It was the kind of play that made him rewind the tape.
In a women’s college hockey game against rival Minnesota State in January, University of Minnesota captain Abbey Murphy collected the puck at the red line and skated it into the opposing team’s zone.
In an awkward fashion, he flipped his stick up, flicked it between the legs of a Minnesota State defender, then spun around the sophomore linebacker. He got a goal from his teammate, Bella Fanale, who scored.
It didn’t take long for the game to go viral.
“I think one of my favorite things is how many eyes I’ve gotten on women’s hockey,” Murphy said in an interview with CBC Sports.
WATCH | Murphy’s highlights help:
That’s the kind of game-breaking ability and vision that Murphy is ready to bring to the PWHL. He is expected to be the first of three picks in the PWHL draft in Detroit on Wednesday.
Any team that selects him will be getting a player to drive the top line. He’s already shown his offensive prowess at the highest level: The 24-year-old had seven points in seven games in his second Olympic appearance this past February, while bringing home the gold medal with Team USA.
But his game has layers. Not only does he make you pay on the power play, he can force you to take a penalty that gives his team a chance.
In the first round win over the Canadians at the Olympics, Murphy drew four penalties. He finished the game with three assists.
Before that tournament, American captain Hilary Knight described Murphy as a “cheat code.”
“His game just took a lot of steps,” Knight said in a January interview with CBC Sports. “I’m afraid of the professional league. He’s got a short fire in him and he can get under people’s skin, but he can keep up with his level of play and he can continue to pick up the pace.”
In other words, any team that selects Murphy at the top of the draft will be happy to have him. The other 11 teams? They will fear playing against him.
“I’m a person who, yes, likes to get into fights a lot, but I also like to play my own game and score a lot of goals,” said Murphy. “So we’ll see how it goes.”
Built-in resilience
You can trace that growth back to Murphy’s growing up in Evergreen Park, a Chicago suburb surrounded by the working-class South Side.
“We’re all very close,” Murphy said. “Everybody knows everybody. You’re walking around and you’re always being waved at or called.”
Hockey wasn’t part of Murphy’s family until he started playing, but the intensity runs deep. Her father, Ed, was a US Marine, and her mother, Lynne, was a college softball star.
The youngest of three, Murphy’s two older brothers, Pat and Dom, fought each other and played football.
They didn’t go easy on her little sister, something Murphy was thankful for.
“Growing up, it was tough love,” she said. “You had to take care of yourself and grow up fast and mature. I spent all my childhood getting beat up by my two older brothers, Pat and Dom, and I owe them a lot to this day. It made me tough, like it brought me that spice that I brought into hockey every day I played.”
Hockey took him to the University of Minnesota, where Murphy credits former head coach, Brad Frost, with helping him find the right balance between those “adventure” on the ice and the kind of skillful play he can produce.
Murphy is often one of the smallest players on the ice, at five-foot-five, but he’s never far from physical.
In 2023-24, he totaled 118 penalty minutes in 39 games with the Gophers.
But she also finished as the program’s career scoring leader (143 goals), surpassing the likes of Nadine Muzerall, Hannah Brandt, Grace Zumwinkle and Amanda Kessel.
You can credit Murphy’s off-the-charts hockey IQ, one developed by watching a lot of hockey. He’ll always prefer watching a hockey game over Netflix, and he always wants to pick up tips when he’s watching.
“The more I watched hockey, the more I learned,” Murphy said. “There’s a lot of things I’ve learned recently in men’s hockey — men’s college hockey, men’s NHL — and that’s something I like to do. Try to just be different and creative and try new things is something I’ve worked on here the last few years.”
Skill and grit
You can call him an Agitator, and that would be true. He upset Team Canada in last year’s Rivalry Series and last year’s Olympics.
After Canada’s 5-0 loss to the US in the Olympics, Canadian coach Troy Ryan described him as “a great performer.”
“He’s an instigator, an instigator, his type of mouse is what he does best,” he said at the time. “There are very few people who can play that role but also back it up with skill and a dynamic side. It’s very difficult to manage.”
His performance has drawn criticism as well. On the broadcast of that game, Canadian captain Cassie Campbell-Pascall called out Murphy for a foul, describing it as “brutal.”
But the agitator doesn’t describe Murphy’s full skill set, which earned her a top-three selection for the Patty Kazmaier Award as the best player in women’s college hockey this past season.
If you ask Frost, there’s really no one like Murphy in women’s hockey.
“A lot of times, you think about ‘attackers,’ they usually don’t have the ability of someone like Abbey, who can play all aspects of the game and put it in the back of the net or set someone up to dunk,” he told CBC Sports earlier this year. “And all of a sudden, it just happened [opponents] he’s very angry because he’s got the perfect game.”
It’s also a role Murphy has embraced.
And unlike many players coming from the NCAA, Murphy seems ready to handle the extra physicality that exists in the PWHL.
“I’m excited about it,” Murphy said of playing physically in the pro league. “Obviously I’m a small player, so I have to defend myself in many ways. I’m not always going to be someone who throws the body in the corner. Sometimes I try to avoid it here and there to protect myself.”
Wherever he ends up on Wednesday, Murphy is looking forward to being part of a new team.
And he hopes more people will get to know the “real Abbey Murphy” beyond his reputation on the ice.
That doesn’t bother him. He grew up in a family that taught him to be strong, and to face the challenges of the past. But he knows how other people look at him.
“I’m seen as a bad guy, a bad guy,” Murphy said. “That is what I would like to tell the world that I have a big heart. If I am in a team with 20 other players, I will love them and I will do whatever I can for them and their success.”
