On Wednesday night, the 21-year-old junior goalie of Minnesota Duluth finished practice and scarfed down some dinner. Before hunkering down over her homework, however, Maddie Rooney made a point to return a call. She found time to share her story and comment about joining the most elite society of American hockey players — the Olympic gold goaltending club.

Last February, during her hockey “sabbatical,” Rooney started for Team USA in the gold-medal game, shutting down four-time defending Olympic Champion Canada for 65 minutes and an excruciating shootout, carrying the Americans to their first Olympic Gold in two decades. She now joins Jack McCartan (1960), Jim Craig (1980), and Sarah Tueting (1998) as the goalies of record for USA’s four Olympic gold medals. 

“It’s a huge honor to a part of,” Rooney said after practice Wednesday night. “Us goalies got to stick together.” 

Although they have never officially met, Rooney and her predecessor Sarah Tueting have a budding relationship. Prompted by USA Hockey, Sarah wrote Maddie and her fellow goaltenders a letter on the eve of the Pyeongchang Games, preparing her for the intense five-ring journey. 

“It won’t matter whether the rink is in Florida or Korea or on the moon, except you might look down at one point and realize you are skating on Olympic rings painted beneath the ice,” Tueting wrote. “A thought may make it through the focus: This is the Olympics, for real, here and now.” 

“To hear personal advice from the goalies just meant a lot to us and definitely gave us some confidence,” Rooney said. 

Rooney peaks through her blue-liners to watch the puck

Tueting, a sports outsider since retiring from the game two decades ago, had a special feeling about Rooney and the 2018 version of Team USA. 

“I said in October, even when they were struggling on the tour, ‘They’re going to win, I know they’re going to win.’ I just felt differently about them, my gut.” 

Tueting’s intuition was prescient, and in February she found herself immersed in a pre-dawn texting storm, as one golden team became reborn with the birth of another.

“I woke up in the middle of the night, and I had literally 238 texts,” Tueting said. “I’m reading the texts, and of course I watch the whole game. It felt really nice to have everybody interacting, excited again. Watching them play felt like we were a team again.” 

The two teams, 1998 and 2018, were symbiotic: The river of inspiration ran both directions. 

“That 1998 Olympic team was our role model going into the Olympics,” Rooney said. “I heard they had a group text going during our game, that’s funny to hear.” 

That “game” was the gold-medal game, a historic first for women’s hockey, because it was the first gold medal settled by a shootout. Although USA’s Jocelyne Lamoureux became an international celebrity with her acrobatic shootout-winning goal, it was Rooney who stoned Canada’s premier snipers both before and after Lamoureux’ magic. While Rooney celebrated under a massive team dogpile, the rest of USA’s golden goalie club finally exhaled from the other side of the world.

“I watched it,” said 83-year old McCartan from Minneapolis, the man most responsible for Team USA’s original Miracle back in 1960. “I just kept saying, ‘You’ve got another one to stop, another one to stop.’ She kept stopping them — it was great! You kind of put yourself in her place because you’ve been there. It was amazing how cool and collected she was playing. I admired that a lot.”

Jim Craig, the legend from 1980, doesn’t like to lump similar accomplishments into one bucket, but he, too, was awed by Rooney’s brilliance on the sport’s loftiest stage. 

“I’m sure what our team did was unbelievable,” he said. “Maddie’s was different. I find them all different, but very special and unique in their own right.” 

Craig’s daughter played college hockey at Colgate, and he is quick to credit the gold-medal pioneers from 1998 for inspiration.

Rooney hopes to guide Minnesota Duluth to new heights this year

McCartan, Craig, Tueting, and Rooney — a group that sounds like a law firm, four defenders who carried their respective USA teams to Olympic glory. The Golden Goalies is a newly formed club, and its members are just getting to know each other. Craig pinged Rooney via social media after witnessing her heroics, and his post was well received. 

“Jim Craig actually reached out to me on Twitter, so that was really cool,” said Rooney. 

Even though McCartan is from Rooney’s home state of Minnesota, the two goalies have never met. He is her elder by 63 years, yet McCartan feels a great affinity for Rooney. 

“I’ve seen her on TV, making the rounds on all the shows afterwards,” McCartan said. “She seems like a very modest young lady; it’s not easy to do when you’re in a position like that. Being from Minnesota, I like that.”

“She could be my daughter,” said Tueting, who is reluctant to gush over any athlete, even a fellow goalie. “I really lean away from saying ‘proud,’ it’s so pedantic. But I can’t help it, of course, (because) I’m proud — it’s very cool.”

Rooney has returned to Duluth as a student-athlete, something none of her other club members did. She is now immersed in the weighty balance of books and pucks. Building relationships with fellow USA Olympic golden goalies is not practical; she has her hands full competing in the WCHA, widely known as the world’s greatest hockey league for women. 

“I definitely want to step in a big leadership role this year,” Rooney said. “Our season starts off pretty big with Minnesota and Wisconsin—those rivalries are huge.” 

Both McCartan and Tueting hope to see Rooney play the Minnesota Gophers this season and get a chance to meet the latest member of their elite clan. 

Part of Rooney and her teammates’ mission in 2018 was to “inspire future generations of women’s hockey,” and they certainly accomplished that. Rooney’s heroics, however, actually reached back in time as well. She touched the USA goaltending legends of yesteryear, cementing their common Olympic dream through four generations.

Tim Rappleye is the author of "Jack Parker's Wiseguys" and the forthcoming book: "Hobey Baker, Upon Further Review," set for release in November. He can be reached @TeeRaps.