2025 Top 25 Under 25: Sophie Jaques (2)
Sophie Jaques’s meteoric rise to stardom is only the start for a player who’s easily in the top ranks of women’s hockey.
I don’t know if there’s been a better “who the hell is this” story when it comes to women’s hockey than Sophie Jaques. There’s been a lot of good “who the hell is this” stories, such as USports players becoming league stars, like Ann-Sophie Bettez and Jade Downie-Landry in the PHF and CWHL. There’s also Michela Cava going from good NCAA player to suddenly being on a five-year championship streak, stretching from the SDHL to the Russian Women’s League to the PHF to the PWHL. What separates Jaques from everyone else is her incredible rise from decent player to suddenly one of the absolute best players in the NCAA to one of the best players in the PWHL, all while still being eligible for the Top 25 Under 25 list. She has skyrocketed to stardom in a way you rarely see.
How it usually works for star players is they start off with their nation’s U18 team. Of the 22 skaters that played for Team Canada at the 2025 IIHF World Championship, only six of them didn’t have an appearance at the IIHF U18 World Championship for Canada. One of those six was Sophie Jaques. She had a respectable career in the Ontario Women's Hockey League, finishing 21st in scoring in her U18 season. Jaques didn’t get the call to play for the U18 World Championship team and the next season ended up at THE Ohio State University in the 2018/19 season, without the usual national team player fanfare.
In her freshman and sophomore seasons, Jaques put up decent numbers to finish sixth, then fifth in team scoring. OSU even won the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Championship in 2020, though COVID would put a stop to their chances at making it to the NCAA National Championship. The shortened 2020-21 season would see a very weird dip in her numbers, as she only put up four points in 20 games, but the whole season was weird. It’s an extremely forgettable season because of what happened next: greatness.
Like Steve Rogers going from scrappy and scrawny to literal superhero Captain America, Sophie Jaques transformed in a way no one saw coming. From four points in 20 games to 59 points in 38 games! She finished third in NCAA points behind only Taylor Heise and Élizabeth Giguère. Jaques outscored noted NCAA stars Daryl Watts and Danielle Serdachny. Not only did Jaques lead her team in points over some PWHLers named Jennifer Gardiner, Paetyn Levis, Clair DeGeorge, and Paetyn Levis, she led the OSU Buckeyes to their first ever NCAA National Championship in women’s hockey.
Jaques went from playing second fiddle to Jincy Roese, to a COVID shortened season where everything went wrong, to leaving the 2021-22 season with the need for a trophy case. Not only did she take home the NCAA Championship, but Jaques would leave the season also having won the WCHA Championship, being named the WCHA Player of the Year, being named to the NCAA First All-Star Team and the NCAA Tournament All-Star Team, and becoming a top three finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award (for MVP in NCAA women’s hockey). The best part? Due to COVID taking away the 2020-21 season from everyone, Jaques was going back to OSU for a fifth and final year.
One of the toughest parts about being an athlete is finding consistency. When you’re talented, you can reach the peaks Jaques did, but what makes her and players like her elite is the ability to stay on top. Her point totals dropped from 59 to 48 points in 2021-22, but her goal totals increased from 21 to 24 goals. She finished in the top 10 of NCAA goal scoring, ahead of the Julia Gosling’s, the Tessa Janecke’s, the Natálie Mlýnková’s, and so on. Once again, Jaques would take home WCHA Defender of the Year, NCAA First All-Star honours, and National Championship All-Star honours, and she went from top three Patty Kaz Finalist to Patty Kaz winner! Unfortunately for Jaques and OSU, a day after winning the Patty Kaz, they’d go on to lose 1-0 to Wisconsin in the National Championship.
The last two seasons were Sophie Time in the NCAA, and with the PWHL starting up the same time Jaques was exiting college, the hype was high for her. The hype was so high that some people put her as their number one pick in the 2023 PWHL Inaugural Draft. The teams at the draft weren’t first overall high on her, but Jaques would still go 10th overall to Boston and be the first player taken in the draft with no national team experience. Jaques arrived in Boston with the expectation that she and Megan Keller would be a lethal one-two offensive punch on the Boston blueline. To say it went poorly might be an understatement.
For whatever reason, it just didn’t work in Boston. Jaques played seven games for Boston, and in one of those games, her butt was stapled to the bench for zero minutes of time on ice. She racked up zero points, was a -5 rating, and only had a rate of 5.1 shots on goal per 60 minutes. There was only one game Jaques saw over 20 minutes of time on ice. It was looking like Jaques was in for a struggle of a season and was going to have to learn how to play PWHL pro hockey the long way.
We all know what happened next. Jaques is traded to Minnesota and nearly instantly becomes the blueliner everyone thinks she should be. Jaques doesn’t play a single game under 20 minutes and has an even-strength goal differential of +5 while being on a team with the league’s worst save percentage. She's paired up with Lee Stecklein playing top competition, has 1.55 points per 60 minutes (which is higher than her former teammate Keller’s 1.48 PTS/60), and an astonishing 9.13 SOG/60. Jaques doesn’t slow down: in the playoffs, she finishes third in points and third in shots on goal to play a major role in Minnesota winning the first ever Walter Cup.
Jaques has a theme in her career where she likes to prove a great season isn’t a fluke, so she decided to rain hellfire upon her foes in the 24/25 PWHL season. She’d finish 14th in PTS/60 (2.36) among all skaters and first among blueliners. Jaques would also finish 15th in SOG/60 (8.05) among all skaters and first among blueliners here too. To really drive the point home as to the dominant play Jaques foisted upon the PWHL, she finished first among everyone in even-strength points per game and sixth in 5-v-5 goals for percentage, with the league’s worst team even-strength save percentage. Playoffs Jaques showed up again this time finishing second in playoff points, becoming the only blueliner with +20 shots on goal, and earning her second Walter Cup.
Finally, Jaques was recognized as someone who should have a spot on Team Canada at the World Championship, making the team this past season. She wasn’t given a big role, which was evident with her three minutes of ice time in the Gold Medal Game, but did finish the tournament with two goals. While not getting a big role at the World Championship, Jaques has been taken to the Canada Olympic camp and will be vying not only for an Olympic spot, but an even bigger role this time around.
Unfortunately for Minnesota fans, arguably their most impactful player of the last two seasons is off to Vancouver after Vancouver took her in the expansion process. For Vancouver fans, this is an extremely exciting time. Jaques is a young, elite blueliner with many years of elite play ahead of her. She brings a skillset that’s quite unique to the PWHL and has been a game changer in the playoffs. Leading an expansion team to the playoffs, going to the Olympics, and maybe even winning a Cup with an expansion team will be a massive boost for the legacy of a player who is already a star.
Too High/Too Low? I don’t know what the argument could possibly be that Jaques should be lower. There are players with better international experience under her, but Jaques now has two seasons in the best league in the world as a top blueliner. Her last four seasons of play have been incredible. With three championships (NCAA and two PWHL), a Patty Kaz, a Patty Kaz top three finalist, PWHL Defender of the Year top-three nomination, all the stats laid out above, and more, she’s on a roll. If Sarah Fillier didn’t exist, Jaques would be the clear number one, but unfortunately Jaques’ competition is a generational player.
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