Birmingham’s Madison Packer blazes trail the long, hard way
The only girl on the boys’ hockey team was feeling a little left out.
Birmingham’s Madison Packer, a trailblazer who helped pave the way for women to be considered equals on and off the ice, was sitting at the front of the bus, while the boys played cards and hung out in the back.
It was 2004, Packer was 13 years old and she was coming home from a tournament in Boston with the Honeybaked bantam minor team.
“It was a particularly tough weekend,” her father, Greg Packer, said. “My wife (Laura) was on the bus for support and she said Madison really got beat up on the ice and her teammates didn’t really defend her. They accepted her but were never really friends with her.
“Laura asked her if she felt like quitting and playing on a girls team and Madison said, ‘Mom, I’m not here to make friends.’”
It’s that defiant spirit and determination, born and bred in Michigan hockey rinks, that led Packer, 32, to become a key figure in the success of the inaugural Professional Women’s Hockey League, which pays a livable wage for female hockey players for the first time.
Detroit will host a PWHL game at Little Caesars Arena, when Boston faces Ottawa on March 16.
“(Madison’s) story is an incredible story, in a lot of ways,” PWHL commissioner Reagan Carey said. “Women of that generation played predominantly a male sport, and that’s why you see such passion about changing the landscape. We have an allegiance to each other and really understand what that experience can be like.”
Most of Packer’s early hockey experiences were positive, from the time she began skating at age 5 at her grandparents’ home on Wolverine Lake in Oakland County, right up until her brushes of fame with Detroit Red Wings Hall of Famers Gordie Howe, Steve Yzerman and Chris Chelios.
Her first goal was at Joe Louis Arena during an in-between periods game of the Red Wings in 1996.
She picked up octopi thrown on the JLA ice during playoff games, along with Zamboni driver Al Sobotka.
She was a four-time state champion with the Little Caesars girls teams from 2007-10.
She was a two-time gold medalist with USA Hockey’s under-18 women’s teams at world championships in 2008-09.
She was an NCAA champion with the Wisconsin Badgers in 2011.
As for her Red Wings’ connections, she was a banner carrier on the ice and Howe’s personal dinner guest at
the team’s 75th-anniversary celebration at JLA in 2001.
“She didn’t really know who he (Howe) was, but she thought some of his friends (Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio) played hockey too,” Greg Packer said. “He insisted she call him Gordie, not Mr. Howe.”
Packer’s sister, Daryn, played hockey with Yzerman’s oldest daughter, Isabella. “Fans would come out to Troy to see Yzerman and NHLers like Craig Wolanin,” Packer said. “One time, after he (Yzerman) gave a pregame talk in the dressing room, he asked my wife if the coast was clear, and he left through the back door.”
Greg Packer also said Madison asked “Mr. Chelios” how long it took to rehab his knee injury. Chelios said 11 weeks. Madison said she would return from her knee injury in 10 weeks.
“Chris said he got paid millions of dollars a year to get back on the ice in 11 weeks,” Packer said. “He said she had her whole life ahead of her.” (Madison’s injury was supposed to keep her off the ice for 30 weeks. She returned in 16 weeks).
Facing off
Packer doesn’t like to dwell on the negative experiences of being the only girl on a boys team up until age 14.
For example, she didn’t tell her parents until years later about a boy who urinated on her hockey equipment bag. “Her brothers (Spencer and Bennett) would’ve taken care of that real quick,” Greg Packer said.
Another time, he said he received a phone call from his wife and he could hear Madison “sobbing” in the background.
“What happened?” Greg said.
“Some guy grabbed her and punched her in the nose,” Laura said.
“Put Madison on the phone,” he said. “Can you take him? She said, ‘Yeah.’ So she grabbed the guy back, pushed him in the corner, did what she had to do and walked out of the dressing room in her hockey gear.
“Laura got back on the phone and said, ‘What did you tell her?’ You can’t do that. She’s a girl.’”
Rochester Hills native Earl Size was one of the first coaches who stood up to parents who didn’t want the distraction of Madison playing on their son’s team. Size coached the Squirt AA (10-11 years old) Detroit Sting in 2001.
“I didn’t care if you were a girl or from Mars,” Size said. “If you could play hockey, you got a spot on my team. She (Madison) was the toughest kid, no question about it. I always told her, if any of the guys give you any problems, I’m behind you 100 percent.”
Size said Madison was tested at a tournament in Toronto when his “ragtag” team of American players faced a high-powered Canadian team.
“Madison came back to the bench and said, ‘They’re calling me all kinds of nasty names,’ and ‘I won’t repeat what they said,’” Size said. “I called the ref over and said, ‘Listen, if you don’t want that girl to kick the (expletive) of every kid, you better calm this thing down now. And he did.”
Coach Larry Elkins, of Bloomfield Hills, said he faced similar opposition when he picked Madison to make his Mite AA (8-9 years old) Southfield Warriors team in 1999.
“A lot of parents thought their kids were going to make the NHL back then,” Elkins said. “They questioned my decision to take her when we had our tryouts. I’m glad I picked Madison because she turned out to be one of my best players, eager to learn, and did whatever you asked of her.”
Madison Packer said parents could be “brutal” and the best coaches were “willing to take a stand” and “hold the locker room accountable”.”My story is unfortunately not that different from a lot of my female counterparts,” Packer said. “You just had to be willing to put up with all the crap in order to have a place to play. I struggled as a kid to understand why I wasn’t allowed to play, when I was just as good and they said I wasn’t. It was more people being threatened by a girl being better. I used it as fuel, to prove the boys wrong.”
Packer’s problems playing boys hockey paled in comparison to two life-altering experiences in 2009 and 2014, which she says sharpened her resolve to deal with mental-health issues and ultimately played a role in becoming an advocate for the rights of marginalized people, especially in the LGBTQ+ communities.
When she was attending Marian High School in Bloomfield Hills in 2009, her friend and hockey teammate, Kelly Scheuer, died, which led to Packer joining “Common Ground,” a suicide-prevention awareness center.
Then in 2014, just days before graduating after a successful collegiate career at Wisconsin with 104 points in 146 games and the third-most penalty minutes (217) in school history, Packer stood on a chair on the balcony of her 15th-floor apartment and thought about ending her life.
“You can’t always control what happens in life, but you can control how you respond,” Packer said. “I didn’t understand how common it was to not feel okay. Every day, people walk around feeling off. After Kelly died, I got involved with organizations to help bring awareness to suicide prevention. I had no idea what support looks like, what resources look like, how communities need community centers that provide those things.
“I just didn’t understand how I was feeling because no one was talking about it. That’s why I shared my story, because it’s so common, especially in sports. As long as I continue to play, I’ll use that platform. I just wish I would’ve known there was someone out there to help me and I didn’t need to suffer in silence.”
Impacting change
After graduating from Wisconsin, Packer played eight years with the New York Riveters and Metropolitan Riveters in the National Women’s Hockey League, which then became the Premier Hockey Federation. She ranks second all-time in NWHL/PHF points with 65 goals and 129 points in 131 games.
In her second pro season, Packer met her future wife, but just didn’t realize it at the time. As Anya (Battaglino) Packer tells it, she was the executive director of the league’s players association when she received a call from Madison, who had worker’s compensation issues after returning from hip surgery.
“I love her now but, at the time, I thought, ‘This girl is obnoxious,’” said Anya Packer, a walk-on Boston University hockey player who lost, 4-1, to Packer’s Wisconsin team in the 2011 NCAA final in Erie, Pa.
“She had sued the league for insurance and was berating me to know what’s what, that her dad ran a payroll company. I told her I was happy to help and asked if she wanted to grab a drink and talk about it. She said, ‘No.’ I thought, ‘OK, what the heck?’ Eventually, she was coaching a team at a tournament in Boston and I said, ‘Me too.’ I asked if she wanted to grab that beer after the game. We talked all night and got along like wildfire.”
The Packers were engaged in Boston in 2018, married in Newport, Rhode Island in 2019, and have two children (Waylon and Harlan) living in Stamford, Conn. At one point in 2021, Anya was technically Madison’s boss, when she was the Riveters’ general manager for one season.
“When I became GM, she fought for the little guy on every call,” Anya said. “It was never to benefit her or those at the top. It was always disproportionate for mental health resources, more sponsors, nutritionists, helping players on minimum wage. She fought for them all. My wife is in constant pursuit of excellence and she expects the same out of everyone around her.”
According to the PWHL’s collective bargaining agreement, the minimum player salary is $35,000, the average roster salary is at least $55,000 with no fewer than six players making less than $80,000 and some star players earn more than $100,000.
There’s also a $1,500 per month housing stipend, meal per diems of $81 per day for a traveling team, relocation reimbursements of up to $2,500 for newly acquired players, and the four playoff teams will receive financial bonuses, including a $63,250 team bonus for the playoff champion.
“I really respect Madison’s selfless leadership as a captain, a teammate and an ambassador of the sport,” said Carey, who has also been USA Hockey’s director of women’s hockey since 2010. “I’ve often referred to her as paving the way for authenticity in the sport. She’s stayed committed to the game and championed things that are important to her. She knows this is a vehicle where she can help others and she does it extremely well.”
Packer’s New York team is in fourth place in the six-team league after 11 games in the 24-game season. They split home games between the New York Islanders’ UBS Arena on Long Island, N.Y., and the Islanders’ AHL affiliate rink Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport, Conn.
After missing most of training camp and the opener with a separated shoulder, the 5-foot-9 forward is skating on the fourth line and just broke an eight-game scoreless drought with her only assist of the season, in a 2-1 win against Boston on Feb. 17. She’s the second-oldest player on the team heading into Friday’s game in Toronto and scored her first goal at JLA before New York teammate Savannah
Norcross was born in 2000.
“I had always heard of Madison Packer but never met her,” said 26-year-old Regan Rust, an ex-Riveter teammate who lived with the Packers at times last year. “My first impression was she was pretty cold, super hard-working and kind of scary, intimidating. I remember my first practice against her. I accidentally hit her into the boards and she went down and I remember the death stare. I said, ‘Oh, it’s over.’ We were fine. It was just hockey.”
Off the ice, Packer will be honored by the NHL Foundation’s “U.S. Empowerment Grant Program for Girls Hockey,” which will be officially unveiled on March 6 in Washington.
A focal point of the program, which aims to elevate hockey participation among girls from underrepresented communities, will be a “Girls Power Play Tournament”, inspired by Packer’s contributions to girls hockey. The goal is to raise $200,000 to support the new grant program and make the sport more accessible and inclusive.
“Nothing worth doing is done easily,” Packer said. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right? It wasn’t until I met my wife when I became more comfortable talking about things that I kept inside, things that had a stigma associated with them, broadly. Using your voice and platform in sports, that’s way more important than anything I do on the ice, and the impact I can have on people, and organizations off the ice.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time but this is the first time we have all the best players in the world playing together and on television nearly every night and playing in front of 8,000 people. I’m 32 and living my dream. I would like to play as long as I can, but I realize my job is to build it. Once we have, others can fill the role and maybe I’ll get involved behind the scenes or something like that. We’ll take it one step at a time.”