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Kendall Coyne, Patty Kazmaier Award winner and Olympic silver medalist announced Thursday evening via Twitter that she would join the Minnesota Whitecaps and its complement of national team players for the upcoming 2016-2017 season.

Excited to announce I will be playing for the @WhitecapsHockey this season! #midwestroots — Kendall Coyne (@KendallCoyne) July 28, 2016

Coyne, a 2016 Northeastern University graduate, was a first-round pick by the NWHL’s Boston Pride. The NWHL is the first women’s league to pay its players to play and bills itself as the first pro women’s hockey league. Given that the majority of her Team USA teammates signed with the NWHL en masse last season and many of them are located in Boston, media and fans alike believed it likely Coyne would stick around Boston to play for the Pride or the CWHL’s Boston Blades.

Instead, the Illinois native’s tweet indicated that she was heading to the Whitecaps because of the team’s location, a fact she emphasized by ending her tweet with #midwestroots.

The Pride has already lost its second-round pick, Canadian national team goaltender and Harvard graduate Emerance Maschmeyer, to the 2016 CWHL Draft. Coyne’s decision to not sign with the NWHL team out of Boston will leave the Pride with greater cap space available to pay its players but certainly puts a crimp in the vision general manager Hayley Moore had for her team.

On Minnesota, Coyne will see a reduced playing schedule, with games scheduled between September and February. The Whitecaps played only 12 games last year, far fewer than the 21 games she would see in the CWHL or 22 in the NWHL over the next season. While Coyne will not be paid for her play, like she would in the NWHL, she will have her travel fully covered by the Whitecaps, as well as an opportunity to be close to home while she trains.

Several national team players have taken this tack in approaching training and find the Whitecaps the most expedient solution to the issue of Olympic training, among them, the Lamoureux twins, Jessie Vetter and Anne Schleper.

Kendall Coyne announces she will join Minnesota Whitecaps