CWHL all-stars want women’s leagues to merge

Equality, merger dominate talk

TORONTO The Toronto Furies’ Natalie Spooner dreams of a day when women’s professional hockey players won’t have to rush home from work to make it to practice.

Montreal Canadiennes’ Hilary Knight hopes the narrative of the sport’s gender inequality eventually fades so she’s only asked questions about wins and losses, successes and failures.

Spooner and Knight were among the 34 players on the ice for the Canadian Women’s Hockey League all-star game Sunday at Scotiabank Arena.

But the bigger issues facing the sport, especially at club level, weren’t far from their minds.

“When I was little, I was going to play in the NHL,” Spooner said before Team Gold beat Team Purple 8-4 at the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Now the girls are like, ‘I’m going to play in the CWHL.’ That is a huge step already.

“I hope these little girls that are dreaming in the CWHL, when they’re older they can have hockey as a career and not have to worry about going to work all day and coming to practice at night.”

“Unfortunately the way to get a story now for women’s hockey is essentially talking about the inequity of the sport,” Knight, a gold medallist with the United States at the 2018 Olympics, added.

“I hope we get to a place where we do have equality in the sport ... and hopefully that storyline won’t be there anymore.”

According to the players, one way to push the game further ahead and achieve those goals is an oft-talked about merger between the CWHL and North America’s other women’s pro hockey league, the NWHL.

The CWHL has four franchises in Canada, one in the United States and another in China.

The five-team NWHL is based exclusively south of the border.

Both interim CWHL commissioner Jayna Hefford and NWHL commissioner Dani Rylan have indicated in the past a merger makes sense.

The CWHL all-stars agree. “It would be awesome,” said three-time Olympic medallist Marie-Philip Poulin, who plays for les Canadiennes and leads the league with 35 points in 19 games this season. “You want to play with the best.”

Knight and a couple of other U.S. stars joined the CWHL this season, further fuelling talk of the leagues combining.

“Inevitably one league is the way to go. What iteration that looks like, I’m not sure,” said Knight. “We don’t have enough players right now to field the level of competition that we want dispersed among two leagues.

“I want to play the best competition night in, night out, and also genuinely feel proud about that.”

The CWHL has the support of individual NHL teams in certain Canadian markets, including Montreal, and has extended its title sponsorship with the NHLPA.

Sunday ’s game was televised nationally in Canada, featured celebrity coaches, and saw Leafs great Doug Gilmour drop the puck for the opening faceoff.