Olson earned Lester Patrick Trophy with dedication to women's hockey

All Lynn Olson wanted was for her two young daughters to know the joys of playing organized hockey, the sport she first fell in love with when she began playing in 1979.

"As they got a little older, I went out to look for someplace for them to play," Olson said. "But there was nothing organized."
Olson's search became a crusade that made her a pioneer who helped girls and women's hockey grow in her home state of Minnesota, established one of the most successful women's hockey programs in the NCAA and brought the women's game to the Winter Olympics.
"My spirit just wanted to see that we women and girls were allowed to participate in this terrific sport of ice hockey, no holds barred," she said.
The fierce but soft-spoken trailblazer is the recipient of the 2020 Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding service to hockey in the United States and will be honored at the 2021 U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Denver on Thursday with Stan Fischler, Paul Holmgren and Peter McNab. The Class of 2020 (Dean Blais, Tony Granato, Jenny Potter and Jerry York) will also be inducted, one year after their ceremony was postponed by the coronavirus pandemic. Jack Barzee, the 2021 Lester Patrick Trophy winner, will also be honored.
Olson said she's flabbergasted about receiving the trophy, which was presented to the NHL by the New York Rangers in 1966 to honor Patrick, who spent 50 years in hockey as a player, coach and general manager, and was a pioneer in the sport's development.
"I was very surprised but feel very honored that they awarded this to me," she said.
The honor comes as no surprise to those who know the 70-year-old native of Richfield, Minnesota.
"Lynn saw what the future could look like when others didn't and made sure it happened," said Mike Snee, a Minnesota resident and executive director of College Hockey Inc. "What we take as normal today -- walking into an arena and seeing tons of girls playing hockey, walking in the concourse of a college game or a (Minnesota) Wild game or anywhere else and seeing tons of girls in hockey jackets and hanging with their teammate -- Lynn saw it years before it happened."
Olson helped organize the Minnesota Women's Hockey League (now called the WHAM) and was elected president in 1984. She brought the organization together with the Minnesota Amateur Hockey Association in 1986 and was the league's women's director until 2007.
Her advocacy helped prompt the Minnesota State High School League to sanction girls ice hockey as a varsity sport in 1994, making it the first state high school association in the United States to do so. Minnesota now boasts 116 high school programs and is a major source for NCAA women's players with Xcel Energy Center, home of the Wild, annually hosting a two-class state tournament.

"I was very happy to see they were finally giving a chance to the girls to participate just as the boys had been doing for years," Olson said. "Part of that, in my philosophy, was there's a lot of skills and things that the boys get in participating on a team. They learn to be leaders, they learn to work as a team, they learn to win and lose gracefully. Those assisted the girls in their life skills growing up. That was a big bonus for all the girls to start learning those things that would help them in a career, help them in college."
Though the explosion of girl's hockey is a source of pride in Minnesota today, it faced some resistance and complaints, from men and women, that it would come at the expense of boys' hockey, Olson said.
"It wasn't easy in any respect, believe me," she said. "There were many moms who came up to me and said, 'Why are you taking ice away from my son?'"
To stem that argument, Olson helped lead the drive for the Minnesota legislature to pass the so-called "Mighty Ducks" bill in 1994, which appropriated funds for localities to build new arenas, update existing facilities and add extra ice sheets.

Through the legislation, the state invested more than $20 million and awarded 82 grants for new arenas that produced 64 new ice sheets and 97 grants that improved existing arenas, according to the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission.
"The girls starting out created a lot of new facilities for all the boys and girls to participate," Olson said. "It was a win-win situation for everybody."
As the girls' game grew, so did Olson's volunteer portfolio. She helped found the USA Hockey Girls/Women's Section, served two terms (1989-95) as its first director, and helped establish a national development camp program.
Back home, Olson was named to the University of Minnesota's Women's Task Force and Coach Selection Committee that established the varsity hockey program in 1995. The program has won seven national championships, six in NCAA Division I (2004, 2005, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016) and one in the American Women's College Hockey Alliance (2000).
"I was working, in addition to doing all this," Olson said. "I had to worry about day care for my kids when I was doing things. The only time I ever got paid was when I became a high school hockey coach at the Academy of Holy Angels for three years. But my daughters were skating and so was I, and most of those checks went to skates and sticks and everything else we needed."

Internationally, Olson was general manager for USA Hockey's women's national team from 1990-94. Her teams finished second at the IIHF Women's World Championship in 1990, 1992 and 1994.
She remembered one European trip where some male general managers greeted one of her male colleagues on the United States staff as if he oversaw the team.
"They looked at me like I was a freak," Olson said. "That was a rude awakening for me. I never had that much resistance. It was tough to get things going but they all came around to it, eventually."
Olson became part of a group that successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee to include women's hockey in the Winter Games. The addition was approved in July 1992 and women's hockey made its debut at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, where the United States won gold by defeating Canada 3-1.
Jennifer Flowers, vice president and women's league commissioner for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, said Olson's accomplishments in hockey are second to none.
"She just did what she thought was the right thing to do, and at that time, nobody else was doing that," Flowers said. "It's paid off tenfold for girls and women in hockey, specifically in Minnesota, but it's not just Minnesota now.
"There was a path to showing how it worked and now that has spread across the country. And it's all because of Lynn."