While hockey had been her life’s work, it was never her intention to make it a career. Sure, she loved the game, but could she earn a living playing it? Whenever Watts envisioned the lifestyle she wanted to lead and family she hoped to have, she’d been keenly aware that playing professional hockey was not going to help make it a reality.

“I’ve always wanted to have a really great career. I’m really competitive with hockey, so [I wanted] to kind of use that drive, channel that into a new career and see how successful I could be,” she says. “But last year, at the time, I didn’t think that pursuing professional women’s hockey could set me down the path of, you know, achieving a really comfortable lifestyle and also creating wealth for my kids.”

She’d long understood that while her male peers could expect lucrative contracts at various levels of professional hockey, her potential earnings were limited, her dreams fueled by her passion for the game. While the Premier Hockey Federation had made some significant financial strides and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association’s ongoing campaign for a sustainable stage for some of the game’s top players was rumoured to be ever closer to a solution, Watts didn’t view either path as the right one for her.

So, upon the conclusion of her college career, the Division-I standout stepped away from the game. A career in commercial real estate was, she felt, the more financially viable option.

The Toronto native couldn’t know that less than a year later, she’d be stepping onto the ice at York’s Canlan Sports Arena, donning No. 4 as the newest member of the PHF’s Toronto Six. Her contract, a two-year pact made official on Jan. 19, carries an average annual value of $88,500 and pays Watts a record $150,000 for 2023-24 — the highest salary ever announced for a professional women’s hockey player in North America, surpassing the groundbreaking $80,000 deal signed by Buffalo Beauts forward Mikyla Grant-Mentis in September. It’s also the first sign of what player compensation could look like in the wake of the PHF’s December announcement that its $750,000 salary cap for 2022-23 will double to $1.5 million starting next season.

Watts thought she was done with hockey — she thought she had to be. “But the doubling of the salary cap in December kind of changed my perspective,” she says.

That she’s back in the game she loves and building towards the future she wants marks a new chapter, not just for Watts but for elite female hockey players everywhere. She believes her record-setting contract is just the beginning, and that many more of her peers will ink unprecedented deals this summer in what is poised to be the league’s most lucrative off-season yet.

But first, she’s got a championship to play for. And while money talks, she’s hoping her play will speak for itself.

Soon, it was clear that Watts didn’t need to pretend to be a star, she was one. Out there on the ice at rinks across the GTA — while playing on her brother’s minor league team, while rising through the AA system with the Toronto Aeros and Mississauga Chiefs of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League — she was Daryl Watts, member of Team Canada’s U-18 team and future college hockey standout.

“I think when I was really young, I wanted to play in the NHL,” she says. “But then as I got a bit older, I was like, ‘I’m a girl — I can’t play in the NHL, so I’m just going to play because I love hockey.’ And then it was probably, ‘Oh, I want to be an Olympian and go to an NCAA D-I school.’”

Her dad, Michael, recognized his daughter’s talent and love for the game early on and started bringing in skills coaches for her and her brother.

“I would say he’s pretty intense, and my biggest fan,” Watts says of her dad, a corporate lawyer in Toronto. She jokes that he’s felt like her agent from Day One, advocating for his daughter and seeking out every resource available to help her thrive. Mom, Barbara, has also always been supportive of every endeavour, “but I would say my dad’s more intense.

“From really early on, he was putting me in extra skill sessions — like, literally from the time I was five years old. On that backyard rink he built, he would have skating coaches come out for my brother and I, to shoot on the net and all that stuff,” she says.

Watts recalls the first moment her Division-I dream felt within reach. At a summer tournament during her time playing for the Toronto Aeros of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League, an Ivy-League head coach approached her and Michael post-game.

“She talked to my dad in the parking lot and was like, ‘You know, your daughter’s really good … there’s opportunities for her to go to D-I schools.’” Watts says. “That was kind of like a ‘woah’ moment for us, because it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, the best university in the world, they want me to come to their school?’

“That was eye-opening.”

“That really stung,” she says. She pauses, like that first college playoff loss is still fresh, and then describes a scene that’s fueled her ever since. She’d flown to Minnesota for the Kazmaier Award ceremony, held on the Saturday of championship weekend, and after accepting was on a flight back to Boston.

“So I was at home, a Patty Kaz winner … And I just remember [thinking], ‘What does it even mean to be a Patty Kaz if you’re not at the championship weekend with your teammates competing for the title?’

“Like, I would rather have the championship than this title. I was happy … but I wanted more,” she says. “I just had this moment, and I can remember it being like, ‘This is great, but like, I’m not as happy as I should be because I wanted our team to be playing that weekend.”

Her sophomore year ended in similar fashion with another early post-season exit for the Eagles. It also presented Watts with a series of individual setbacks right from the start. The return of a handful of U.S. Olympians post-PyeongChang centralization saw her separated from Lonergan, stripped of her power-play role, and spending half the season on the fourth line with a steep drop in playing time. Still, she led the squad in points. But it was a struggle.

“I wasn’t excited to go to the rink,” says Watts of her sophomore year. “I just kind of fell out of love with hockey.”

She knew she needed to make a change. So, when Lonergan made the decision to enter the transfer portal — a rare move among women’s players, and even rarer among the game’s notable stars — Watts decided she would do the same. Three (nervous) days after declaring her intention to transfer, she heard from the school she’d hoped would come calling: Wisconsin, powerhouse program and reigning national champs.

Like she had at Boston College, Watts wasted no time acquainting herself with her new surroundings upon joining the Badgers, producing offence early and often and leading the team in assists (49) and points (74) while averaging 2.06 points a game and landing herself back in the Patty Kazmaier conversation as a top-10 finalist. When the 2020 NCAA tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19, it meant waiting for another crack at her ultimate goal, but she got there the following spring when, after a condensed regular season, she helped lead Wisconsin to a national championship, topping it off with the overtime game-winner in the final.

“I don’t even know how to describe it,” she says, beaming. “We did what we set out to do, what we’d been working towards for the past two years. It was just incredible.”

By the end of her third year at Wisconsin and fifth college season overall, Watts had put together one of the finest resumes in the game, leading her team in points all five years and finishing as a Patty Kazmaier finalist four times (including another top-three nod in 2020-21). But on that post-loss bus ride to the airport, surrounded by her fellow Badgers, overlooked by Canada’s national women’s team and unable to see a future in which she could make a viable living as a pro, she did what far too many elite female hockey players do before they even have a chance to enter their prime: She made it official and hung up her skates, intent on turning the page.

She’d been accepted into a Master’s program at Wisconsin to pursue commercial real estate, but got cold feet just a few days before she was to start, the decision not quite sitting right with her. Instead, she spent that fall at home in Toronto, wanting to see what else might be out there and looking up programs more closely related to her passions in television and film production.

And then, in December, she saw the news that would change her entire outlook on her future, reopening a door she thought had been locked for good.

“I know that her initial reasoning was because she felt that she couldn’t make a living. A lot of these girls coming out of pretty prestigious schools with great educations, you know, are you gonna play hockey full-time and make $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $70,000, where they can work full-time [outside of hockey], make $100,000, $150,000 and, you know, start their careers?” James says. “Even this year, that was, I think, a bit of a balancing act for even some of our existing players, even though they were making a half-decent wage. But, you know, to give up their careers to play full-time — because the expectations now, on full-time, I don’t think a lot of people understand the grind, what it takes to play professional … You’re expected to be there, whether you’re injured, sick or missing a limb.”

After a positive first phone call in early January, Watts and James spoke again — this time, with Michael taking on the role of agent to talk numbers. Watts had also reached out to other teams — it was initially a four-horse race between Boston, Buffalo, Connecticut and Toronto — but in her mind, Toronto was the one that stood out from the start.

“Right from the beginning, Toronto was my number one choice,” says Watts. While she also looked into the PWHPA — she’d heard the reports over the past year of the association’s plan to launch a league with the help of investors — she never had any talks with the organization, choosing to focus her efforts on the PHF.

“Just the growth of the league impressed me the most, I’d say. What other pro league in the entire world sees growth like this?” she says. “There’s something to believe in there.”

James doesn’t take for granted the fact she’s able to be the one not just rewarding some of the game’s most talented players but bringing them back to the rink overall.

“I just thought it was just absolutely phenomenal, even last year when I just started in the position … the fact that I was able to hand out salaries that I handed out last year for the girls to play hockey,” says James. “We never had a professional league when I was growing up, so the fact that I’m able to still be a part of this journey with the PHF and what they’re doing and the ownerships and the sponsorships and everybody who’s really seeing this league take off.”

James sees Watts’ signing as a continuation of the league’s rapid growth.

“You bring in the salaries, you’re going to attract the talent pool, and then that’s going to elevate the game and that’s going to bring in the sponsorships. And then from there, you elevate again, salaries, you bring in more talent, because this is where people are going to want to play,” she says, adding that Watts’ contract also marked the first time James had signed a player to a two-year deal — another sign of progress. “We’re the only league in existence right now that players are getting paid to play. I think that it’s only going to get larger. We’re going to go through stages where we’re going to maintain, and grow, but we’re only going to get stronger.

“I’m glad that Daryl found the love back. And if it was money that brought her back, well, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that,” says James. “I’m just glad she’s back in the game.”

“It feels good to be rewarded for, I guess, my hockey resumé, my NCAA career, my objective statistics,” she says. “And I think that’s also a great message to players in the NCAA today who are performing at a really high level, like, putting up points: You will be rewarded. Maybe not by the national team, but you’ll be rewarded with a dollar figure for your performance in the way that NHL players are — you know, the highest point-getters in the NHL get the best contracts.

“It’s been fun to talk to some of the younger girls on Wisconsin right now who are really incredible players because it’s like, ‘Look at what’s waiting for you in three years,’” she continues. “It’s just so exciting for them. I’m really trying to encourage them to, you know, keep it up and get rewarded for it.”

Being the PHF’s highest-salaried player isn’t a title Watts ever expected to hold, and she says it’s not one she wants to keep. She hopes this deal opens the door for even bigger contracts to be signed this off-season. “It should be a cycle, the bar raised each time. You see that in the NHL,” she says. “My salary should just continue to push the next deals up and up and up. And we’re not making millions of dollars. It’s still about just trying to have a good lifestyle.”

After a long layoff — between her final game with the Badgers last March and her first practice with the Six in January, Watts hadn’t once laced up her skates — she’s starting to feel more like her old self.

“I’m not at 100 per cent right now, so it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m the highest-paid women’s hockey player — well, you know, I better start performing like it.’ But I’m not trying to be too hard on myself,” she says.

Watts is viewing this stretch of games like a runway on which she’s picking up speed before she really takes off.

“I want to help this team win a championship. Like, what’s better than helping your team win the championship? I feel right now, like, I’m not — and it hurts me to say this — I’m not helping my team win games right now just because I’m not at the level that I want to be at,” she says. “I want to be playing with all my abilities by the time playoffs come.

“I’m just really looking forward to being myself on the ice. It’s been a grind and I’m still not there yet, but hopefully [by the playoffs] I’ll be there.”

James understands Watts will take more time to “get up to game speed.” A major negotiating point, in fact, was her insisting Watts join the team right away — not next season, as was Watts’ initial intention — so she could make an impact come playoff time this spring.  Watts registered her first career assist in her PHF debut on Jan. 21 and scored her first goal in game No. 4 on Feb. 5. Her best outing yet, a two-assist effort against the Minnesota Whitecaps in her 10th game, helped the Six complete the series sweep and clinch a top-two place in the league standings as well as home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. Toronto concludes the regular season at home this weekend against the first-place Boston Pride with the No. 1 seed on the line.

When she’s not on the ice, Watts is working with NHL trainer Gary Roberts to build back the muscle she’d purposely been trying to shed in retirement. She’s excited to see her five-foot-six frame undergo another transformation — one that more closely follows the trend we see in today’s NHL of lean upper-bodies with all the power coming from a strong base.

“I don’t need the big shoulders, the big traps, that I had at Wisconsin. I’m trying to shed that so I’m light, so I’ll be faster,” she says.

As for her competitiveness and desire to win it all? That never left her.

“Playoff hockey is the best time of the year. It’s what you work for from the beginning of the season. I wasn’t there at the beginning of the season, but now I’m here,” she says. “I just think of winning the national championship. That was the best time of my life. So, winning the Isobel Cup, what could be better?”

Watts is embracing the hockey career she earned, but never expected, and now when she looks ahead to her future, she sees that it’s possible to reach her goals on skates.