She grew up in Beauceville, Quebec, a small town that has since named an arena after her, and she carried that small-town seriousness into every room she ever entered. Those who have played with her describe someone who is quietly, almost unnervingly focused, who does not separate practice from competition because she does not experience them differently. She is married to Laura Stacey, her teammate on the Canadian national program, and there is something fitting about that: two players who have given everything to the same sport, who understand at the most personal level what the other one carries. They have both been central to building what women's hockey in Canada has become, on the ice and in the culture around it.

What Poulin did beyond the scoresheet matters as much as anything she scored. She was a cornerstone of the effort to establish a sustainable professional league in North America, lending her credibility to the PWHL at a moment when the future of women's professional hockey was genuinely in question. The league launched, took hold, and gave the next generation of players somewhere to go. The arena in Beauceville bears her name. The league she helped build bears her fingerprints. Cap'n Clutch, it turns out, was never just about overtime goals.