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Rheaume, 28, has only seen the rough cut of Manon Rheaume, Woman Behind the Mask (Thursday, 9 p.m. EDT, WTN), but she said she felt validated by what she saw.
The documentary focuses more on her hockey career and less on the hype that surrounded the first woman to appear in an NHL hockey game.
"That made me feel good because I know through all those years a lot of people thought I was doing it for publicity and lot of people thought I shouldn't be playing," Rheaume said Tuesday from California.
"They (producers) really wanted to show me as a hockey player and what I did as a hockey player."
The influence of her family -- brother Pascal plays for the St. Louis Blues -- and her current role as a wife to husband Gerry St. Cyr, a member of Canada's roller hockey team, and mom to infant son Dylan are addressed in the show.
But the bulk of the documentary charts her rise from being the first female to appear in the Quebec international peewee tournament through her years in the Tampa Bay Lightning's organization to her successes and disappointments with the Canadian women's hockey team.
The one-hour documentary, a joint effort of the National Film Board of Canada, Voice Pictures and Les Productions Colin Neale, doesn't shy away from the tears she shed when she was cut from the Canadian women's team in 1997 or her irritated answers to embarrassing media questions when she played for Tampa Bay's farm team in Atlanta.
Rheaume, who is from Lac-Beauport, Que., but now lives in Las Vegas, was interested in the documentary's interviews with former Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Phil Esposito, who put her in an NHL exhibition game in 1992.
Esposito speaks candidly about the attitude of the Tampa Bay coaches at the time -- "They thought it was a joke," he said -- and his regret leaving her in the American Hockey League where she hardly ever played when she could have been playing more in the lower East Coast Hockey League.
"Just to see him Phil Esposito talking, I'd never heard any of his interviews," said Rheaume.
"I knew he really cared about me when I was there in Tampa Bay. He always helped me out and cared about the person and not making money for his team, even if he knew it would bring money and publicity."
The documentary concludes open-ended because Rheaume's story is still being written.
She is at a crossroads in her hockey career and will decide in the next few months if she will work towards making the Canadian women's team for the 2002 Olympics. She was Canada's goaltender in the 1998 final when Canada took the silver medal.
"I need to decide if that's what I want to do and if it is, I have to commit full time on the ice and off the ice every single day until then," she said.
She is currently involved in starting line of women's hockey equipment with Mission Hockey and there is the prospect of doing television work for ESPN.
Rheaume was not part of the Canadian team that won a gold medal at the women's world championship in March, but she did not expect to make this year's squad after taking a year off to have Dylan.
"I knew the year after I had a baby I wouldn't be there," she said. "I went to camp to get back in shape."
She splits her time between Orange County, Calif., where Mission Hockey is based, and Las Vegas.
Rheaume tends goal for senior men's teams in both cities and also plays for a women's roller hockey team in Las Vegas at forward, which she loves.
"I know where to shoot on the goalie," she laughed.