Taylor Baker (ice hockey)

Taylor Samantha Baker (born July 30, 1997) is a Hungarian-Canadian ice hockey defender for New York of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) and member of the Hungarian national team.

Playing career
Baker began playing ice hockey early in her childhood, around 3 or 4 years of age, and developed on minor teams in her home city of Toronto. Her junior career was played with the Toronto Jr. Aeros in the Provincial Women's Hockey League (Provincial WHL). She played one regular season game with the Jr. Aeros in the 2012–13 and 2013–14 Provincial WHL seasons before fully joining the team for the 2014–15 season. Across her final two seasons with the team, 2014–15 and 2015–16, she scored 10 goals and 19 assists for 29 points in 72 games and racked up 62 penalty minutes. During Baker’s four seasons with the Jr. Aeros, the team's roster featured a number of future Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) and Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) players, including Jessie Eldridge, Loren Gabel, Mikyla Grant-Mentis, Emma Greco, Sarah Knee, Daryl Watts, and Breanne Wilson-Bennett.

NCAA
Her college ice hockey career was played with the RIT Tigers women's ice hockey program in the College Hockey America (CHA) conference of the NCAA Division I during 2016 to 2020. A traditional stay-at-home defenceman, Baker amassed modest collegiate statistics in offensive categories but was a standout in blocked shots. She led the team in her first season with 60 blocked shots and tallied 49 and 45 blocked shots respectively in the following two seasons.

Professional
The end of Baker’s college career coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in North America. Options to play in Canada or the United States were suddenly in short supply, so she pursued opportunities in Europe and opted to sign with the women’s ice hockey team of MAC Budapest, which plays in the European Women's Hockey League (EWHL) and the Női OB I bajnokság. She played the 2020–21 season and 2021–22 season with MAC Budapest.

Returning to Canada after six years playing abroad, Baker signed with the PHF's newest expansion team, the Montreal Force, one day before the 2022–23 PHF season began. That season, she and Christine Deaudelin tied as the Force’s top scoring defencemen, with 9 points each.

International play
Baker was offered Hungarian citizenship and the chance to compete with the Hungarian national team while playing with MAC Budapest. She made her debut with the Hungarian national team in the qualification tournament for the 2022 Winter Olympics, at which Hungary narrowly missed qualifying. Her first IIHF Women's World Championship was the 2022 Top Division tournament in Denmark and she also represented Hungary at the 2023 Top Division tournament.

Personal life
Baker was born on July 30, 1997, in Toronto to Nancy and Peter Baker. One of three siblings, she has two brothers.

She earned a bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and is pursuing a MBA with a concentration in sports business at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Baker holds multiple citizenship – Canadian by birth and Hungarian via naturalization. She does not speak Hungarian.