The hockey pay gap
WAYNE SCANLAN
OTTAWA—OnSundayafternoon in Kanata, Ont., the best female player in the world, Marie-Philip Poulin and her Les Canadiennes de Montreal will try to wrest the Clarkson Cup from the defending champion Calgary Inferno, led by captain Brianne Jenner.
Game time is 4 p.m. Eastern at the Canadian Tire Centre. A crowd of about 4,000 is expected and the action will be broadcast live on Sportsnet.
Colour analyst Cassie Campbell, a former Team Canada captain, calls Poulin “the best player that’s ever played” women’s hockey. If Hayley Wickenheiser was the Wayne Gretzky or Gordie Howe of the genre, Poulin is the female Sidney Crosby.
Like Crosby, Poulin has an Olympic “golden goal” to her credit (Sochi 2014), after scoring late in the third to force overtime. As an 18-year-old, Poulin scored both goals in Canada’s 2-0 win at the gold medal game in Vancouver 2010.
“She’s been the best in the world for a long time — she’s ridiculous,” Campbell told Postmedia. “And she’s so humble — she’s just a good person.”
For the women of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), the Clarkson Cup is their version of the NHL’s Stanley Cup.
If only these female “professional” players could get paid a tiny fraction of the millions in salaries paid in men’s pro leagues. In fact, they are not paid at all. CWHL players who are not carded pay for such basic gear as their own hockey sticks, which are that deadly combination of expensive and fragile. Players do have travel costs covered and receive a small per diem to cover out-of-pocket expenses. Some equipment — helmets, pants and gloves, are provided.
Members of the national team have Canadian access to sticks and skates, along with a Sport Canada/Hockey Canada stipend. Other club members are out of luck, and sometimes lean on nationally carded players for support.
The annual Clarkson Cup (first awarded in 2009) comes with the yearly question: When will CWHL players receive salaries to play?
Campbell, who is a governor on the CWHL board, and CWHL commissioner Brenda Andress, both believe the day is coming soon.
“I feel, maybe for the first time, there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Campbell says.
A former vice-chair of the CWHL, Campbell has witnessed slow but certain growth of the league over the past decade to the point where “we’re just starting to make some money.” But not universally in the five-team league, and not consistently.
“We’re just not bringing in enough dollars yet to get us over that edge,” Campbell says. “We’ve seen an increase in attendance, in sponsorship and numbers on television (four Sportsnet games).
“We’re so close, but I think we’re still one to two years away from being able to pay the players.”
Payroll issues in the other professional women’s league, the U.S.based NWHL, serve as a cautionary tale about paying players too soon, before a league has a foothold. Campbell and Andress repeatedly say that when the CWHL launches a salary program, it won’t stop.
In a promising step, just last week the CWHL announced an affiliation with the NHL Players Association. The joint venture is expected to help grow the women’s league, but is largely about educating female players to the pitfalls as they approach a truer sense of being professionals.
Down the road, perhaps in two or three years, there is expected to be an official alliance between the CWHL and the National Hockey League. The NHL has observed the working relationship between clubs such as the Ottawa Senators (hosts of the Clarkson Cup this year and last), Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames.
Next year, the Cup game could move to the Bell Centre in Montreal.
Yet, for the NHL to join forces, the CWHL has to present a solid business model. Players patiently bide their time.
“Obviously as a current player, I’d like it to happen sooner rather than later,” Jenner says. “But I understand what we’re building here in the league — we have a great product. And we’re only ten years in. You can’t rush things and jump the gun.
“We’re trying get more people aware of our teams, get them out to regular season games and just build that fan base,” Brenner adds. “That has to come first before any salaries. The main thing is, the progress the league has made in the first ten years is pretty phenomenal and we’re happy to be a part of it.”
Jenner, a carded member of the national team, has teammates on the Calgary Inferno who put in a full day of work as police officers or lawyers, among other occupations, before a practice or game. They somehow find time to train as well.
“I’m in awe of the players that do that,” Jenner says.
Kanata’s Jamie Lee Rattray, a forward with the CWHL Brampton Thunder, has witnessed significant advancement in the three years she has played pro.
“The crowds are bigger, there’s more of a buzz on social media — there’s more attention with everything we do,” Rattray says.
“In bigger markets like Montreal, there are huge crowds,” she says. “They are loud, energetic fans, that really love the game. That’s where we see it — in the rinks where we play.”
At Clarkson University, Rattray won the 2014 Patty Kazmaier award as the top player in U.S. college hockey and led Clarkson to its first NCAA title.
Like Brenner, Rattray is pragmatic about future pay days.
“You want to play in a league you know has a future,” says Rattray, who helps out as an assistant coach at the Bantam AA level. “As an athlete, you strive to do what you love and be paid while doing it. As a female athlete, it doesn’t matter what sport, you have to be patient with it.” wscanlan@postmedia.com