Aerin Frankel

Aerin Frankel grew up in Chappaqua, New York, and arrived at Northeastern University in 2017 as a freshman who led all NCAA rookies in save percentage with a .934 mark. By the time she left four seasons later, she had become the most decorated player in women's college hockey. Frankel won the Patty Kazmaier Award in 2021 — the sport's top individual honor — was a top-10 finalist in 2020, and became the inaugural winner of the WHCA National Goalie of the Year award that same year, then won it again in 2022. As a sophomore, she recorded a shutout over Boston University, the first goaltender to accomplish that feat since Florence Schelling in 2011. She led Northeastern to the 2021 NCAA championship game.

On the international stage, Frankel has earned five IIHF Women's World Championship medals for the United States — gold in 2023 and 2025, silver in 2021, 2022, and 2024. During the 2023 tournament, she served as the primary goalie and recorded a shutout over Germany to send the U.S. to the semifinals, and she became the first American women's goaltender to start five consecutive games at the national-team level in 26 years.

In the PWHL's inaugural season, Frankel backstopped the Boston Fleet to the Walter Cup Finals. She was a top-three finalist for PWHL Goaltender of the Year in both 2024 and 2025. The 2025–26 season brought her deepest collection of honors yet: seven shutouts in 22 regular-season starts set a PWHL record, including three consecutive shutouts for another PWHL record. She also added three shutouts in five games at the Milano-Cortina Olympics, where she and Gwyneth Philips helped the United States win gold. The Boston Fleet's coaching staff, specifically what it meant to work with Frankel day to day, was explored by InGoal in a podcast with Fleet goaltending coach Lenny Mosca ^[1].

Frankel appeared on Episode 346 of the InGoal Radio Podcast, recorded after her return from the Olympic Games ^[2]. In that conversation — analyzed in depth by Colin Hodd for InGoal subscribers ^[3] — she described her approach to managing the pressures that come with heightened attention: "I think for me, just being able to stay present and focus on what I can control, which is only myself and my preparation and not everything that's going on." She also pointed to skating as the foundation of her work in the crease: "I rely a lot on my skating. It's really important for me to be a good skater... you can never be good enough of a skater." Hodd's piece — available to InGoal members — examines how that focus on fundamentals connects to her 2025–26 season ^[3].

Off the ice, Frankel started a goalie camp in Boston in 2022 with a specific purpose in mind. "I never had a female goalie coach growing up that I could look up to," she told PEOPLE. The camp runs three days on the ice with roughly 40 goalies, is open to boys as well, and has more than doubled in attendance since its first year. Her assessment of the project: "It's honestly one of the things I just take a lot of pride in." InGoal covered the camp and its origins as part of its broader PWHL reporting ^[4].

Frankel and her Boston Fleet teammates were among the goalies named to represent the United States at the Women's World Championship in Denmark, as reported in InGoal's daily goalie news ^[5], and her national-team selections have been a consistent thread through InGoal's international coverage ^[6].

InGoal Magazine has covered Aerin Frankel in two podcast appearances and four InGoal articles.