I Try Not To Talk Trash with Claire Thompson

Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we are still watching that clip of Serena Williams crip walking in the Super Bowl halftime performance, a clapback at critics from the Olympics, and a chance to dog a dude to try to dishear and her husband because he didn't get the girl.

Oh and plus she looked fire doing it. Let's go.

It's Wednesday, February twelveth and on today's show, we're skipping the need to know and jumping right into my chat with Claire Thompson, a defender for the Minnesota Frost of the Pro Women's Hockey League. We talked on Monday about how she's balancing medical school and hockey ambitions preparing for the twenty twenty six Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, her affinity for travel, and her minimal.

Desire to trash talk. That interview is coming up right after this joining us now.

She's an Olympic gold medalist and World champ with Team Canada Hockey, a defender for the Minnesota Frost of the Professional Women's Hockey League, and currently on a little hockey brain from medical school at the NYU Grossman School of medicine, a Princeton Tiger, a fellow Michigan fan despite neither of us attending. She's hung out with sled dogs in Alberta and elephants in Thailand, and she once slept in a sea through pot on the side of a mountain in Peru.

It's Claire Thompson. What's up, Claire?

Hi, thank you for having me.

I gotta start with Michigan.

I chose them after a lengthy process called college Football Bachelorette, wherein I needed to select a football team to root for. Since I went to Cornell and it's not a big college football school, how'd you end up rooting for Michigan?

Michigan was my dream school. We had a tournament in Michigan in ann Arbor when I was in novice, I think I was like eight years old, and we toured the Michigan facilities and went to a men's hockey game there, And from then I was a dead set on going to Michigan, despite them not having a women's team.

Yeah, and then that ended up getting in the way. Do you still feel bad about choosing Princeton over Cornell?

No, not at all.

I was sad in the moment but I'm proud to be prince. Sometimes you got over it.

Okay, okay, important things first, Why are we still calling women and hockey defencemen?

Can we work on that? What's our solution to this?

Yeah, I'm honestly not sure.

I think people try to use the gender neutral term just defense and not put a gender to it.

But yeah, definitely something we could work on.

Yeah, defense woman doesn't have the same ring to it. But also defense doesn't feel grammatically correct sometimes, so I end up just stumbling and saying defencemen and being like, ah, that's not that's not right.

I'm going to work on something to work on.

It's been so great to see you in the PWHL this second season. Can you tell our listeners why you didn't play in year one?

I couldn't play in year one because I was attending medical school and the demands of my clinical training. I just couldn't be at practice and in the hospital at the same time.

So I had to pick one or the other.

And I had kind of already signed up for my year of medical school before the league came together, so it was kind of a wasn't really a decision to be made.

It was just unfortunate. I had to sit out last season.

Yeah, and then there was something with a visa too, where at one point you thought you might be able to do both, and then it kind of threw a wrench in the plans.

Yeah, I was on an F one student visa, so I wasn't able to work a job that wasn't in my field of study.

So I couldn't.

Sign a reserve player contract and be paid to play hockey while my visa was for medicine. So I had to wait a bit to switch my visa and get work authorization and all that. So it never quite came together last season. But for a while I was optimistic that it was going to work out, but it didn't end up happening.

I feel like if this were the much sneakier men's side of sports, they would have just like hired you as a physical therapist, chock it up to a medical gig, and then thrown you out on the ice.

We got, Yeah, we got our sneakiness.

I know, but I didn't. You know, immigration and everything. It's pretty serious stuff. So I didn't want to do anything that would like jeopardize my future abilities to work or to play in the United States, so I went by the book and waited the lengthy process of acquiring

That seems like the smart move.

I'm starting to understand why you're becoming a doctor ninety ninth percentile in the MCATs.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a good test day for me. I yeah, I don't know it worked out.

You got lucky?

Sure, Yeah, nobody believes that clear. Okay, So, how tough was it to put medical school on hold and enter the league? Like, obviously there's a time limit for hockey in a different way than there is for medicine, but that's also something that requires a tremendous amount of work and effort, and to be in the middle of it and have to part with either.

How tough was that?

It was pretty tough.

It was a sad realization that the people I started medical school with and some of my best friends right now wouldn't be the people I would graduate with and wouldn't be the people that you know, you go through all those milestones of taking your board exams together and applying to residency and matching and all of that, all

And so it was kind of I.

Had two worlds to choose from, and knowing I had amazing people in both places, in two areas I wanted to be a part of.

It was I was so grateful for the time I got.

To spend with my med school classmates and getting to know them and stuff, but I was more than happy to come back and be alongside all my hockey teammates and everything. So I just really grateful to have such amazing people that made making a decision so so hard.

Yeah, it feels like there's the similar bonding probably with classmates in medical school, like not real trauma bonding, but like it's stressful. There's a lot of tough days and big tests and long night studying. Does it feel similar to some of the bonds you make with teammates when you're doing like super hard workouts and getting ready for stressful tournaments.

Yeah, for sure, I think. Yeah, whenever you're kind of put in the same positions as other people, and those are the people you lean on because of shared experiences and shared understanding of what you're going through in the stressors you're facing. It's hard not to get very close

Of the time.

Yeah, it's very similar to being on a team and working together to get through it, to get through those tests and all of that. So yeah, you definitely form really close bonds to people, and it makes the experience that much better because of the people. But yeah, I would say I never really thought of it like they were my teammates. But they were my teammates, those yaws going through all of all of those hardships together.

This feels like a TV show.

I can't believe it hasn't been made yet that there isn't a show about the medical school side of medicine. When you all live in an apartment together. There's like a million medical shows, and where there's one of the doctors that also goes to hockey practice every day. I think we need to pitch this, Claire, this is yeah, all right, we.

Need to pitch this. Do you know what type of medicine you want to specialize in?

Yeah, I'm fairly certain I want to do orthopedic surgery.

Cool gosh, I just it's so overwhelming to even think about trying to balance all your ambitions in one place and another. Was there ever a point when you felt like it was sort of incompatible to be as ambitious as you are in both spaces.

I'm not really, I think I you know, I haven't really hit a point yet. I mean, I guess last year you could say I wasn't able to do both, but I still knew, like I was still playing hockey and practicing, and I knew I was gonna come back to the p WHL, And so no, there's never really been a point where I haven't thought it was possible

But so far it's been going well.

I was listening to on the Jackson Jills podcast and I noticed that Tessa said when she walked up to start the interview, she joked that were you studying and you said, yes, So are you still sort of maintaining this through line of medical study behind the scenes just so that you're ready to go when you head back.

Yeah?

I am doing a bit of work on the side. I have to take one of my more important board exams. I'm probably going to try to take that in the spring, so I study a little bit each day for that, just so that when I sit down and start studying again for it, truly it's stuff is still fresh and there's you know, a lot of time across the days that I can just put a little bit in and chip away at the large amount of content that I

Unbelievable.

So when you were trying to do a little of both, what does a day in your life look like? Because I feel like it's got to be a lot of discipline to get you know, your time management and everything handled so you can get it all in in twenty four hours.

Yeah, it kind of depended.

Last year I was on my clinical rotation, so even within those rotations, the days looked very different from being in the OAR in early starts and rounding on patients to then other days when I was in the clinic and it was more of like a nine to five picture, but it kind of you know, I would wake up, try to get a little bit of work done if I didn't have to be in the hospital too early, go to the hospital, be a part of the team that I was assigned to, and just try to help

But it's busy as a med student.

But I you know, I've been fortunate that my trainer from home was really great about programming my lifting schedule and you know, making the most of like the hour I had each day to work out and then I would have to dedicate a bit more time to practice days where I had to travel.

More and stuff.

But I was really fortunate that the people were in my life were able to be flexible with me and allow me time to get my studying done because that was really important to me. But then also find you know, make time to get the workouts done and stay in shape and as.

Best as I could coming back into the league.

Yeah, it's just a constant re upping, both physically and mentally of everything you can within a certain day to keep it as fresh as possible. You know, before the PWHL, one of the things that the previous women's hockey leagues didn't have was something that seems pretty basic in retrospect, a team physician.

You're young enough that you didn't play.

In those other leagues, but I'm wondering how your time in medical school has sort of informed or understanding of what medical standards in women's hockey should look like.

Yeah, I you know, I think that the PWHL has

Yeah.

I love that you could also sort of either self diagnose if you start to feel something, or your teammates might come to and be like, Okay, how serious is this? Should I go to the trainer or should I just play through it like you're like a little doogie house around the ice. I keep using that reference for young people and no one knows what it means. That is a very old show about a doctor who is like fifteen.

Yeah, okay, we got to take a quick break. When we come back more with Claire Thompson. Sit tight, I want to talk hockey.

You're the Olympic record holder for points by a defender in a single tournament. You finish the Beijing Games with the highest plus minus rating of anyone in the tournament, with the plus twenty three. You've got the twenty twenty six Olympics next year. How is twenty twenty six next year already? That's insane. How does the existence of the PWHL and this league that you're getting constant reps in change your preparation on your training compared to prior games.

Yeah, I think it's really changed the landscape a lot in previous years. The Canadian and US national teams will centralize before so we'll all move to the same place for the months leading up and practice and train together every day, which I think helps us put in a ton of time and getting reps together. Whereas next year we won't step.

Away from the league.

All the players will play for their clubs and then come out and just it'll be a shorter run up to the Olympics, so I think that it's going to look a little different. We haven't you know, we haven't been named to the team or even to the pool yet, and we don't know what the schedule is going to look like. But I know that there are a lot of people working very hard behind the scenes to make

Yeah, speaking of that, you played with Team Canada in the rivalry series that recently wrapped up. Has it been different playing against the US now that you regularly play with and against so many familiar faces in the PWHL.

Yeah, this was this past week was my first time kind of playing against the Americans that I had gotten to know so well over this year, and I think it is a bit different.

It's harder to be mean to them. I always have a hard time.

With that, but you know, I think you tend to when you practice with people day and day out and you see the habits and like the little things that they do so well that you maybe wouldn't have never

It's like the famous Mark Twain quote, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness. Like when you finally meet the people that you think you hate you're like, oh, they're just like me. It's like you're like, darn it, it's so hard to hate the US.

They're my teammates. Now I love them.

Is there a lot of trash talk with the Frost though, because you've got folks like Kendall Quoinschofield against whom you've played in the Olympics, in World Championships, have like been like out to get and now every day you're in the same locker room, like rallying together to get a win.

Yeah. I think we.

I think people do a good job kind of of separating those like national allegiances when it comes to Frost play. I know that we're all united in the same goal of achieving the Walter Cup this year, and everyone's very dedicated towards that. And then in the weeks we take off, you know, we're then part of our national teams and were competitors there. But then as soon as we're back together again in the hotel, it's like nothing has changed.

Even when you're the enemy, even when you're like, what if you didn't make the game, that'd be cool too, it'd be.

Easier, exactly exactly.

So, this is your first year in the PWTEL. You were drafted third overall in June. How is it matched or differed from your expectations?

Yeah?

I think I tried to not have too many expectations going into the league. I knew I had taken a year off. I tried to be kind on myself with where I came back into the play. But the league has, you know, far exceeded my expectations in terms of professionalism, in terms of the competitiveness of the games. The fans are way more than I could have ever hoped and dreamed for. We were really lucky to participate in the Takeover Tour in Denver, and it was a dream come

And you mentioned you had to offer yourself grace after a year off, but you're doing pretty well. You've been among the top point scorers in the PWHL all season despite playing defense. Why do you think such immediate success despite the break.

I think I was very fortunate to come into a team with a lot of very skilled goal scorers. You'll see my points are a little skewed. I have a lot of assists in not very many goals, which.

Is how I tend to roll.

And I think just putting the puck on people's sticks and letting them go to work has been the key to my success, I guess.

But yeah, it's just I.

Think coming in the team is amazing. The girls work so hard day in and day out, and I'm fortunate to play with a lot of very talented people that make my job really easy.

So it's been It's been fantastic so far.

Your teammate at Princeton and Team Canada, Sarah Filier described your style of play to the Athletics Hailey Salvian as quote a little reckless, but in the most poised way possible.

Would you say that's accurate?

Maybe?

I guess people I think I'm a little unpredictable sometimes in my D zone, which I think people think is maybe a little reckless, but I try to keep it under control and make good defensive decisions in situations. And I've been, you know, over the past few years, really working harder to clean up my defensive game and be a little more intentional about where.

I take risks and stuff.

But Sarah has been a fantastic friend and teammate for many, many years, and so honestly, that's high praise coming from her.

Where does that style come from?

Like, in my brain, my assumption is that you're ten steps ahead of everybody else because of that big old brain of yours, and so sometimes people see it as reckless, but you're actually seeing things that they're not seeing. Do you think that's where the quote unquote recklessness comes from.

Potentially, I think some of it comes I came from playing as a forward. I played forward until my last two years of high school, and so I think that some of the skills I developed as a forward in ways to be people in one on one situations to open up another play or not maybe the most conventional things to do in the D zone because they're kind of seen as higher risk, right plays like toe dragging someone in your D zone is generally not what you.

Should be doing.

You should probably just move the puck to the wall.

And so I think that my tendencies to do some of these higher risk moves, just from how I was brought up, tend to happen without really thinking. I don't really think that this is the best decision I have.

It's just what I do right, and usually.

It pans out. Yeah, it's just my instincts. I don't really know what to do about it, but thankfully it works out most of the time. I only do it when I have to, I guess, or when I just think I need to.

So, you know, why'd you make the switch to defense? I just said it like a Canadian defense.

Sorry.

Yeah, I was a kind of defensive minded center. I was more of a playmaking center, and I was not I mean, I scored a fair amount, but I always just felt very responsible and I enjoyed playing defense, and my dad and my coach at the time thought that my skill set and my tendencies would translate very well into being.

An offensive defenseman, and that.

As you go up and up, the people that become these responsible centers are actually people who were prolific goal scorers in their younger days as well, and so we just thought that my skill set would translate better to being an offensive defenseman, which I guess they were right about, but it was really my dad and my coach's idea at the time.

Okay, we've been talking for like twenty four minutes. Your humility is very appropriate for someone who wants to be a doctor and help people, for someone who wants to be on defense and be supportive for the team, less of the glory, more of the the for.

The overall team.

And now I'm starting to wonder where does Claire become raggedocious or swaggy in what part of your life are you ever showing that side of yourself that's like, I'm of gold medal winning doctor to be who's a pretty badass, you know, I.

Think that not many places.

I think.

I think sometimes I try to use my previous accomplishments to prop up my confidence when I been making some poor plays and I'm like, this isn't like you've done a lot, You're still that person. You can be that person like this was like one wrong decision, but nine out of ten times that pays off. And I use that to kind of keep myself going when I start to feel like I'm you know, my confidence is starting

Circumstantial my family.

I was just at breakfast with my parents and we were talking about how fortunate I was to be in the places that I was as a minor hockey player and have access to the you know, skills coaches. I just got luck. I truly just got lucky that I was in the right place at the right time, and so I keep.

Trying to be in the right places at the right times.

But I know that I wouldn't be who I am without the people around me, and so I just try to remain very very grateful for all that I've been given and all that I've had access to.

It's an incredible perspective to have at your age, and it's so helpful to finding joy in life and being grateful at all times. I think it's going to serve you so well. Can you talk shit though? Do you ever talk shit?

Maybe? Sometimes?

Let's hear it? Yeah, what's your go to? What's your go to? Trash talk?

Oh?

I try not to trash talk on the ice.

I usually, I don't know.

Sometimes people say things to me and I'm just like, I don't even know why you're saying that to me.

It really doesn't affect me. I don't know.

Sometimes I ask them how many shifts they've had this game. If it's like someone who's pretty random, Oh, okay, there, it is the meanest thing I'll say.

But if like, I'll never instigate. You know.

It's only if someone's like cross tracking me in front of the net and I'm like, what are you doing out here? Like you're just hurting me for no reason.

That's when I might say something. If they're yelling at me too.

Honestly, the most annoying thing for trash talkers is someone who is unfazed and so you're winning.

You're winning.

If you're like, I don't even know why you're saying that, it has no effect on me.

That's amazing.

Your teammates call you human chat GPT. When do they most often call on you to like repeat something or interpret something for them?

Yeah, it's sometimes when there's been like a long meeting full of logistical stuff. We've had some recent like updates to taxes and that sort of thing, and so they're like, Oh, Claire, like, what's the what are the quick hits on on what's going on?

Give us the bullet points exactly.

And so it's kind of in those situations that they like to be like, oh, Claire, like, what are we doing here?

But no, they're great, it's all in good fun.

It sounds like an excuse to just get you to do their work for them and be the one who has to listen carefully.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe it's probably a medium for them for me to summarize it, but.

I don't I don't mind.

I like to, you know, get my information straight from the source and kind of do it myself.

So I don't have a screible memory, right, Your memory is just insane?

Yeah, apparently it works. It works pretty well, I'll say.

Yeah, Okay, final question for you. I was scrolling through your Instagram and you look.

Like a travel influencer, like the just unbelievable trips and adventures I mentioned sleeping in that pod that's like see through, floating off the side of a mountain, like unbelievable. So jealous of some of the adventures that you've had. What was your favorite trip or maybe the wildest activity.

Sleeping in that pod, hanging off the side in Peru that was that's probably up there. And then on that same trip, we hiked the Salkin Tae Pass to Machu Pichu, which was amazing. We grew up in glaciers and down in rainforests. That was probably the most complete, amazing trip. And then I was also in Thailand a few years ago and that was really special. With the elephants down on the beaches in the rainforests, it was really special. Yeah, I would say probably the most complete trip Peru. But

Yeah.

Well, honestly, it feels like you have it all figured out, Claire. I'm super excited to see what's next for you. I can't say I'll root for you in the Olympics, but I will hope that you do your best and then the USA wins, and excited to watch more of you in the PWHL and just see, like what amazing things you contribute to the world, because it feels like you're destined to.

Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. But go Ken go.

Thanks so much to Claire for joining us.

I don't know about you, guys, but after talking to her, I would definitely trust her as my surgeon.

An exceptional human.

We got to take another break when we come back. Have I reevaluated my relationship to trash talking Welcome back slices. We love that you're listening but we want you to get in the game every day too, So here's our good gameplay of the day. Support our new friend and tune in for Claire's next game, her Minnesota Frost play the Ottawa Charge tomorrow at seven pm. You can catch

There's not a mean bone in her body. Review what a genuinely kind soul.

I mean, seriously, like really resonated, even though we did the interview via computer. And for someone that young to have like this self awareness that trash talk is kind of more distraction than a tool that is really admirable. Now does that mean I'm.

Gonna stop trash talking anytime soon?

Definitely not no, But I do love that Claire keeps the main thing the main thing and does it her way. Kudos to her all of my enemies. Sorry, you're not off the hook. Now it's your turn, rate and review. Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good game, Claire, Good game, Team Canada. I guess you only twenty four hours in a day. Some of us want to be doctors and Olympic hockey players.

Okay.

Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iheartwomen's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rutterer, Britney Martinez, and Grace Lynch.