State champion, IIHF Under-18 gold medalist and now Minnesota Gopher, Peyton Hemp has been on fire her freshman year. The Andover native has tallied 12 goals and 19 assists totaling 31 points this season.
Playing on a line with two seniors, Emily Oden and Amy Potomak, Hemp doesn’t shrink but stands out.
Emily Oden told the Forum News Service, “Peyton plays with a lot of confidence. She knows her abilities and what she’s good at, and she plays to what she knows she can do. Peyton knows she’s a fast, strong skater, so she plays to those abilities and keeps things simple. She doesn’t try to do things that aren’t necessarily in her toolbox.”
“She plays in every situation and she’s got a really good 200 foot game,” Gophers head coach Brad Frost said. “She backtracks well, she uses her speed and gets the puck to the net. Normally it takes a semester for freshman, in particular Minnesota freshman, to get into the groove of things but she jumped in right away.”
Fifth-year co-captain Emily Brown agreed with Frost, saying, “there really doesn’t feel like there’s that five year age gap.”
Hemp did jump in right away, scoring the Gophers’ first goal of the season against Ohio State on Oct. 1.
“The first goal took a lot of weight off my shoulders because that’s something that every freshman thinks about,” Hemp said. “I was definitely more comfortable after that.”
Currently, Hemp is fifth on the Gophers in goal scoring and points. She has additionally won WCHA Rookie of the Month in October and November and has locked in two WCHA Rookie of the Week honors with one of those weeks having her score her first-career multi-goal game versus Bemidji State.
“As a defense there’s certain players you don’t want to match up against in practice, and Peyton is definitely one of them,” Brown said. “She can break free at any point and really work for it due to her speed and good vision of the ice. She has a knack for getting into dangerous areas of the ice where goals are usually scored and you can see that through her score sheet this season.”
Hemp was on Frost’s radar for a long time during the recruiting process, being on top of her age group in Minnesota and winning 2021 Minnesota Ms. Hockey.
“When it was permissible we were able to get her on a visit and we had a great visit with her, talking about our culture and what we, the Gophers, want to be about, and she wanted to be a part of it,” Frost said.
Frost also noted that Hemp is super competitive, hard and strong on the puck, quick, has a good release and plays an honest game where she stays above the puck and doesn’t cheat. Sizing up Hemp to other players he’s seen, Frost said senior forward Catie Skaja would be the closest comparison.
Off the ice, the transition towards school hasn’t been quite as smooth for Hemp, a biology major, who wants to go into a career in the medical field.
“The first semester kinda kicked me in the butt,” said Hemp, whose dream job is to become a dermatologist. “I’m figuring it out now, but that was a big adjustment for me.”
