Ann-Renée Desbiens

Ann-Renée Desbiens grew up in Clermont, Québec, and went on to build one of the most statistically decorated careers in NCAA goaltending history. During four seasons at the University of Wisconsin, she accumulated 99 wins and 56 career shutouts — an NCAA record for any goaltender, men's or women's. Her senior season alone, 2016–17, produced 17 shutouts, 29 wins, a 0.71 goals-against average, and a .963 save percentage, earning her the Patty Kazmaier Award as the country's top women's college player. The season before, in 2015–16, she had set the NCAA single-season shutout record with 21.

At the international level, Desbiens has appeared in two Winter Olympics — 2018 and 2022 — collecting one gold medal and one silver. At the 2022 Beijing Games, she made five starts, including the gold medal game against the United States, where she stopped 38 of 40 shots. Earlier in that tournament, she set a Canadian Olympic record — men's or women's — with 51 saves in a single game. She has also appeared in five World Championships, amassing three gold medals and two silver medals across that competition.

Between the end of her time at Wisconsin and the launch of the PWHL, Desbiens played in the PWHPA, winning the Secret Cup in both 2021 and 2023. She now plays for the Montréal Victoire, wearing number 35, and has established several PWHL records, including 41 career wins. In the 2024–25 regular season, she posted a .955 save percentage and a 1.11 goals-against average — both PWHL records — while tying a league record with 19 wins and adding seven shutouts.

In the 2025 PWHL playoffs, Desbiens backstopped Montréal through a semifinal series against the two-time defending champion Minnesota Freeze, finishing with a .940 save percentage in the series after dropping the opener 5–4 in overtime. The Victoire's three wins came by scores of 1–0, 2–1, and 2–1, advancing the team to the Walter Cup Finals.

InGoal Magazine has covered Desbiens across both her approach to in-game focus and her development as a practice goalie. In a 2022 piece ^[1], she described how she used to struggle with goalie-unfriendly drills like 3-on-0s and 5-on-0s — openly acknowledging that her coaches would not have called her the best practice goalie when she was younger. Her solution was to identify specific technical or tactical focal points within those drills, such as depth management or save selection, rather than measuring success solely by whether the puck went in. She also credited communication with teammates as part of that shift, working with them to keep drills as game-realistic as possible.

Ahead of the 2025 playoffs, Desbiens shared a related philosophy about not trying to do more when games carry more weight ^[2]. "I feel like now I can just be the average me every game," she told InGoal, noting that she had spoken with her coach about the idea that a well-prepared team doesn't need anyone to play their best game — average is enough. She linked that mindset to preparation: "When I was younger, a lot of the pressure came from the fact I was not ready, that I could have prepared differently, I could have trained more, I could have done this and that differently. I find personally now that it's like I've done the work, I just get to go out there and play and have fun."

She also described the specific mechanical risk of over-trying in big moments ^[2]: "You see it in some of the goals where goalies could just slide in a regular butterfly, control the rebound but they're trying to make this big split save and it squeaks through or deflects and then it's an open net backdoor."

A separate piece from May 2026 ^[3] explored another element of her approach: the deliberate mental reset she uses between stoppages. Desbiens described using TV timeouts and faceoffs as opportunities to let go rather than maintain constant intensity. "Your nervous system takes a beat down if you're always like, go, go, go," she said. "So I think for me, it's this ability to let go when I don't need to focus, and just when the puck drops, it's like, 'okay, game on again.'" She tied that habit to a broader perspective on her career: "For someone that didn't think I was ever going to be able to play professional hockey, I'm going to enjoy every single second."

InGoal Magazine has covered Ann-Renée Desbiens in one podcast appearance and three InGoal articles.