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Full Steam Ahead: Keller Leads Fleet into a New Era

By Jamie MacDonald, 12/05/24, 11:30AM EST

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Two-time U.S. Olympic medalist Megan Keller wants redemption

Megan Keller is among the best defensemen in her sport in the world.


Credit: PWHL Boston Fleet

“Yeah, I saw it.”

When asked if she had seen the November/December cover of USA Hockey magazine – featuring PWHL Minnesota rival Taylor Heise celebrating with the Walter Cup held triumphantly aloft and a Minnesota-purple theme impossible to miss in a stack of mail – Boston Fleet defenseman Megan Keller couldn’t have responded more quickly or flatly.

Yes, Keller saw the cover. 

No, she didn’t care for it much. 

That cover, with playoff MVP and Team USA teammate Heise, only served to bring up some fairly stinging memories for the Boston College Eagles star and Olympic gold medalist whose second season with Boston opened on Nov. 30. (The season will run through May. Or, if the Fleet have their way, longer, preferably finishing with a different outcome than last season.) 

“At the start of the 2023-24 season, we all had the same goal,” Keller says. “We wanted to bring home the first Walter Cup to Boston. And we came up just short of that.”

Boston lost to Minnesota in a decisive Game 5, a game Boston forced with a double-overtime win in Game 4, on home ice at Tsongas Arena in Lowell. Keller led both teams with 28:33 in ice time in the excruciating loss.

“We had a great journey together and learned a lot as a group,” says Keller. “We will bring that into the season and rely on those experiences when we come across them this year.”

As with 2023-24, this 2024-25 season features the league’s six teams based in Boston, Minnesota, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and New York. This season also brought with it new jerseys to match team names: Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Toronto Sceptres, Ottawa Charge, Montreal Victoire and New York Sirens.

Only one of these jerseys appeals to Keller, who, having grown up watching one of the best defensemen in history, Nicklas Lidstrom, wears No. 5 for the Fleet.

“Any jersey other than Boston, I’m not the biggest fan,” Keller says. 

In her first hockey stop in Boston, at BC with the Eagles beginning a decade ago, Keller played 145 games, recording 158 points, a Women’s Hockey East MVP and a Patty Kazmaier finalist honor. She also closed out her career as the program’s leader among defensemen in scoring, goals (45) and assists (113) while leading the nation among defensemen in scoring during her sophomore, junior and senior seasons.

Simply, Keller is among the best defensemen in her sport in the world, first representing Team USA as a teenager in 2013. At 5-feet-11, she is also among the handful of tallest players in the PWHL, representing a rare combination of size and skill in the game. 


Credit: Boston College


Credit: PWHL Boston Fleet

In her second hockey stop in the area, Keller returned to Boston for the league’s historic first season.

“The inaugural season was so fun and exciting to be a part of, to have the structure and support we had last year, with the staff and the coaches, the medical staff, training staff, everybody, and it was pretty awesome to have,” says Keller, who has a message for the fans, too …

“Thanks for all the support last season, especially those last few games,” she says. “They were incredible. Some of the highlights of my career. So loud and fun, to be repping a city and playing professional hockey and having that support from them. We’re excited for year two and can’t wait to see them.”

So, does she consider herself a Bostonian at this point?

“I do,” Keller says, with a caveat that locals might appreciate. “I don’t know if I can claim that. But I do think Boston has become really my home. This is a place I want to be in and this is the city I want to play for. If they’ll take me in, I’ll take the label.”

(It should be noted that for Thanksgiving with members of the team, Keller, on desserts, brought cannolis from Mike’s Pastry in the North End. How’s that for some Boston flavor?)

This offseason, Keller focused on taking some time off … and going to concerts, as anyone who follows her on Instagram will know.

“That time off for me was great,” says Keller. “I think we all went through a long and grueling season. The first couple of months it was nice to relax and have some fun with friends. My brother got married and I had my youth hockey camp in my hometown. And went to a lot of concerts. My bank account is not too happy after all those concerts, but I have a lot of videos and photos and memories from those. Can’t replace that.”

Now back on the ice in earnest, as part of what might have been an unheard-of career when she first arrived as a teenager from Michigan, the goals begin again. 

“I spent a lot of time in the gym getting healthy and getting stronger again, making sure I have a good foundation,” Keller says. “Eventually, I got back on the ice and we had a great group in the Boston area for the first time in a while, so it was nice to be able to skate with them.”

For any hockey player, getting back to the rink with a team is welcome.

“I think we have a good mixture of a group,” says Keller of the Fleet room. “We have a lot of laughs – lots of jokes going on in the locker room. You’re never safe from the pranks, that’s for sure. You could never count Hilary [Knight] out for a good prank. Hannah Brandt is always a menace. And we have some fresh faces, so we’ll have to see.”

In the offseason, the Fleet signed, among others, their first-round draft pick, Hannah Bilka, who played four seasons at Boston College before finishing her NCAA career at Ohio State, and was selected at No. 4 overall. 

“We have a pretty good core, but we have obviously added some pieces from the draft and training camp who will come in and fit in right away,” Keller says. “We all have the same goal, and that’s to win the Walter Cup and not have what happened last year happen again.”

The Fleet also added new coaching positions, including another Boston College star in Woburn native Courtney Kennedy, who spent 17 years as a coach in Chestnut Hill and joins the staff as a skills coach.

“Yeah, they’re great,” Keller says of the Fleet staff, headed by Courtney Kessel. “They work so well together. They make you want to come to the rink every day and compete. Great relationships with all of them. They have played at the highest level in women’s hockey so they’re people we look up to. We just want to go to battle for them.”

Going to battle for the Fleet, in some ways, means going to battle for the women’s game, too. 

“Going into this year, we have such a great base, and we were provided with all these resources so we can just focus on the hockey,” says Keller. “As postgrads, this is something we have been waiting for and we’re excited that the season is here.”

It also means going to battle for the young players in the sport.

“I remember growing up and the role models I looked up to – like [Harvard grad] Angela Ruggerio – I would see them on TV every four years,” Keller says. “That’s when I realized I wanted to play hockey at the highest level. So, for a lot of us, we just continue to [try to] make it more visible for the next generation. Leave it better down the road, and we can continue to watch this league get better and better. We’ll be watching from our couch and these kids will be doing things we could probably never have done.”

Now, though, is the present in women’s hockey, and Keller is in the thick of it all. And she’s proud to say something that very few in this world can – and convey it in a declarative, unequivocal sentence that would have been unfathomable, impossible-dream stuff not all that long ago – when asked what she does for a living.

“I tell them I play hockey.”