It’s the 3rd period at TD Place in Ottawa on Feb. 20, 2025, and Tereza Vanišová is fighting Boston’s Jill Saulnier, in what’s widely viewed as the 1st fight in PWHL history. Her bench takes it well. Ottawa defender Ronja Savolainen told The Ice Garden after the game: “Every player was standing up and cheering for her, so I thought that was a good one.”
That night Vanišová also set up Savolainen’s power-play goal and tied the game with just under 3 seconds left in regulation. A goal, an assist and a fight in the same game is a Gordie Howe hat trick, and nobody in the league had done it before. Boston won 3-2 in overtime anyway.
She learned to play like that in Strakonice, in South Bohemia, on boys’ teams. She told Pavel Pechoušek for his book “Sport u Otavy”, as excerpted by Písecký deník (translated from Czech): “In the dressing room I had my own spot where I changed behind the bench so nobody would look at me.”
She stayed with the boys until about 18, and she says it helped her a lot. When Vancouver signed her in June 2025, its general manager talked up her skating and her feistiness. Both were built in that dressing room.
- Number: 13
- Position: Forward (shoots left)
- Hometown: Strakonice, Czechia
- Born: Jan. 30, 1996
- How she got here: Signed as a free agent from Ottawa on June 17, 2025
- Contract: 2 years, through 2026-27
Sneakers and hard hands
Vanišová grew up going around the rinks with her parents and her brother, and she started playing at 6, in Strakonice’s beginners’ program. The stickhandling took longer, as she told the Bangor Daily News in 2020. “We used to play street hockey in sneakers. My hands were really bad on my stick.”
In hockey that’s called hard hands, and she used the term herself. “I had hard hands. But I got better. My brother helped me a lot.”
Her teams were boys’ teams, in Strakonice and then in Písek from 7th grade, with a season in Příbram. She joined the Czech women’s league at 14 and kept playing with boys until about 18. At 17, by then with Slavia Praha, she told Strakonický deník what the boys’ game asked of her (translated from Czech): “Practice, for example, and hockey with boys in general, takes much more speed and toughness.”
In the Písecký deník excerpt, she spelled out what that got her (translated from Czech): “Because I played with the boys too, I dominated among the girls.”
Passport stamps
After the boys’ teams came about 6 months at the Hockey Training Institute in Ontario, where, the Bangor Daily News reported, she worked on her English.
At the University of Maine she was Hockey East’s Co-Rookie of the Year in 2016-17, scored in overtime against Boston University for the program’s 1st-ever postseason win the next season, and left in 2020 holding Maine’s career records for points (129) and assists (66).
The Boston Pride drafted her 12th overall in 2020, and she won the Isobel Cup, the NWHL’s championship, in her 1st season there. After a COVID year with few games, she told RN Hockey, she chose Leksands IF in Sweden for 2021-22. She still played 3 playoff games for Boston that season and won the Cup again, which is a long way to go to keep a streak alive.
Then came the Toronto Six. On March 26, 2023, in Tempe, Ariz., she scored 4:23 into overtime to beat Minnesota 4-3 in the Isobel Cup Final, Toronto’s 1st title and her 3rd in a row.
In the PWHL’s inaugural draft in 2023, 41 players went before Montréal took her in the 7th round. She had 10 points in 17 games there before a deadline trade to Ottawa in March 2024 for defender Amanda Boulier. In 2024-25, only Marie-Philip Poulin scored more goals.
Her 22 points led the Charge that season, and she became the 1st player in PWHL history with 2 hat tricks in a season, set Ottawa’s single-season goals record and made the league’s Second All-Star Team.
Beijing 2022 was Czechia’s 1st women’s Olympic tournament, and she led the team in points (6) and assists (4) while playing her club hockey in Sweden. Against Sweden she scored 2 goals in a 3-1 win, and by CNN Prima News’s account, the 2nd came when she won the puck and made it 3-1 with a deke to her backhand. So much for the hard hands. At the 2023 Worlds she set up 2 of Czechia’s 3 goals in a 3-2 win over Switzerland for bronze.
On Nov. 1, ČT sport reported that Czechia’s coach Brian Idalski, her coach in Vancouver last season, didn’t name her to the roster for this month’s Worlds in Denmark, and no reason was given.
Slippery, with an edge
Start with the skating. The Ice Garden quoted Toronto Six GM Angela James saying she didn’t “think there is anyone faster than Vanišová in this league” when the team re-signed her in June 2023. At Maine, teammate Victoria Hummel told the Bangor Daily News in 2016 that she was “really fast, and it seems like the puck is always with her.” Merrimack coach Erin Hamlen, an opponent, told the same paper in 2020: “She’s slippery. She has the ability to get into space that not a lot of players have.”
Her Maine coach, Richard Reichenbach, said in the school’s release when Boston drafted her: “Fans can expect a player who loves to have the puck and makes plays like she does.” He had a line for the other side of her game, too. “She is incredibly strong and loves the challenge of playing against the best in the biggest games.”
The strong part shows up in the numbers. She was 2nd among Vancouver forwards with 44 hits last season, up from 32 in Ottawa, while her penalty minutes went the other way, from 38 to 10. She hit more and sat less, which is the useful kind of feisty.
Then there are the goals. She scored 15 on 87 shots in Ottawa, a 17.2% shooting percentage, and 4 on 57 in Vancouver, or 7.0%. She played all 30 games both seasons and her ice time barely moved, 16:09 a night to 16:07, 5th among Vancouver’s forwards, so this isn’t about minutes.
Her 1st Goldeneyes goal didn’t come until her 14th game, on Jan. 22 against Toronto at the Coliseum, ending what the league’s recap called the longest single-season scoreless streak of her career. She wasn’t invisible before it, since her 5 assists through 10 games led the team. “She’s been grinding this entire season, and for her to finally put that one in,” linemate Sarah Nurse told The Hockey News, adding that it meant a lot “to her as well inside.”
Both parts of her scoring dropped. She took 1.90 shots a game after 2.90 in Ottawa, and fewer of them went in. At her PWHL career rate of 11.3%, which sits between the 2 seasons, her 57 shots would have made about 6 goals. That’s 2 of the 11 goals she lost, so the finishing doesn’t explain it all.
There are 2 fair readings. The friendly reading is that 17.2% was a hot year and 7.0% a cold year. The other is that she was doing a different job. She set up more, with 11 assists after 7 in Ottawa, tied for 2nd on the team, and her power-play points fell from 5 to 1. Before anyone emails, yes, her +6 was the best on the team.
The box score can’t tell those 2 readings apart. What it does show is the size of the hill, since scoring 15 on 57 shots would take about 26% shooting. The goals won’t come back until the shots do.
What Vancouver ordered
Vancouver signed her as a free agent from Ottawa on June 17, 2025, after the expansion draft, to a 2-year deal through 2026-27, and announced her alongside Michela Cava. Cara Gardner Morey, then the GM and now the head coach, put the order in writing in the release.
“Tereza is an elite skater with a unique scoring touch and brings a physical presence to the ice every shift. We are excited about the energy and feistiness she will bring to the lineup, day in and day out.”
That’s the Strakonice dressing room, translated into press-release English, and the physical presence showed up in the hit totals. The unique scoring touch is the part of that sentence Vancouver is still waiting on.
In her own words
She told the Bangor Daily News in 2020 what those boys’ teams were like. “Some of the guys wouldn’t touch me and others went after me because I was a girl.”
Judging by the rest of what she told the paper, the 2nd group was more fun. “It was tough but I loved [the contact]. It was such an adrenaline rush.”
Crossing to Maine was harder on her, at least early on. She told the Czech Olympic Committee’s website in 2019, in her 3rd year there (translated from Czech): “At the start it was quite a shock. I’m shy. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone.”
English was part of it. In an IIHF profile before the 2019 Worlds, she talked about having a Czech teammate at Maine. “Sometimes you don’t really know how to express yourself in English. It’s fun to have someone from your country.” Vancouver has another Czech on the roster this season, defender Dominika Lásková.
By 2025 she had no trouble making her point in English.
“I think hockey should be a physical game,” she told The Hockey News after a 7-0 quarterfinal win over Switzerland at the 2025 Worlds in Czechia. “It’s too bad the refs are calling (so many) penalties because some of them are just not penalties, it’s just hockey.
“I think the bodychecks should be allowed, for sure.
“I think that’s hockey.”
She said that 2 months after the Saulnier fight, so it wasn’t a hypothetical.
“I am delighted to have signed my contract with PWHL Vancouver and appreciate the trust the organization has shown in me,” she said when Vancouver signed her, and that was the whole statement.
She had more to say after her 1st Goldeneyes goal, when she talked to The Hockey News about her line with Nurse and Michelle Karvinen. “We complement each other.”
Her part, as she described it, was the forecheck, chasing the puck down in the other team’s end. “I’m trying to forecheck really hard for [them] to get the puck.”
The rest she left to Nurse. “And, obviously, Nursey can score goals.”
Finishing the deal
The GM who signed her is now the coach deciding her minutes. Gardner Morey took over behind the bench on July 30. Camp opens Nov. 18 at the PNE Agrodome, and the season opens Dec. 5 at the Coliseum against Seattle, the 1st game of the last season on her deal.
The league doesn’t publish line charts, but in the Jan. 22 win, on-ice data had her with Nurse and Karvinen.
Watch her shooting percentage, 7.0% last season. The question she’ll answer is whether Vancouver gets the Ottawa scorer back in the last year of her deal, or more of the forechecker she described in January.
She already knows how she feels about goals. After her 2nd hat trick for Ottawa, the league’s recap quoted her keeping it simple. “It always feels good to score goals.”
