NWHL launches first Canadian team, expanding to Toronto
Professional women’s hockey is set to return to Canada, with the National Women’s Hockey League announcing Wednesday it is expanding to Toronto.
The yet-to-be-named franchise has an ownership group led by former Harvard captain Johanna Boynton, features former Brown Bears coach Margaret “Digit” Murphy as its president and already has five players under contract, the NWHL said in a news release.
“Launching our first team in Canada is a pivotal and proud moment for the NWHL,” league founder and commissioner Dani Rylan said in the statement.
The Toronto team increases the U.S.-based NWHL’s number of franchises to six and comes a year after the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded following 12 seasons because of financial instability.
The NWHL was founded in 2015, becoming North America’s first pro women’s league to pay its players a salary. It currently has teams in Boston; Monmouth Junction, N.J.; Danbury, Conn.; Buffalo; and Saint Paul, Minn.
The move north of the border comes a little over a week after The Associated Press first reported the NWHL’s plans.
Murphy has played a lead role in establishing contacts and recruiting players.
All five players signed previously played in the CWHL, with the most notable being Shiann Darkangelo, a member of the 2016 world championship-winning U.S. team.
The four other players are Canadians: forward Taylor Woods, defencemen Kristen Barbara and Emma Greco and goalie Elaine Chuli.
“I’m delighted to be part of the first NWHL franchise in Canada because it brings me back to my roots,” the 58-year-old Murphy said in a phone interview. “A year ago, when the CWHL shut down, they had one of the best hockey products on the market,” she said. “So I just see this as a continuation of that, and Toronto deserves a women’s franchise.”
After leaving Brown, where she won 318 games, Murphy won two CWHL championships in three seasons coaching the Boston Blades.
She then spent the 2017-18 season coaching a CWHL expansion team in China, whose players included Darkangelo and Chuli.
It’s unlikely the NWHL will be able to draw from the rosters of current U.S. or Canadian national teams after their members helped form the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association in the wake of the CWHL’s demise.
The PWHPA balked at competing professionally in North America last season, instead pushing for the establishment of a single league capable of paying players a fair wage and with a financially stable long-term economic model.
“It would be easy to make this an ‘us versus them’ story, but we have no interest in that narrative,” the PWHPA said. “Our mission as the PWHPA has not changed and we are still moving on with next season — in full force. Simply put, the opportunities the NWHL will provide may be good for some players, but it’s not the opportunities that we want for our players or for our future generations of young girls who will play the game at the highest level.”
PWHPA leader Jayna Hefford said she wasn’t surprised the NWHL planned to add a team in Toronto.
“I think it was a few days after the CWHL folded that it announced they wanted to expand into Canada,” Hefford told The Canadian Press.
“Toronto is probably the hockey mecca of North America for sure. Of course, it’s expected they would want to expand into this market with a lot of female players. It doesn’t impact what we’re trying to achieve,” she said.
“We’ve been very clear about what we believe the next professional women’s league needs to look like,” she added. “We don’t believe those things currently are offered in any women’s pro league.