There is something inside Hayley Wickenheiser that shouts enough is never enough. It's a voice that makes her sharpen her game to a gleaming edge; a need that stretches the limits of her abilities because what she did the day before wasn't enough and more is better, more is power.
It's why she goes to the Pengrowth Saddledome not just to watch the Calgary Flames play but to see them warm up, see how they act, their body language.
It's why she talks with NHL players. Recently, she chatted with Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby and asked how he played against Detroit Red Wings ace Henrik Zetterberg in last spring's Stanley Cup final. She wanted to know every detail she could - "hockey stuff," she called it - and declined to say what she learned.
It's why at home she'll go on her computer not to read e-mails but to watch YouTube.com videos of her hockey idols - Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s.
"I watch Russian Red Army footage, too," said Wickenheiser, who makes mental notes of the players and their moves so she can try them in practice, over and over again.
For more than a decade, the best female hockey player in the world has won Olympic medals and world championships, attended an NHL rookie training camp and scored the first goal by a woman in a professional men's league. But none of that matters now because Wickenheiser wants more. She wants the ultimate prize - a gold medal at a home Olympics - and to achieve it, she must not only remain resolute in her pursuit of perfection, she must work on what she's never had to before.
Being the team leader.
At 31, Wickenheiser understands what it takes to be a top player but now she has to incorporate that with being a captain. It's the newest challenge Wickenheiser has attacked with her trademark tenacity, beginning with phone calls to her mentor, former Philadelphia Flyers captain now senior vice-president Bob Clarke.
Clarke has long been a sounding board for Wickenheiser. The two became friends when they met during the 1998 Olympics in Nagano. Clarke was the general manager of the Canadian men's team; Wickenheiser was 19 and eager to learn about the sport. Clarke invited Wickenheiser to the Flyers rookie camp two years in a row (1998 and 1999). They continue to talk regularly and, lately, the discussions have revolved around one theme.
"A lot of it is about leadership, her role as the best player on the Canadian team," Clarke said. "She wants to know what is good leadership, how the game is played with different styles. She wants to know what you do in certain situations.
"There's no question she's a better hockey player than a lot of NHLers," he added. "Unfortunately, she doesn't have the strength the men do. But the instincts, the feel for the game, all those things, she has that. When you sit down and talk with Hayley, you're talking at a very high level."
Wickenheiser's on-ice skills aren't enough to assure her status as a great leader. She knows that. She knows, too, that leadership comes in all forms and from all kinds - doers, talkers, inspirational opportunists.
Early in her career, Wickenheiser's primary role was to score the big goal. This month at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, she's being counted on to do everything from setting up goals and playing sound defence to reading her teammates' emotions and producing the right response. Now, it's her words that matter as much as her statistics.
It's a heightened responsibility for Wickenheiser, who saw Cassie Campbell and Danielle Goyette do and say all the right things in helping Canada win past Olympic gold. Having been around the world and back, Wickenheiser believes she can earn the faith of her teammates by appreciating them and what they bring to the group.
"I always work at [leadership]" she said. "In Europe [with men's teams] I played every role possible. One game, I'd play a lot of minutes; the next, not so much. I understand the role as a fourth-line player. I've been through it all. You're a captain, but it's not you going out there to win or lose; it's about the team."
Wickenheiser is very much the doer. It's her signature and her attention to detail goes beyond fixation. Like a lot of dedicated hockey players, she's the first on the ice and the last off after practice. One of her rituals is to shoot the puck from all angles, especially off bad passes in her skates or so far behind her she has to reach back, off-balance, before unleashing her shot.
"How many times in a game will the pass be perfect? Pretty rarely," said Goyette, a former teammate who coaches the University of Calgary women's team. "As an athlete, you work on the good things to make yourself feel good. Hayley works on what she's bad at to get better. That's the difference."
Wickenheiser's fortitude has always emboldened her to make a difference. As a nine-year-old forward on a boy's team, she once bumped into an opposing player during a minor hockey game in rural Saskatchewan, knocking him to the ice. As she sat in a dressing room, separated from her male teammates even between periods, Wickenheiser was visited by the angry mother of the boy she'd knocked to the ice.
"Listen, blondie," the incensed mom spat. "Stay away from my son."
Wickenheiser tried to crack a joke. "Well, if he'd get out of the way ..."
The parent just glared. Wickenheiser went back onto the ice and played just as hard.
It was something of the same story years later, when Wickenheiser signed with HC Salamat, a men's pro team in Finland. The head coach of rival Savonlinna of the Suomi-sarja, the third-highest league in the country, said his squad was going to target Wickenheiser and knock the daylights out of her. Before the game, the home team made her change in the same dressing room as its cheerleaders.
Savonlinna lost that night, and Wickenheiser was named player of the game. Her reward? A paper bag full of raw fish.
"My teammates weren't too happy about that," Wickenheiser said. "Was it done on purpose? Who knows? I don't think [the Savonlinna officials]knew I was going to be the player of the game."
If only they'd done their homework.
All those experiences have shaped Wickenheiser and how she hopes to instill confidence and calm into her teammates, without overdoing it. Goyette, who has watched the 2010 Olympic team practice and play, is certain Wickenheiser is making the right adjustments.
"I would say a couple of years ago she wasn't ready [to be captain] But she's aware now of what's around the team and what's the best thing for the team," Goyette said. "She's a complete player now."
Tomas Pacina knows best how Wickenheiser is responding to the changes and the pressure that tags along. The Czech-born coach has worked the women's game and is a skill-development coach for WHL and NHL teams. He and Wickenheiser have been together for 10 years, and are raising Pacina's son, Noah, who turns 10 in April.
Pacina talked about Wickenheiser's perfectionist spirit and her fear of failing. ("That's something she's told me a few times," he admitted.) But most of all, he insisted it was Wickenheiser's commitment to squeezing the absolute most from her skills that defines her as a player and leader.
"It's the way she eats. The way she goes to bed early every night," he said. "She surrounds herself with similar-minded people; people who are high achievers. She has incredible talent and she's doing all she can with it."
Pacina has one wish, though; that Wickenheiser would act more relaxed in front of the media and let her natural sense of humour shine through. Unfortunately for Wickenheiser, casual words can represent casual thoughts and that's not how the best female hockey player in the world wishes to be seen.
"In the right surroundings, around people she trusts, she has a very light side," Pacina said. "She's always light when she's on her grandpa's farm riding horses and doing work. But she has all these official roles and media requests and she's so serious. She sees it as a responsibility to the team and the women's game."
And now the intensity of that duty has multiplied. She is captain of the Canadian women's hockey team gunning for gold at a home Olympics. It's the apex of her career and she has done her homework.
It will have to be enough.