Women’s Hockey’s Civil War Has Ended, Messily

July 7, 2023 9:57 AM

For over a year, players in the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association have been in negotiations with investment firms Billie Jean King Enterprises and the Mark Walter Group to launch a new women's hockey league. Thus, the part of their Thursday night announcement laying out plans for the new league to start play in January of 2024 wasn't a huge surprise. But the other part of the announcement was: The investment groups have also bought out the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly the National Women's Hockey League), consolidating the sport's player pool and essentially disbanding what had been the only pro women's hockey league in North America for the last four years. (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan (13 comments total)

I feel like this is a victory, but only of a sort, when looked at via a certain lens.

Life in a nutshell, perhaps.
posted by riverlife at 10:43 AM on July 7, 2023

Chatting with a fellow parent last month at a track meet, I discovered she had been a national hogh high hockey champion in high school (maybe 20 years ago, admittedly).

I so want women's hockey to get a fair shake: the players are super passionate and the game is a lot of fun for spectators.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:15 AM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

More coverage from Just Women's Sports, which has been on this story since it began:

PHF sale: Unpacking what just happened in women’s hockey
"The fact that these two things – the sale of the PHF, followed by the confirmation of a new league with a CBA negotiated by PWHPA players – happened nearly simultaneously resulted in confusion, with some fans placing blame on PWHPA players for the demise of the PHF."

PHF sale 'ruined a lot of people's lives in a 10-minute Zoom call'
"More than 120 players already had signed with the PHF for the 2023-24 season, but those contracts have been voided, and the players are not guaranteed a spot in the new league. Many already had started to prepare for the upcoming season, from relocating to their teams’ cities to finding housing, before they learned of the sale Thursday via Zoom call."

There's heaps more stories on this topic on that site.
posted by rednikki at 11:33 AM on July 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

It's tough and shitty for a lot of PHF players, but I think something like this had to happen. Glad the new league has a CBA and player's union already -- the PHF did not, which meant that they did not have to negotiate in good faith, so they were signing players to contracts days before the league was dissolved, even though those talks were well advanced.

I hope they can expand the league up some in the next few years, both for the sake of the PHF players and for fanbases in potentially dropped markets; I think that only six teams sucks, but starting a new league with 11+ teams was probably a recipe for individual teams closing up down the line. I also hope the NHL will start doing the right thing and kicking in even a fraction of a percent of their billions of dollars of revenue.
posted by Superilla at 12:32 PM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

The top sites being considered for the new league are Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and London, Ontario, according to one of the people who spoke to AP.

Wait, no team in Minnesota, but two possibilities in Pennsylvania? WTH?!
posted by wenestvedt at 12:41 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

The top sites being considered for the new league are Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and London, Ontario, according to one of the people who spoke to AP.

Wait, no team in Minnesota, but two possibilities in Pennsylvania? WTH?!

Likely due to ease of travel though I am rather surprised Buffalo isn't named. I had thought the Beauts were one of the better fan-supported teams.
posted by beaning at 1:00 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Toronto does deserve a professional ice hockey team.
posted by saturday_morning at 1:03 PM on July 7, 2023 [14 favorites]

Likely due to ease of travel...

Minneapolis has a major international airport, to be fair.

Anyway, I would love to see some Midwestern kids playing. Here is a three-episode series about the rise of women's hockey in Minnesota from several years ago, called "Homegrown": https://youtu.be/0SPhfnU9dWc
posted by wenestvedt at 1:14 PM on July 7, 2023

FWIW, all but 6 of the 20-person 2022 Women's Hockey Olympic Roster were from Minnesota (6), Illinois (5) or Wisconsin (3). The Midwest is the hot spot of U.S. Women's Hockey, seems pretty sad not to locate a team or two where the interest is.
posted by mcstayinskool at 2:12 PM on July 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

both Minneapolis and Detroit have very nice airports, although I suspect they may be looking at bus distances. Detroit to buffalo via Toronto isn’t a terrible drive.
posted by CostcoCultist at 2:24 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

@beaning, this is probably due to the team in Pittsburgh being superior to the team in Minnesota. Though, Minnesota did teach Jake Geuntzel the art of hockey, so I guess they can not be all bad.
posted by oldnumberseven at 10:01 PM on July 7, 2023

Shocked (not shocked) Chicago didn't make thr list given the other cities. We also have two very nice airports.

Wow though, what a shake up. Thank you for posting this here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:05 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Athletic Hockey Show (including Hailey Salvian, who might be the only professional journalist in English-language media whose primary beat is women's hockey) did an interview with Stan Kasten, who is the president of the LA Dodgers and one of the people behind the new league.

It's long and some of it isn't super informative (did you know that Kasten thinks his billionaire boss is a good guy?) but helped clarify a couple of the main things; most importantly that the two negotiations with the new league proceeded in parallel, but with NDAs preventing the PHF and PWHPA knowing about the other one.

I hope that there's soon a couple of teams in the Midwest; I really wish that here in Calgary we would get a team, but we're probably a ways back in the queue from the Chicagoes and Minneapolises-Saints Paul of the world.

For karma's sake, I hope a market that doesn't get a starting franchise gets an expansion in a few years in time to get Nela Lopušanová on their team. She scored over half of Slovakia's goals in the most recent U18 world championships, including some pretty incredible ones and was named the tournament MVP despite her squad finishing 5th. She was 14 at the time, playing against young women who were mostly 17.
posted by Superilla at 6:44 PM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]