Never backing down: How Montreal Victoire forward Kristin O'Neill found her confidence
'Fearless' centre plays a key role on both sides of the puck for Montreal
As the clock ticked down on a tie game on home ice at Verdun Auditorium, Montreal Victoire forward Kristin O'Neill fired a puck through traffic just beyond the slot.
With less than 50 seconds left in the game, the puck beat Minnesota goaltender Maddie Rooney, and gave Montreal a one-goal lead that would be enough to secure the win.
It was O'Neill's first game back in the PWHL after a breakout world championship, where Canada's go-to fourth-line centre was named one of Canada's top players.
Before that night, the seventh-overall draft pick had registered only one goal in a Montreal sweater. Her confidence was low.
"I thought about it every game," O'Neill said in an interview with CBC Sports.
But her confidence from worlds, along with her gold medal, travelled back with her to Montreal. On that night, when O'Neill scored two power-play goals, it felt like something clicked.
"When you play with the heart and details, day in and day out, it's a matter of time," O'Neill's captain, Marie-Philip Poulin, said about her teammate that night.
The Victoire has a star-studded lineup, led by the superstar captain, Poulin, and players like Laura Stacey, Erin Ambrose and Ann-Renée Desbiens. It's easy for O'Neill to fly under the radar.
But she's one of the Victoire's most important players. Not only can she score goals and win faceoffs, but she's willing to do the less-glamourous jobs on the ice, like killing penalties and chasing down pucks.
When CBC Sports surveyed a number of players about who they were least looking forward to playing against heading into the first season, O'Neill's name came up a lot. Toronto defender Renata Fast pointed to her never-give-up attitude on the forecheck.
It's a role she's carved out through hard work, knowing her size — O'Neill stands five-foot-four — wasn't going to do her any favours.
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"You always cheer for someone like Kristin O'Neill, who works so hard at her game, has worked so hard her entire life to get to where she is right now," said Doug Derraugh, who's coached O'Neill at Cornell University and with Team Canada.
You can watch the Montreal Victoire visit the Toronto Sceptres on Dec. 21 at 2 p.m. ET on CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBCSports.ca.
'She never backs down from a challenge'
Off the ice, the 26-year-old is a key part of a Montreal team going into this season with championship aspirations, after a first-round sweep at the hands of the Boston Fleet. O'Neill scored two of Montreal's four playoff goals in the loss.
She's so steady and such a staple on the team that Ambrose feels she can sometimes take her friend for granted.
"She's somebody that at any point you call or you text and she's answering the phone in a heartbeat," Ambrose said.
Born in Oakville, outside Toronto, O'Neill is the youngest of four girls who all played hockey.
Weekends were spent at the rink, from first thing in the morning until it was dark outside. When O'Neill wasn't playing, she was watching her older sisters play. She credits all three for being supportive of her hockey career.
O'Neill might have been 14 or 15 the first time Derraugh saw her play. She was small, but her explosiveness and compete stood out. She wasn't afraid to go to the tough areas.
"Even though she would get knocked down a lot, she was always getting right back up and right back at it," Derraugh said.
Her college coach thinks that tenacity was ingrained in her young, having to fight for every inch of the ice due to her size.
Some smaller players build their game around speed. O'Neill has that in spades. But she's also built it on relentlessness. If you can't be bigger, you can always work harder.
"I've kind of always been fearless," she said.
When she came to Cornell, Derraugh was impressed with her fitness. O'Neill was also a middle-distance runner, and her conditioning helped her keep going when others would start to fade.
"She never tires and she never backs down from a challenge," Derraugh said.
Finding positives
In her senior year of university, O'Neill co-captained a top-ranked Cornell team that looked like it could compete for an NCAA championship. Those dreams disappeared when the NCAA championship was cancelled in March 2020 due to the pandemic.
Graduating into an uncertain time for women's professional hockey, O'Neill spent time training at Montreal's Centre 21.02 alongside players like Poulin, and getting to know a city that would become home in 2023, when she was drafted to Montreal.
She also found herself in Beijing for the 2022 Olympics, but not part of the Canadian roster that won a gold medal. She didn't make the team but was called to be part of the taxi squad. The four reserves isolated from the rest of the players and had to be ready to jump in if a member of the team caught COVID.
"You learn a lot about yourself," O'Neill said about failing to make the 2022 roster. "You learn a lot about your resilience and your comeback as a player and as a person."
An eye on 2026
In those moments, O'Neill has leaned on Ambrose, who dealt with her own disappointment after being cut from the 2018 Olympic team, for friendship and advice on building confidence. That's carried into Montreal, too.
In the Victoire's first game of last season, veteran forward Ann-Sophie Bettez scored the overtime game-winning goal on Ottawa's home ice.
But it was O'Neill who won the puck battle along the boards that set the stage for the Bettez goal.
"There was a lot of talk last year about the beginning of the year and not kind of producing offensively, but I think what went unnoticed is what she did on the other side of the puck, and what she stopped other teams from doing," said Ambrose, who describes O'Neill as one of the best penalty killers in the world.
When Poulin went down with an injury in March, O'Neill took on an elevated role as the next centre on the depth chart.
That continued when O'Neill returned from worlds and Poulin was healthy. She spent time on the top power-play unit, and alongside Poulin and Stacey at five-on-five play.
The season didn't end the way O'Neill and the rest of the Victoire hoped. She spent the off-season training in Montreal, focusing on getting stronger and more balanced on her feet to give her more stability in the corners.
When it comes to Team Canada, O'Neill feels like she's learned a lot about herself since the disappointment of 2022. Back then, she was afraid of making mistakes.
That's a normal feeling in the high-stakes world of competing against the best. No one wants to mess up. But this time around, she's trying to put less pressure on herself.
"Dwelling on a simple mistake, it's definitely not the stuff you're going to remember at the end of the day," O'Neill said.
"Confidence, just having fun, being surrounded by people you really like [who] push you and help you grow everyday are the things that are going to get me to the next level. Those are the things that are going to help me try to make the Olympic team."
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