New Jersey Devils Hire Meghan Duggan For Front Office Role
The New Jersey Devils announced a major addition to the front office. Meghan Duggan will be added to the Hockey Operations department. It’s the latest in an emerging pattern of NHL teams hiring women’s hockey stars for front office and development roles, including Blake Bolden in Los Angeles and Kendall Coyne Schofield in Chicago.
The Devils’ press release states that she “will work closely with Senior Vice President/Assistant General Manager Dan MacKinnon across all levels of the development department’s operations, with a specific focus on on-ice and off-ice information.” That latter part is more than a bit vague, considering that “on-ice and off-ice information” contains every single piece of information in the known universe, but the release also notes jobs in player development and minor league prospect scouting.
Shortly after the announcement, many Devils fans on Twitter half-joked that she’d be one of the top five players on the team if she joined the roster. There’s a decent chance this is true — not just because of the sorry state of the team, but because she’s just that good overall.
Duggan was one of the faces of American women’s hockey for over a decade, spending much of her time as captain of Team USA. She was a star at the University of Wisconsin, winning the Patty Kazmaier award in 2011. She’s played for the USNWT since 2007, after her freshman year of college, appearing in eight World Championship Tournaments and three Olympic Games. She helped America stay one of the top two teams worldwide, and is one of the most successful players in best-on-best history with eight gold medals and three silver. She was a crucial part of the 2018 Olympic team that brought America the gold for the first time since 1998.
She played professionally in America from 2011 until 2017, spending parts of four seasons with the CWHL’s Boston Blades before joining the NWHL in 2015 and winning the Clarkson Cup twice. She played one season with the Buffalo Beauts before returning to Boston for another, joining the PWHPA afterwards. Duggan retired from hockey in October of 2020.
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Duggan’s married to Gillian Apps, a member of the Canadian National Team — part of the USA vs Canada Women’s Hockey Enemies-To-Lovers Pipeline — and together they have a 15 month old son named George. She is believed to be the first openly gay person to work in an NHL front office.