Knight will play for the Boston Pride of the N.W.H.L., the first major professional women’s hockey league to offer salaries. One of the players she advised was Zoe Hickel, a recent graduate of Minnesota-Duluth, who has also moved to Boston.

With the season opening Oct. 11, Knight still worries about her choice. “What if we fall on our faces and I’ve convinced everyone to join a new league?” Knight said. “This is on me, and I would feel awful if that happened. If it fails, it fails. But at least we tried something different.”

As the most marketable player in women’s hockey, with sponsorships and partnerships with Nike, Chobani, Red Bull, GoPro, Casio and the hockey equipment manufacturer STX, Knight is in a stronger financial position than many of her colleagues. But as with any new venture, there are unknowns that even she must grapple with. One of them is what to charge for speaking engagements, a question she often hears from teammates.

“We kind of have to establish a price integrity for ourselves, and figuring out how much you’re worth in a market that doesn’t even exist is very difficult,” Knight said.

The key to growth for women’s hockey is television exposure. The 2014 gold medal game between the United States and Canada drew 4.9 million viewers and doubled the 2010 ratings, according to NBC. U.S.A. Hockey reports that registration for its programs for women and girls rose 3.74 percent from 2013-14 to 2014-15.

In the N.W.H.L., Knight’s name will be one of the first used to sell the league to networks.

“She’s maybe the biggest women’s hockey player namewise in the world,” N.W.H.L. Commissioner Dani Rylan said. “It’s definitely easy to throw that out there and have someone resonate with that.”