The USA and Canada will meet in the Women’s Ice Hockey World Cup final

As a young teenager, Taylor Hayes taped a poster-sized sheet of paint to his bedroom and inspected each one as he encountered it. The Minnesota native also uncapped a black Sharpie and wrote the word Olympics in a strategic spot on the bright green wall: just above his light switch.

The family then repainted the room. The word is no longer there.

I can see it in my mind, he said. I turned on and off the lights in my room so many times.

Heise is now heavily featured in USA Hockey, which has exploded through the program since being cut from the 2022 Olympic team two summers ago.

In the last 13 months, he won the NCAA Player of the Year award at the University of Minnesota, made his senior national team debut at the 2022 Summer World Championships (after testing positive for COVID, drove 13 hours home during self-isolation to shoot pucks in the family barn and then flew across the Atlantic Ocean the day before the opener), led those Worlds in scoring and was named MVP. He shares the team lead at this year’s worlds.

Among the forwards, only the future Hall of FamerHilary Knight spent more time on the ice for Saturday’s semifinal against the Czech Republic (formerly known as the Czech Republic) and the eventual final against Canada on Sunday in Brampton, Ontario.

The U.S. needs more offensive talent now than at any point in the past decade. It lost the last three major league finals to Canada and is on a five-game losing streak in the competition. Strong forward Brianna Deckerannounced his retirement last month. Olympic captain Kendall Coyne Schofieldis on maternity leave this year.

Enter Heise, a 5-foot-10 forward with a commanding presence, ability to control the game himself and a knack for passing the puck end-to-end.

That’s what the assistant head coach at the University of Minnesota saw Natalie Darwitz described him. Darwitz, captain of the 2010 U.S. Olympic team, compared Heise Krissy Wendellanother Gophers standout who was captain of the 2006 Olympic team and three-time leading scorer for the US at worlds.

[Heise] wants the puck off his stick in big moments, Darwitz said. In two years, I’ve never seen him take a day off or practice or outside of a game.

Like many others, Heise fostered this determination as a child. But his story is unique, starting with the setting: Lake City, population 5,000, on Lake Pepin, about 70 miles southeast of the Twin Cities. Its name is the birthplace of water skiing.

Heises’ parents both played basketball at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. They had three children and three hoops. Heise credits his younger brothers for his initial efforts, joking that they’d be ready to beat you up all the time.

At about age 4, he began a three-year hobby of pulling pedal tractors at local county fairs, often taking on kids twice his size. He placed second in the 5-year-old division at the national championships at the famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

In first grade, he brought home an entertainment flyer promoting recreational hockey at Lake City’s lonely rink. Her favorite sports memory: those first skates with pink laces. But Ice Age was limited, so he honed his shot in the family’s three-and-a-half-car garage.

He eventually switched districts so he could play at the school, which resulted in a three-hour round-trip weekday commute from Lake City.

He’s kind of big and strong now, but he started in seventh grade and weighed 98 pounds, mom Amy said. The coach didn’t want him on the ice until he was 100. He spent an entire year in seventh grade trying to break 100 pounds and never got there.

Heise also learned about setting short-term and long-term goals. One of his first goals was to make the national under-18 team at the age of 15. He made it.

He won three consecutive gold medals at the Under-18 World Championships in 2016-18. After the COVID break, it was time to jump into the senior national team.

He got a shot in 2021, but missed three teams in four months. He was dropped after the originally scheduled but postponed April 2021 World Cup evaluation camp, then cut again after trying out the national team’s residency program that summer, missing both the rearranged worlds and the 2022 Olympics.

He’s trying to stave off the July 2021 surgery date that stalled his Olympic dreams for another four years. The Olympic coach was Joel Johnsonwho had coached Heise as captain of the U18 national team and recruited and coached him in Minnesota.

Joel knew me as a person, he said. He goes, I know you’re going to figure it out. He goes, I just think you need time. I understand that, but for myself, I didn’t want to hear it right now. So I feel like it took me a few days to process it.

Heise decided that being upset wouldn’t help him make the team in the following years. His parents helped him develop a new way of thinking.

If they [USA Hockey] I don’t want me, so I’m going to prove throughout the next year that it was the wrong decision, he said.

If Heise wanted concrete motivation, he got several in a box that arrived on the family’s doorstep. It contained Olympic team clothes and a credential that ended up not being used. Replicas of his 2022 Olympic jersey are can be found on USA Hockey’s website for $275.

When the Olympic team earned silver without her, Heise led NCAA Division I hockey in scoring and then won the Patty Kazmaier Female Player of the Year Award in March 2022. Her teammates started calling her Patty, which was also fitting since she was born on St. Patricks Day.

Darwitz said Heisis’ hunger extends to healing the people around him. It makes sense because the growth of Heises’ favorite player was forward Julie Chuwho never led the United States in scoring but was a national team captain and Olympic champion.

A year after being cut from the Olympic team, Heise made a personal pact to make himself indispensable. He was chosen as the new coachJohn Wroblewskis list for the summer 2022 World Cup.

After a positive COVID test, Heise only arrived in Denmark the day before the opening game. Wroblewski liked Heise so much that he still put him on the second line with the veterans Alex CarpenterandAmanda Kessel. She collected five assists, setting a women’s world record. This was not only Heises’ World Cup debut, but his first senior national team game.

He finished leading the tournament in goals (seven) and assists (11). She became the first player in US women’s hockey history to lead an Olympic or World team in goals or points in their major championship debut since the first Worlds in 1990. He was named MVP of the tournament even though the USA lost to Canada in the final.

I worked, Heise said on Friday, reflecting on the breakthrough performance.

Heises’ bedroom wall may be painted, but now he has his goals written and hidden in a drawer. He is willing to share them. They include one he can prove this weekend when he wins the world championship, and another he’ll look to fulfill in three Olympic years.

“People say they’re going to do something, but if I write it down, I’m going to do it,” he said. I understand [making an Olympic team] it’s not all about me. I understand that people choose the team, but I think when I wrote it, I had to train as hard as I could to make it clear that I was the one for the job.

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