In 1998, she helped the first-ever U.S. women's Olympic hockey team win gold in the sport's debut at the Games — one of four Olympics she competed in, and four medals she brought home. Four years later, in Salt Lake City, she carried the flag for the entire U.S. delegation at the Opening Ceremony. In between, she competed at the top of international hockey while confronting a pay gap she spoke about openly, refusing to treat it as an uncomfortable subject reserved for later. In 2005, she signed a one-game contract with the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League, becoming the first woman to play meaningful minutes as a position player in a U.S. men's professional hockey game. She skated that night alongside her brother Bill, making them the first brother-sister pair to play together in a North American professional hockey game.

After retiring, she earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and founded Sports Innovation Lab, a research firm built to study how fans actually watch and engage with sport, in an industry her own career had outpaced by the time she left it. Fellow athletes elected her to the International Olympic Committee's Athletes Commission, a vote of trust from the people who had competed against her rather than a title handed down from above. In 2017 she was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. She spent a career refusing to accept the terms she was given, and then spent the one after it changing them for whoever came next.