Hayley Williams

Hayley Williams (born June 3, 1990) is a Hungarian-American professional ice hockey player and member of the Hungarian national team, currently playing in the European Women's Hockey League (EWHL) with HK Budapest.

With their signings announced by the Beauts at the same time, she and UMass Minutemen alumna Paige Harrington became the first former ACHA players to sign in the league and the first in any North American women's professional league since the 2002–03 season.

At the 2008 USA Hockey Girls 19U National Championships in West Chester, Pennsylvania, she scored the winning goal in triple overtime to help the Mission – a team also featuring future Olympians Megan Bozek and Kendall Coyne – down Little Caesars for the national title.

Despite going 3–22–3 overall in 2008–09 and being a unanimous WCHA last-place pick for 2009–10, the Beavers made history during the league playoffs.

With Williams in the lineup for both wins, Bemidji State University (BSU) rallied to defeat St. Cloud State in the best-of-three opening round of the WCHA tournament, snapping a 14-game playoff losing streak and advancing to the WCHA Final Face-Off for the first time in program history.

However, her time with the Beavers was derailed by academic issues, and Williams ultimately played only 16 games with BSU.

Williams committed to play NCAA Division I hockey with the Bemidji State Beavers women's ice hockey program and immediately contributed to a successful 2009–10 season.

Despite leaving the hockey team after 2009–10, Williams remained enrolled at Bemidji through the summer of 2012, including playing outfield for the Beavers softball team during the 2011 season.

By the fall of 2012, Williams had moved home to the Chicago area, and began volunteering for the USHL's Chicago Steel which, at the time, played its home games at Edge Ice Arena in Bensenville, Illinois.

Through a chance meeting with a former teammate who went on to play for Robert Morris University Illinois (RMU; which shared Edge Ice Arena with the Steel), Williams wound up enrolling at RMU and practicing with the Robert Morris Eagles women's ice hockey team during the 2012–13 season.

She represented the United States in the women's ice hockey tournaments at the 2013 Winter Universiade and the 2015 Winter Universiade, winning a bronze medal in 2013.

Williams spent most of her youth career with Team Illinois, before finishing with the Chicago Mission as an under-19 (19U) player.

She then joined the Eagles' full roster for 2013–14, marking an official return to college hockey after a three-and-a-half year absence.

Williams immediately found chemistry with one of the Eagles' established stars, Ramey Weaver.

The pair would go on to form two-thirds of the ACHA's best line, as each earned a spot on the ACHA's first All-American team and the duo finished 1-2 among the national scoring leaders.

Williams scored 34 goals and 73 points that season in route to winning the Zoë M. Harris Award as the ACHA's Player of the Year.

Weaver, who wound up her career after 2013–14 as Robert Morris' all-time leading scorer, added 32 goals and 55 points.

The Eagles largely breezed through their regular season schedule.

With Williams putting up nine games with four points or more (including one late-season stretch where she accomplished the feat four times in five games), and delivering late winning goals against Colorado State and Adrian on two of the few occasions RMU was seriously challenged.

The Eagles were 22–5–4 during the regular season, good for second in the Central Collegiate Women's Hockey Association (CCWHA) behind Miami, and were ranked third or fourth in the ACHA throughout the entire year.

Things abruptly turned south at playoff time however, as RMU was eliminated in the pool round at both the CCWHA playoffs and the ACHA National Tournament.

Williams, for her part, was named first team all-tournament at both events after posting 12 points in six games between the two.

Williams transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio for the 2014–15 season, adding even more firepower to a RedHawks team that had quickly risen to prominence to win both the CCWHA and ACHA titles in 2013–14.

With Miami, Williams largely picked up where she left off the year before, putting up 15 points in her first four games of the season as the RedHawks routed Lindenwood–Belleville and Midland.

She got even better in November as the games got tougher, taking home the ACHA's Harrow Player of the Month award by scoring seven goals as Miami defeated a string of top teams including UMass (in a rematch of the 2014 national championship game), Adrian, Minnesota, and Liberty.

Williams then burned her old RMU team for a goal in each game of a sweep in December, and delivered a two-goal, two assist effort in a 7–4 win over Rhode Island.

During most of the ACHA National Tournament at York City Ice Arena in York, Pennsylvania, Miami looked like a safe bet to repeat its 2014 title.

Despite a tie with Adrian, the RedHawks won Group B with wins over Minnesota and Michigan, then had little issue with Grand Valley State in a crossover semifinal.

In the final however, Liberty scored three goals during one 64-second first-period stretch, outweighing Williams' second-period goal as the Flames won their first national championship by a 4–1 count.

Despite the setback, and for the second straight year, Williams conducted a clean sweep of the major national honors.

She was once again voted as the Zoë M. Harris Award winner after a combined total of 59 points, becoming just the second player at the Division 1 level to earn the award twice (another player has accomplished the feat since), while also winning first team all-season and all-tournament honors for both the ACHA and CCWHA.

The RedHawks were the wire-to-wire number one team and only lost twice during the regular season, a January defeat at home to Penn State (Miami's first loss in more than one calendar year) and another the next month against Michigan State, although Williams and four other key RedHawks missed the latter contest while at the 2015 Winter Universiade tournament in Spain.

The quintet then returned for the CCWHA playoffs, in time to help the team win a second consecutive league title with a 4–2 win over Michigan, with Williams contributing a goal and an assist in the championship game.

Williams scored her first NWHL goal on November 22, 2015, burying to tie a game against the Connecticut Whale at 6–6 with 3:23 remaining in the second period, although the Whale would go on to win in a shootout.

She added four assists while playing in 17 of the Beauts' 18 regular season games.

She previously played in the Zhenskaya Hockey League (ZhHL), the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), and the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL), and is a three-time professional all-star, having been selected to the 2016 NWHL All-Star Game as well as the 2019 and 2020 ZhHL All-Star Games.

Williams represented Hungary at the IIHF Women's World Championship in 2022 and 2023.

Williams went on to complete her Bachelor of Science degree from Miami in Kinesiology, through the Sport Leadership and Management program with a Coaching concentration, in 2016 while playing professional hockey.

After learning of the launch of a new North American women's professional league, the National Women's Hockey League (rebranded as the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) in 2021), Williams attended free agent camps during the summer of 2015 ahead of the NWHL's inaugural season, eventually earning a contract with the Buffalo Beauts.

A fan vote determined the last four participants in the 1st NWHL All-Star Game on January 24, 2016, and, after receiving 6,384 votes, Williams was added to Team Knight, an All-Star team captained by Team USA and then-Boston Pride player Hilary Knight.