Minnesota will have a big presence in Plymouth again. The program announced that 6 Gophers are headed to the USA Hockey Women's National Team Training Camp in Plymouth, Michigan, running Oct. 23-30.
USA Hockey invited 31 players to the week-long camp at USA Hockey Arena, which is the U.S. tune-up for the 2026 IIHF Women's World Championship, set for Nov. 6-16 in Herning and Esbjerg, Denmark. The Americans play Canada twice during camp: Oct. 28 at the WFCU Centre in Windsor, Ontario, and Oct. 30 at USA Hockey Arena, both at 7 p.m. ET. USA Hockey expects to name its final 25-player Worlds roster on or around Oct. 31, so the next 10 days matter.
The Minnesota names on the camp roster will look familiar. Up front are Taylor Heise, Abbey Murphy, Kelly Pannek and Grace Zumwinkle. On the blue line are Lee Stecklein and Sydney Morrow. The 31-player group includes all 23 players from the U.S. team that won Olympic gold in 2026, plus 8 more players fighting for a spot.
5 of those 6 were on that Olympic team. When the program announced the U.S. Olympic roster in January, it listed then-graduate student Murphy and alumnae Heise, Zumwinkle, Pannek and Stecklein. That's a lot of Minnesota in the middle of the best women's hockey team in the world.
Murphy and Morrow come to Plymouth as pro rookies. Both are fresh out of the University of Minnesota and now play for the PWHL's Seattle Torrent. For Morrow, this camp is a real shot at moving from Olympic-cycle outsider to Worlds regular. Murphy's job is to show the scoring touch Gopher fans know so well.
Six Gophers make up close to a fifth of the camp, and 4 of them are among the 18 forwards competing for spots. If you want to watch the Gopher pipeline up close, mark Oct. 28 and Oct. 30 on the calendar. Then watch for the final roster around Halloween to see how many maroon-and-gold alums are headed to Denmark.
