Female officials debut at games
The league selected four women to officiate at rookie tournaments
Once the butterflies and adrenalin rush of officiating her first NHL prospects game subsided, Kirsten Welsh woke up Saturday eager to get back on the ice again. Whatever miscues Welsh made and hesitancy showed during her debut at the Buffalo Sabres prospects tournament a day earlier were overshadowed by how much she enjoyed the experience. There was also the realization she might have a future as an NHL linesman — or is it lineswoman?
“I just think this is what I love. This is what I’ve always been about,” Welsh told The Associated Press by phone before preparing to officiate her second tournament game Saturday. “Having the opportunity to pursue this is just unbelievable. I can’t tell you how thankful I am.”
The 22-year-old from Toronto was, as she put it, “thrown into the fire” by working a game between Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins prospects. Aside from calling offside and icing and handling faceoffs, the fivefoot-10 Welsh was unafraid to get in the middle of several post-whistle scrums.
“I think the guys were kind of thrown off that a girl was rushing in there to break them up,” said Welsh, who completed a four-year college career playing defence at Robert Morris last season.
“I got smushed in the boards yesterday, too. It’s fun. I just think it’s so great to be out there with them and being able to be on the ice with all these amazing athletes.”
Welsh has the potential of becoming a trailblazer in a role that’s been exclusively reserved for men at the NHL level until Friday. That’s when the league announced Welsh was one of four women selected for the first time to officiate the league’s various prospect tournaments held around the U.S.
Welsh is joined by Katie Guay and Kelly Cooke, who were selected as referees to work tournaments in Anaheim, Calif., and Nashville. Kendall Hanley was assigned to work as a linesman at the Detroit Red Wings tournament in Traverse City, Mich.
The four were chosen after being among 89 participants — 11 of them women — at the NHL’s annual officials scouting combine in Buffalo last month. And they become the first women assigned to work on the ice in a competitive NHL setting.
All four are considered candidates to eventually break the NHL’s officiating gender barrier, which has become a point of emphasis stressed by commissioner Gary Bettman and the league’s director of officiating Stephen Walkom.
The NBA has had female officials since Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner were hired in1997. Sarah Thomas was the NFL’s first female official in 2015. Pam Postema, in 2000, was the first female to umpire a Major League Baseball spring training game, and there are at least two women currently working at the triple-A level.
Al Kimmel, the NHL’s director of scouting and development for officiating, said last month the growth of women’s hockey has led to a surge of candidates.