King Crowley defined by willpower, determination en route to U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

When A.J. Mleczko thinks of Katie King Crowley, they don't think of that crowning achievement, the gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics and the kickoff for everything that would come later for the United States women's hockey team.

Or, at least, that's not first.

First comes the bronze-medal game eight years later at the 2006 Torino Olympics.

"What I remember [about] watching that bronze-medal game is she played out of her mind," Mleczko said.

It was King Crowley's final international game and no one -- least of all the team itself -- believed the United States would be playing for bronze. They were supposed to be playing for gold like in the previous two Olympics, the one they won and the other they lost (Salt Lake City in 2002), each against Canada.

But the U.S. stumbled in the shootout against Sweden in the 2006 semifinal and, though the disappointment was palpable, King Crowley wasn't going to let that stop her.

She scored a hat trick. The U.S. defeated Finland 4-0. Mleczko was broadcasting the game.

"She was such a leader the way she carried herself out there," said Mleczko, King Crowley's teammate in the first two Olympics, "You don't want to go into that game and not go home with a medal at all and that was going to be very easy for them to do, based on their mentality.

"You could just feel how she dragged everybody into that fight."

It was a shining moment in the career of King Crowley, who will be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame on Wednesday in Boston, not far from where she grew up in Salem, New Hampshire, and where she now works, as the coach of the Boston College women's hockey team since 2007.

It's an honor that former coach and 2017 U.S. Hall of Fame inductee Ben Smith called "long overdue."

King Crowley played for three Olympic teams and won three medals. She scored 14 Olympic goals, tied for first in United States women's hockey history with Natalie Darwitz, and is fourth with 23 points behind Jenny Potter (32), Hilary Knight (27) and Darwitz (25).

"It's still surreal to me that I've played on three Olympic teams," King Crowley said. "It just doesn't seem real."

The goal total, said Smith, is even more impressive because of where she did it from. To Smith, left shot left wing might be the most challenging position offensively for anyone in hockey.

"So for Katie to be tied for the lead for most goals I think just shows what a dominating player and dominating goal scorer that she was, culminating in her last game in a difficult-to-play bronze game where she recorded the hat trick," Smith said. "For her to rise to the occasion like she did was obviously really, really special and just really a testament to how competitive she was. Her want was off the charts as to her competitiveness and her desire."

That all started in 1998, when she was part of the first women's Olympic hockey tournament and had eight points (four goals, four assists) in six games. That team, including King Crowley, was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009.

"From a historical standpoint, she's proven herself to be the best left wing that USA hockey -- and maybe women's hockey -- has produced," Smith said.

In addition to the Olympics, King Crowley competed in six IIHF Women's World Championships, winning gold in 2005 and silver in 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2004. She played 223 games for the national team and had 278 points (153 goals, 125 assists), third all-time.

But her strength didn't lie in her shot, Smith recalled. It was getting in close, getting dirty, working for every inch, that differentiated King Crowley.

"When I go back and I refer to the men's game and I refer to the all-time great goal scorers, and I think of the left shots that were great goal scorers like Bobby Hull or Frank Mahovlich, those guys had big thunderous slap shots," Smith said. "It wasn't like Katie possessed the greatest shot of all time.

"The term power forward was just coming into the hockey lexicon at that time, people like Cam Neely in the early 90s, and she was that type of a player. She didn't depend on scoring with her shot from outside. Her goals were goals where she was driving to the net and goals that were battles in front of the net."

It was, in some ways, pure determination.

It was also, in some ways, because Neely was who she watched, growing up.

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I want to be like him,'" King Crowley said. "We always watched the Bruins. That was our team, and he was someone that I always kind of wanted to be like. I don't really know, maybe because I was bigger than some of the other kids, but I think I found that knack.

"Finesse was not my thing."

She laughed.

"I certainly wasn't going to dangle through a lot of people," King Crowley said. "I had to use different ways to get to the net and I guess I just used my size and my strength and fell into that role as I got older and certainly on the U.S. team."

Mleczko called her the "quintessential power forward of our era."

"She was just a very north-south presence," she said. "Playing defense, she really challenged me, her speed, her power coming down on me. It really helped me with my gap control.

"She'd just bear down. We called her the 'Big Train' because she would just get the puck, she was determined. She had a great shot."

It was sheer willpower to get to the net, to put herself in areas with which others had no interest.

King Crowley began playing hockey at age 4, following in the footsteps of her older brother, David King, whom she venerated and always wanted to do what he was doing. Hockey was no different. She even got to play with him one year, subbing for an injured player on his mite team.

She played hockey and softball at Brown University, adding Ivy League Player of the Year in 1996 and Pitcher of the Year in 1997 to her myriad of hockey accomplishments.

And then came her nine-year tenure with the United States national team, where she became known as a model teammate, a leader with a tremendous work ethic, an infectious laugh and, Mleczko said, "a really warm and positive energy," exactly the type of person you might entrust with your own daughter's playing career. Mleczko's daughter, Jaime Griswold, will play for King Crowley at Boston College next season.

Mleczko still remembers those final moments before the official roster went up for the 1998 Olympics, the names that would go down in history. Her parents were sitting in the hotel bar in Lake Placid, New York, with King Crowley's parents, just waiting for the word.

Once the final three names were announced, the two women called the bar.

"I remember the pay phone," Mleczko said. "I remember, vividly, the two of us standing there."

It would change their lives. They would change their lives.

"When you talk about Katie King, you're talking about somebody special for me," Smith said. "That's for damn sure. I had a lot of great players and, to me, she's the premier left wing in USA Hockey and maybe all of women's hockey."