Emerance Maschmeyer

Emerance Maschmeyer grew up in Bruderheim, Alberta — a small town northeast of Edmonton — and by 2012 she was already posting shutouts on the biggest stage in women's hockey, blanking the opposition in the gold medal game at the IIHF U-18 Women's World Championship. That performance foreshadowed a career that would carry her from the Ivy League to two Olympic Games.

At Harvard University, where she played from 2012 to 2016, Maschmeyer assembled one of the more decorated careers in program history. She became the first goaltender to win Ivy League Rookie of the Year in more than fifteen years after her freshman season, going 12-6-2 with a 1.44 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage. As a sophomore she was named Co-Ivy League Player of the Year, earned Second Team All-American honours, and finished among the top ten finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Award while posting a 16-6-4 record with a 1.75 GAA and .943 save percentage. Her junior year brought a Patty Kazmaier Award nomination, an All-Ivy League First Team selection, and an ECAC All-Academic Team nod after she went 18-5-3 with a 1.48 GAA and .943 save percentage. By her senior season in 2015-16, she had accumulated 2,538 career saves — establishing herself as Harvard's all-time career saves leader.

After leaving Cambridge, Maschmeyer played professional hockey in the CWHL, appearing in 43 games with the Montréal Canadiennes and 8 games with the Calgary Inferno across three seasons from 2016 to 2019. She then played with the PWHPA from 2019 to 2023 before the formation of the PWHL.

Internationally, Maschmeyer has been a fixture with Canada's national program for more than a decade. She represented Canada at the 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 IIHF Women's World Championships, collecting three gold, three silver, and one bronze medal across those appearances. At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, she won gold with Canada, appearing in two games during the tournament. In 2026, she was part of the Canadian team that again competed on the Olympic stage — her second Winter Olympics — returning this time with family in the stands and her son Beckham present. Speaking on the InGoal Radio podcast shortly after returning to Vancouver, Maschmeyer described what that meant: "My first experience, I didn't have that. So that was a huge motivation of mine to, you know, accomplish that goal of going to the Olympics again was to be able to have my family and friends come out and experience it." ^[1]

Maschmeyer and her wife Geneviève became parents before the 2026 Games, and on that same episode she spoke about the perspective that change brought to her approach to the game: "He doesn't care if we won or lost or how I played. He's just so excited to see me, and so it definitely puts everything in perspective." ^[1]

On ^[1], Maschmeyer also walked through the mental side of goaltending in considerable depth — her game-day planning process, the words she keeps written on her blocker ("battle, big, calm" and "never give up"), her approach to staying engaged in low-shot games, and how her preparation has shifted across different stages of her career. The episode, hosted by Kevin Woodley, is available now.

Maschmeyer's first appearance on the podcast came in ^[2], episode 246 of InGoal Radio, recorded in March 2024. InGoal Magazine has covered Emerance Maschmeyer in two podcast appearances.

At the professional level, Maschmeyer played for the Ottawa Charge before being traded to the Vancouver Goldeneyes, where she currently wears number 38. She described the trade as arriving alongside a mix of emotions — including an injury that had cut her previous season short — but settled quickly into her new environment. On ^[1], she talked about working with Vancouver goaltending coach Joey and how that relationship followed an earlier experience adapting to a new coaching voice, noting that she had already been through the process of building a new working language with a different coach, which helped smooth the transition.

She has worked with national team goaltending coach Brad Kirkwood since approximately 2011 or 2012, and traces her foundational development to Eric Robertson, a coach from just outside Edmonton she began working with at age seven and continues to skate with during offseasons. On ^[1], she described how those long relationships shaped the way she now approaches new voices and new technical input — and what it means, as she put it, to keep her foundation while remaining open to evolving.