Heartfelt boycott risky play for a better endgame

The Canadian Press reported on the boycott in Friday’s section.

What was already confusing is only more so today. And that’s probably the way it has to be right now with women’s professional hockey in North America. There have been many rumours and much speculation, and certainly a great deal of backroom fighting and disagreement, about what the future should look like. To get beyond that, many of the top players have banded together in what they are touting as an act of solidarity to protect the female hockey industry and its future.

It’s admirable, particularly for those of us who have applauded the growth of the women’s game and would very much like to see professional women’s hockey become a viable business.

But does this new strategy make any sense?

Saying “it is time” for a sustainable league, 200 of the best players have said they won’t play at all until they get “the resources that professional hockey demands and deserves.”

Here’s the problem. By withdrawing the supply of their services, they are apparently banking on an underlying belief that there is a pent-up demand for those services that goes well beyond what most currently believe is the reality.

In other words, their demands don’t seem — at least at the moment — to line up logically with the demand for women’s pro hockey in the marketplace, which is sporadic. Boycotting the industry — which is essentially what they’re doing, although they prefer not to put it in those terms — only makes sense if they believe the business will be under severe duress and at risk of losing valued customers if that business doesn’t meet their demands.

Ultimately, as with any strike or lockout, labour has to believe that the business will suffer or even be forced to its knees. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of bravado. Like members of the NHL Players’ Association vowing 15 years ago that they would “never” accept a salary cap.

The top female players can talk all they want about what they deserve, but all that matters is what a business can afford, or is willing to afford, and what those players can negotiate and

organize. Listening to players such as Brianne Jenner and Kendall Coyne Schofield in recent days, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect. Their demands seem based on some kind of morality and sense of fairness, plus a belief that the public very much wants to buy their product but is being denied access.

Layered on top of that is a sense that female players are being exploited, or at the very least undervalued. Again, absent massive corporate sponsorships and arenas filled to capacity, it’s not clear how they can make that case. The women who were doing the speaking on behalf of the larger group had their talking points, and very much want to frame this as a sacrifice by current players to benefit future generations.

“We want to build something that’s going to last for years to come,” Jenner told Hockey Night in Canada. “This is something bigger than an individual’s aspirations in hockey.

“I don’t want the next generation of female hockey players to have to be pioneers.”

Again, this is all admirable, the next level of the fight for the women’s game that began with establishing an annual world championship and then led to inclusion in the Olympics. Still, a boycott is a curious strategy, and seems philosophically related to the successful effort by players with the U.S. national team in 2017 to withdraw services until important changes were made.

Then again, perhaps there’s a larger plan here, a bigger power play. The demise of the CWHL has left only the NWHL, which says it wants to expand to Canada and increase salaries. The players, or at least this group of 200, are suspicious of the NWHL and dismissive of its business model. They are unwilling to accept NWHL promises at face value.

Many believe this latest move is actually a bid to drive the NWHL out of business, and set the stage for the NHL to swoop in as a white knight and establish a league with better salaries, benefits, facilities and training.

Quite a gamble. Wipe out the only league left, and hope Gary Bettman and 32 owners will see underwriting women’s hockey as an attractive longterm strategy of growing their game and improving the NHL’s bottom line. It’s a big leap from having Coyne Schofield flying around the ice — impressing the uninformed who were unaware women could skate that fast — at the NHL All-Star Game to investing millions of dollars in a startup women’s league.

“We know we deserve a longterm viable option,” Coyne Schofield said. “We don’t have that right now.”

True, and it’s not going to appear overnight. What is needed is a stable, for-profit women’s pro league with substantial seed money that can grow deliberately and gradually over the next decade. Everybody agrees on that. But how to get there? And if the best women refuse to play next season, could that only decrease existing public demand for women’s hockey, and thus be more of a setback than progress?

Withdrawing services only makes sense if there’s something better available at the end of the rainbow. These 200 women, based on their statement and comments, seem confident that there is.

Here’s hoping they’re right, that they know things that aren’t apparent to those of us outside the industry.

Self-sacrifice and fighting for a better future for others are indeed admirable. These women are fighting the good fight.

But in this case, there’s eventually got to be money in such altruism for it to make strategic sense.