Fresh off her gold-medal-winning stint with Canada at the Sochi Games, Szabados, 27, opened another door for women when she signed with the Cottonmouths of the Southern Professional Hockey League, a regional men’s senior league.
When Szabados, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, makes her expected pro debut this weekend, she will become the first woman to play in the 10-year-old S.P.H.L., a rung or two below the midlevel ECHL on the National Hockey League ladder. It is the latest stop in Szabados’s trailblazing career. She was the first woman to play in the Western Hockey League in 2002 at age 16, and she played on the men’s team at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
From Prefontaine’s gentlemanly gesture to the introductory news conference on Thursday before the Cottonmouths’ game against the Pensacola Ice Flyers, there was no mistaking Szabados was a snake of a different skin. Kyle Johnson, a defenseman who was instrumental in the Cottonmouths’ signing of Szabados, said it was the team’s first news conference of the season.
It’s probably the first one since Boom-Boom retired,” Johnson said, referring to Columbus’s coach and general manager, Jerome Bechard, who once gave the Cottonmouths their venom, piling up 1,996 penalty minutes in 448 regular-season games before calling it quits in 2003.
Though he knew nearly everyone in the audience, Bechard still was nervous enough to stumble on the pronunciation of Szabados’s surname. As far as gaffes go, it fell well short of John Travolta’s “Adele Dazeem” moment at the Academy Awards.
Cutting to the chase, Bechard said: “She’s a Snake. Congratulations.”