back to better than I was before?” I’m almost four months in. My strength is definitely back to where it was. It’s now working on my quickness. I’ve been on the ice once a week at least, and I feel good, to be honest. Coming back and training, it’s brought me a different perspective because when I retired I was not doing anything. I don’t think I’ve jumped in two years and I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but I think that it’s just going to be an interesting journey coming back, working out, getting back into that training life.
But I am so focused and so just motivated to step on the ice and prove that maybe I shouldn’t have retired and I have more in the tank and I want to show the world that.
(Photo of Kacey Bellamy, center, being honored in a ceremony before a Team USA women’s hockey game against Canada in 2021: Jessica Hill / AP Photo)
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