y’all wanna talk about gay hockey romances?
let’s talk about alex carpenter & steph klein.
aka the cutest couple in all of hockey.
first, we have alex carpenter:
won two silvers and one gold at women’s world juniors for team usa.
at her first juniors tournament she was only 15, the youngest american on the team. she was also named best forward overall in both of the following tournaments at age 16 & 17.
won five golds and one silver at women’s worlds for the senior team usa since then.
olympic silver medalist in 2014.
2015 patty kazmaier award winner (given to the best female college hockey player in the us. she was also the first ever person from boston college to receive it and the first person in the hockey east conference to receive it also. nbd)
first ever player drafted into the nwhl (drafted by the rivs but traded to the pride).
her dad is bobby carpenter, 3 time stanley cup champ who spent 18 years in the nhl. her mom julie is a figure skater. she was born to be a hockey star. her two younger brothers are athletes too but neither are as decorated as her.
i could go on forever about my love for alex carpenter but ultimately you just need to know that she is an all around ultimate hockey bad ass.
alex is also unique because she is not actually a member of the pwhpa or the nwhl (now phf).
after not being chosen for the 2018 olympic team, she (along with megan bozek) made the decision to follow her previous cwhl team, the vanke rays, to china where they would compete in the russian women’s profession league, the ZhHL.
she led the team to win the cup in the 2019-2020 season where she was also named mvp in the league.
due to her being able to still regularly compete at a professional level, she remained in much better shape than her fellow us women’s national teammates after the fall of the cwhl and the pwhpa formation.
under new leadership, team usa noticed this and asked her to come back to the uswnt where she scored both of team usa’s goals in the gold medal game at this past women’s worlds.
she’s been open about how playing for the russian league in china is the best playing conditions she’s experienced in professional women’s hockey. better facilities, better money and a massive fanbase.
but those aren’t the only benefits to playing for the vanke rays. enter, equipment manager steph klein.
she’s an incredibly experienced and badass equipment manager for a ton of teams, including currently for the toronto marlies.
she’s also all of us if we were on the bench.
she’s an absolute nerd about her job and posts about how much she loves her blademaster regularly. she’s also constantly posting cute pictures of her girlfriend’s equipment & stall because she’s the one in charge of it.
alex carpenter saw an insanely hot girl sharpening her skates and said “yup, i’m definitely gonna wife her up” and CAN YOU BLAME HER???
i mean the badass hockey star who is secretly a total shy softie falling for the hot badass equipment manager who is her girlfriend’s biggest fan? who among us hasn’t read that fic? or at least that imagine?
these two are a real life hockey fairytale romance and their relationship seriously keeps me alive these days.
is this not the gayest shit you’ve ever seen? godiwishthatwereme.
i think my absolute favorite thing about them and what makes them so incredibly bad ass to me is that they’re not secret about their relationship at all. they’re not trying to hide it or keep it quiet, they’re very public about being queer and being together.
which, for north american hockey players, rarely happens until after they retire. AND THEY DO IT IN THE RUSSIAN LEAGUE. they’re very publicly queer and together, working together and dating while living in china and competing in russia. including this past season where they played the whole year inside the bubble in russia. they’re living their lives, publicly, without fear, in fucking russia. NOTHING IS MORE BADASS THAN THAT.
in further proof of these bad asses giving zero fucks about living their gay lives publicly, here’s steph spanking her girlfriend’s ass from an actual official team video from the team’s official youtube channel.
i think about this every single day of my life.
so yeah, dreams really do come true. love is real. it’s stuff like this that makes me not give up on the sport as a queer female hockey fan and i just wanted to share some positivity in a world full of awfulness.
to be clear, all of these photos and information are all gathered from their public instagrams. i haven’t invaded their privacy in any way and i’m not sharing anything that the two of them haven’t publicly shared themselves. i know these are two strangers who i don’t know and i don’t know the real life dynamics of their relationship but for a queer hockey fan, their love truly keeps me going on hard days and i just love them so much. i wish them nothing but happiness and a lifetime of hockey badassery together.
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