U.S.A. hockey’s Alex Carpenter is out, married and looking for her first Olympic gold
Carpenter, a seven-time IIHF World champion, gets her third crack at Olympic gold with Team USA. The post U.S.A. hockey’s Alex Carpenter is out, married and looking for her first Olympic gold appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
Name: Alex Carpenter
Country: USA
Sport: Hockey
Previous Olympic experience: Beijing 2022, Sochi 2014
Social Media: Instagram
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Who Is Alex Carpenter?
Alex Carpenter has the lineage of American hockey royalty. The daughter of New Jersey Devils legend and three-time Stanley Cup champion Bobby Carpenter has carved her own path of glory on the ice over the last 15-plus years, but still points to her father and her formative years as fostering her love for the sport.
“My dad would build us rinks and we’d get to go out all the time and just play,” Carpenter told Warrior Hockey last year when asked about her favorite hockey memory. “We’d have so many friends over from our teams and it would be full on five-on-five with three subs and all that. We would have a big crowd out there until one or two in the morning in the backyard.”
Carpenter’s legacy already boasts seven IIHF World championships between 2013 and 2025, an IIHF U-18 World championship and two Olympic silver medals in her previous Olympic appearances, where she was the only out LGBTQ player on the team at the time.
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3 out LGBTQ players on U.S. women’s Olympic hockey roster, including one dating another Olympian
Captain Hilary Knight is joined by her Seattle Torrent teammates Alex Carpenter and Cayla Barnes on the confirmed roster.
That won’t be the case this year in Milan as Hilary Knight and Cayla Barnes join Carpenter to round out a trio of LGBTQ representation on the team after coming out publicly after the 2022 games.
Carpenter showed strength over the years in giving sapphic fans an athletically excellent face to root for through her actions more than anything. She and her wife, Toronto Marlies assistant equipment manager Steph Klein, celebrated their engagement shortly before Carpenter’s silver medal run with Team USA at the Beijing Games.
The veteran forward is a key figure in building the profile of women’s hockey domestically in recent years as professional women’s sports enjoyed new levels of national popularity. Currently playing for the Seattle Torrent in the PWHL, Carpenter ranks fourth all-time in points in PWHL history.
Alex Carpenter at the Milan Winter Olympics
The long list of accolades littering Carpenter’s trophy case has one glaring hole that the 31-year-old has a chance to rectify in February: an Olympic gold medal.
It’s the only major international prize that has eluded her, but it is also the only one that Team USA hasn’t taken home on the worldwide stage in nearly a decade. The last gold medal win for the American women came in 2018, the same year that Carpenter was shockingly left off the Olympic roster despite being regarded as one of the top players in the world at the time.
Olympic dreams realized.
The 23 members of the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team got the call and are headed to Milan!#MilanoCortina2026 | @Honda pic.twitter.com/jO9WbK26uW— USA Hockey (@usahockey) January 2, 2026
The goal of bringing home America’s third gold medal in women’s hockey and Carpenter’s first will likely mean another clash with the buzzsaw known as Team Canada. The two nations are the only two teams to medal in every Olympic Games since women’s hockey was added in 1998 and have played each other in every gold medal game except for 2006, the last time the Winter Olympics were held on Italian soil.
Carpenter played a key role in Team USA’s clashes with the Maple Leaf-laden crew in 2022, scoring a go-ahead power play goal in their group play game and assisting on Amanda Kessel’s late goal during America’s comeback attempt in the gold medal game.
Carpenter has four points, including two goals, in four Olympic contests against Team Canada but has yet to play on a team that beat Team USA’s neighbors to the north in Olympic play. There is little doubt that Carpenter will be up for the challenge again with multiple first-time achievements in her sight.
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The post U.S.A. hockey’s Alex Carpenter is out, married and looking for her first Olympic gold appeared first on Outsports.
