PWHL Boston's Danielle Marmer addresses the media during the PWHL's inaugural season. Credit: PWHL Boston
If a willingness to keep busy is among the prerequisites for the job of General Manager, Danielle Marmer would seem to have been preparing for a lifetime.
Hired at the age of 29 as the youngest General Manager in the top women’s hockey league in the world, PWHL Boston’s GM has almost always been more than comfortable taking on a little extra.
Born in Newton and raised for the first few years of her life in Foxboro, close enough to the stadium to hear roars from Patriots games, Marmer moved at the age of 3 to Vermont, which is where she spent her formative hockey years as a “big fish in a small pond” before playing prep hockey at Loomis Chaffee and college hockey at Quinnipiac University.
Beginning in 2017 in her first job out of school, as an assistant for the women’s hockey team at Connecticut College, Marmer was involved in recruiting, player evaluation, practices, film study and athletic training. A lot to be sure, but Marmer had been working toward it – and for executive leadership – without really even knowing it.
Or maybe she did.
“I think I’ve just always done a lot from a young age,” says Marmer, whose mother ran the rink in Dorset, Vt., when Danielle and her sister were kids. “Growing up, I played so many different sports – usually playing multiple sports a season – and, on top of that, my parents, they wanted all of us to be playing musical instruments, so I was playing the piano for a number of years. I think I’m used to doing a lot.”
Danielle Marmer '17, MS' 21 who broke barriers as the first woman in an on-ice role for the Boston Bruins, returned to campus last weekend to welcome #QU2026, encouraging them to say "yes" to opportunities that come their way while at QU. Read her speech: https://t.co/JaXPXZN9Yo pic.twitter.com/CtsYbkWdCt
— Quinnipiac University (@QuinnipiacU) September 4, 2022
Wise Parents
Marmer credits her mother and father, who is from Framingham and remains a longtime fan of all Boston teams, for seeing the importance of taking on a heavy load.
“I have very wise parents,” Marmer says. “And they have always encouraged me: All of your experiences will culminate into allowing you to get the job that it is you want. Part of it was having an early understanding that any job in hockey was going to help me on a path.”
Obviously, that first job in coaching seemed to set Marmer, who graduated Summa Cum Laude and considered law school after college, in one direction.
“I didn’t know what the path was, but I knew I just wanted to be in hockey,” says Marmer. “For a long time, I thought that might be coaching. I was always confident that if I worked hard and did a good job and I was a good person, then I’d sort of work my way into the job that I wanted. I’d always done really well in school, so there was a little bit of understanding that if I’m going to have somewhat of a nontraditional job, I’m going to have to work really hard at it.”
That paid off in the form of her second hockey job, a Director of Player Development role with her alma mater, where she oversaw all player development and team operations for the women’s program.
Then, just about two years ago to the month, the Boston Bruins hired Marmer as Player Development and Scouting Assistant. With the Bruins, Marmer sat in on NHL Entry Draft meetings, trade deadline meetings and generally soaked up as much as she could from the Hockey Operations department and coaches.
Now entering her second season at the helm of PWHL Boston, Marmer is taking as much as she can from her previous experiences. In some cases, though, her own experiences have to be left behind.
Danielle Marmer on players finding their identity: "When they are a younger player, we don’t want to put them in a box and tell them that they are going to be this kind of player, right? You want to give them the opportunity to show us what they are capable of doing." pic.twitter.com/ctZdmODH4h
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) July 5, 2023
Rink Rat
Her own story is both cautionary tale for those who might be flying a bit too high too early, but also a lesson in what to make of a career when looking both ahead and back.
As a youth player in Vermont, Marmer was one of the best players in her town, in her state and in the region. On the ice since around the age of 2, her skating gave her all kinds of ice, breakaways and odd-man rushes. The game stuck.
“I’ve always been a fan of team sports, and hockey was so fun,” Marmer says. “And because I started skating so early I was a better skater than most who were starting, so I had a lot of success early on and it formed strong relationship with hockey early.”
As a kid, Marmer was at the rink a lot. A lot, a lot. In fact, because her mother was at the rink even more, often times parents’ friends would drop Marmer off at the rink much as they might drop the other kids off at their houses.
Success, however, would plateau to Marmer in college. NCAA hockey can be eye-opening for any kind of player, but it was especially so for Marmer.
“I was one of the better players in New England,” says Marmer, joking that at the time she could have thought maybe she was the best player in the world. “And I quickly realized how good hockey is in the Midwest and how good hockey is in Canada. There are Swedish players on my team and I’m, like, ‘OK, I’m far behind.’ It was a realization that there’s so many people competing for the spots.”
Being faster and a good skater became more blessing than curse in her own development, which is a lesson any young player could learn.
“I didn’t have the best hands because I could skate by everybody [when I was young],” Marmer says. “I didn’t necessarily have the best hockey sense because I could create a breakaway or odd-man rush. There were parts of my game that were fine, but I had to figure out a lot. I hadn’t been training at a high level, but a lot of these players were. And they had been training at the highest level for long time.”
Danielle Marmer was the first female hired by the Boston Bruins in an on-ice role for the organization. Credit: Boston Bruins
Learning to Adapt and Battle Adversity
Another lesson – after maybe not loving the game for a while, and certainly not as much as she had when she was the best player around? Adaptation.
“I really hadn’t experienced any adversity,” says Marmer. “It was new to me. It always came easy and I wanted it to come easy. At that point, I didn’t like being at the rink. I really had to adapt my role. It took me longer than I’d like to admit and I was in and out of the lineup.”
What did that adaptation look like for Marmer – particularly as a lesson young players could learn?
“I had to be a really good teammate,” she says. “If we were working on the power play, I had to work really hard at the PK, to make my teammates better on the power play in practice. Go out and block a shot. I got excited when my teammates would do that, and they would get excited when I would do that. And it would create energy and momentum. That was really cool to experience, to feel the momentum shift in a game because I went out and had a good shift or blocked a shot. Those are things that I had not previously cared about.”
The spark returned.
“Once I really embraced that type of role-player energy and identity, it ended up being a lot of fun again,” says Marmer. “I just had to go out there and, say, be a really good F1.”
Looking back, there was a lot Marmer wish she knew, but, and this speaks to the career she has chosen, the roots of a life in hockey were 100 percent there in Dorset.
“The first thing is, you have to love it, otherwise you won’t shoot all those pucks and you won’t put the effort in,” she says. “That comes from a younger age. So I think about different ages and what’s important. I would say that from 5 to maybe 11, hockey has to be just the most fun thing you’re doing. It’s why you’ll continue to try out for whatever the next level is. Between 10 and 14, that’s the most important time for skill development and improving. You have to see the progress and accomplishing something – the first time you life a puck off the ice, the first time you do a toe drag at full speed. I would say 14 through 18 is sharpening the tools, spending time in the weight room, being explosive and strong, and then refining skills like puck-handling and skating.”
Once a doubter, Marmer is fully on board with the theory that skating can be taught.
“Skating is something I used to think you could or couldn’t do,” says Marmer. “I was so wrong about that. You’re never done working on skating. The Bruins are working on skating every day. That’s where with the older groups, you have to love it and you have to be willing to put in the work. And if you don’t love it, that’s OK. But you won’t get to the highest level.”
One win away from the Walter Cup in 2024, PWHL Boston looks to make another run in 2025. Credit: PWHL Boston
The Next Step
Now essentially building a roster from a pool of only players at the highest level, Marmer has yet another cautionary tale. Note to all future GMs who grew up hardworking and humbled, adapting roles to earn playing time through blocked shots and lineup scratches, that those players, while alluring from one very important standpoint, might not always be the players who win championships – as maddening as that can sometimes be.
For Marmer, finding a roster that can compete for a championship, which PWHL Boston did this past season as the league’s runners-up, isn’t as likely to come through building in her own mold. Humbled grinders, she learned in her time with the Bruins, don’t always win championships.
“When I worked with Bruins, I was so into that type of player because I had to be that player,” she says. “I had to be great on the details. Great on the habits. Have a good attitude. [But] I remember watching games with the Bruins scouting staff and with [Director of Amateur Scouting] Ryan Nadeau. He said, ‘You keep pointing out the players who are working hard but those aren’t the players who were going to play in the NHL. The players who are going to play in the NHL are the ones who might [tick] you off.’”
It’s not the first or last time someone would have eyes for what made themselves tick.
“I had fallen in love with a player I had to become,” says Marmer. “I’ve had to sort of reverse that. I had to understand that I like that player because they played a similar role to the one I played, but they probably don’t have that much more upside.”
Now, looking ahead to PWHL Boston’s second season, there is, after losing a best-of-five series to Minnesota in the Walter Cup finals, some unfinished business. These summer months after the draft, including signing new players and keeping in touch with every current player on the roster in hopes of a stronger start in 2024-25 has Marmer busy.
“We provided feedback at the end of the season for our players in various areas – what their strengths were, roles, the pieces of the game we think they could improve that are related to that role,” Marmer says. “Our coaching staff sent out personalized player development plans to everyone who is signed at this moment: ‘Here’s what the focus is for this off-season for you and here’s where we think you can improve specific to the role of the players.’”
Even that brings with it a delicate balance.
“You don’t want to put players in a box,” says Marmer. “You don’t want to say, ‘You’re a fourth-line player.’ Sometimes it helps not to be too specific. But you want to give them their best path to playing the role and giving them some kind of direction – an indication of where we see them. There’s nothing worse than a player the coach sees as a fourth-line role player out there doing toe drags and one-timers from the hash.”
Specifically, the team is looking to work with a player’s present and help them make for a better future with and against the best players in the world.
“Let’s say there’s a forward who is maybe what I would consider a powerful identity, like a more powerful skater and a bigger body,” Marmer says. “And maybe it’s about [zone] entry. We might be wanting you to not feel like you have to stay on the wall. Get off the wall. Lower your shoulder and drive that D back to the far post. If that’s the thing you think you can improve on, now it’s in the weight room and we leave that sort of blank so whoever it is they’re training with can work with that specific skill. But then you give them a couple details on how to do that well with a drill or two.”
In some ways, the clock is already ticking down to mid-November when players start to report.
“If I could script it, it’s getting off to a better start and playing more consistent hockey, and it’s finding our identity and playing to it,” says Marmer. “Now we’re bringing back a big core of our group and I think we’ve added some pieces. I think we lacked some speed up front and we drafted Hannah Bilka. We have some D on our back end who will help us break pucks out more consistently.”
Coming out of the draft, Marmer is cautiously optimistic.
“Hopefully we’ve added the pieces we need to play to our identity and to play the way we want to play more consistently and playoffs will take care of themselves. Hoping to control our own destiny,” says Marmer of the team’s goals. “I think its finishing the job. We hope to be in the same spot in playoffs next year and being able to come out with a win in that Game 5 to win a Walter Cup championship.”
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