Some people are destined to be hockey lifers.
At some point, their playing careers will end in some random house league game with no real fanfare. Even once they’re done playing, they’ll continue in the sport, helping others find the type of love of hockey that they have had for a lifetime.
Stacey Hochkins is one of those folks.
A former college star at Holy Cross, Hochkins has already transitioned into a hybrid role. The 34-year-old still plays adult hockey and won a national title with the Little Caesars Women’s Hockey program this past April. When she isn’t playing, Hochkins coaches with a Detroit-area high school girls team and a college women’s team.
Brad Johnson has seen Hochkins’ impact for years. He has coached her since 2014 in what is now the Little Caesars program.
“We can talk about hockey, and we can talk about her talent, talk about her leadership, but none of that happens if she also just genuinely doesn’t care about her teammates and what we’re doing and care about in a bigger picture,” Johnson said. “Because I also don’t believe that if she was just in it to show up and play and then go home without trying to build our players up and help them get better — without trying to encourage more of our players to get involved in youth hockey, to be role models, some of the role models that these players maybe didn’t have when they were younger with predominantly male coaches — I don’t think if she genuinely didn’t care about all of that that I’d be talking to you right now.”
Hochkins’ impact on and off the ice is why USA Hockey named her the 2025 Adult Player of the Year. Hochkins and others will be honored at the USA Hockey President’s Dinner in Denver on June 6.
A knee injury while trying to play overseas with the Salzburg Eagles in Austria cut her professional career short. That came after a decorated run at Holy Cross, where she finished as the career leader in goals (103), assists (86) and, of course, points (189). She also scored a record 18 game-winning goals and was a four-time first-team All-ECAC selection and conference Player of the Year as a sophomore.
In 2024, she became the first Crusaders women’s hockey player to have her jersey retired.
Knowing there wasn’t a lot of high-level hockey left for her after the injury, Hochkins returned to Michigan and connected with Johnson through a mutual acquaintance. He quickly found out why the New Boston, Michigan, native was so successful as a player.
“She’s a very competitive player, still at her ripe age now,” Johnson said. “Still very competitive. Wants to win and works her butt off in everything she does, but definitely on the ice one of the fiercer competitors in my 30 years of coaching … and now I’ve had the opportunity to coach her for over a decade. … But she’s also not over the top with the competitiveness. So as far as sportsmanship goes, she’s always on the right side of that.”
Hochkins is a staunch advocate for growing girls and women’s hockey. She is certainly around it enough. Hochkins is an assistant coach on the combined Orchard Lake Saint Mary’s and Saint Catherine’s high school team as well as an assistant at Lawrence Tech at the college level.
In addition to playing with Little Caesars, she also laces up the skates for adult league rec games and dabbles with inline hockey. Sometimes she shows up at the Little Caesars games to be an unofficial assistant coach, too.
“We wouldn’t have a program without her,” Johnson said, “but a great deal of success that we’ve had over the years, which includes a couple of national championships at the adult level — one in 2018 and then most recently just a couple weeks ago — I don’t know if we win either of those national championships without Stacey on our team. We’ve got a lot of great players, I don’t want to take anything away from other players, but her being around the team, both on and off the ice is a major contribution to our success.”
Much like her younger days, Hochkins has often been the best player on whatever team she was playing on. While there has been — and still is — a “Get the puck to Stacey” mindset, Hochkins has always been about boosting up those around her to set the stage for this and future generations of female hockey players.
“She builds a foundation for players to respect her, both as a player and as a leader,” Johnson said. “Again, going back to leading by example, she does it in a respectful way and she does it in a way that the players see how hard she works, but she doesn’t talk down to them or ride players or anything like that. They feel like it elevates their level. Our players do skate harder when Stacey’s going because you watch her go out there on a shift and work harder than anybody else on the ice. They want to go out and do the same thing. It’s unspoken, but it’s definitely palpable and I see it.”
A perfect description of a hockey lifer who goes about her business each day yet is important in ways she might not imagine.
“I don’t think it’s something that she’s going to wear this [award] as a badge of honor, but I think it also helps her understand that she’s made a difference — and she absolutely has,” Johnson said.
Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.
Source: usahockey.com