Russia offers vision of future league
Return of pro game to North America could follow Zhenskaya model
Early in Game 4 of the 2020 women’s hockey Rivalry Series, Team USA’s Megan Bozek skated the puck down the ice. As she entered the offensive zone, she lifted her stick horizontally and drilled it into the protective cage of Erin Ambrose, the Canadian defender who had been blocking her path to the net.
After losing Game 3 in overtime two nights earlier, Bozek was sending the message that the U.S. team would be taking no prisoners.
Bodychecking may be illegal in women’s hockey, but intense physical play is the norm whenever the world’s two top hockey nations square off, even when there’s nothing more than pride on the line.
“Used to it. Yep. Nothing different than we haven’t seen before,” said U.S. captain Kendall Coyne Schofield after her team’s 3-1 victory in a contest where Bozek’s cross-checking minor was one of 11 total penalties called on the night.
In the so-called “gap year,” the time between the Canadian Women’s Hockey League’s folding in spring 2019 to now, there has been no North American professional league available to the sport’s top players. Bozek and her teammate, Alex Carpenter, have been playing in Russia’s Zhenskaya Hockey League to work on their games, giving them a leg up on the many Olympians and other elite players continuing to boycott the National Women’s Hockey League. But their stories also reveal how hard it still is to make a go of life as a female professional hockey player.
“The physicality has been very helpful,” Carpenter said. “Those teams just never give up and they always go, so I think playing against competition like that and very skilled players is definitely helpful.”
U.S. head coach Bob Corkum liked what he saw from Carpenter when she arrived for the first Rivalry Series training camp and exhibition games in the Pittsburgh area last November. She has since been named player of the game for scoring the game-winning goal in the second game of the series, and struck again — in overtime — in Saturday night’s finale in Anaheim.
“I’m not sure what has given her the advantage, but this whole year she’s been lights out,” said Corkum. “She’s been one of our most consistent players.” The demise of the CWHL led to the formation of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, a group of more than 200 players who pledged not to play in a North American pro league this season due to concerns about operations and low wages. The highest announced salary in the NWHL, a five-team outfit now in its fifth season, is $15,000 (U.S.). The PWHPA has made no bones about its desire to partner with the NHL to launch a league styled after the relationship between the NBA and WNBA. The connection between Russia’s top men’s league and its women’s league may provide another template.
“I think it would be great to take a look at that league,” said Carpenter. “I mean, there’s things that we could do better, there’s things that are great already, but I think just taking a look at that overall, due to their backing with the KHL, I think would be a really great start for us moving forward.”
After playing her first pro season in 2016-17 with the NWHL’s Boston Pride, Carpenter headed for China after she was cut from the 2018 Olympic team that went on to win gold medal over Canada in Pyeongchang.
Her father, former New York Ranger Bobby Carpenter, was coaching the men’s Kunlun Red Star team in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League and suggested she come over and join the women’s side, one of two women’s teams based in Shenzhen and affiliated with the CWHL.
Carpenter returned to China for the 2018-19 season, when Red Star and the Vanke Rays merged into one squad. This season, the Vanke Rays joined up with the WHL, which has been backed by the KHL since 2015, giving Carpenter a chance to stay in China for a third year — and to get a sense of how a women’s pro league that’s affiliated with Russia’s top men’s league operates.
“We didn’t know what to expect going into it,” Carpenter said. “We came from the CWHL and we’d bounce back and forth between China and North America for a month and a half at a time.”
Playing in the same arenas as the men, either before their games or after, came with perks. “We get towels, we get a locker room a week before if we need it,” Carpenter said. “We get a coaches’ room. Small things like that, that you don’t think are a big thing. But they really make a big difference in your travels.” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has stated repeatedly that his league is reluctant to get involved while there’s an existing women’s league in operation. Instead, top women’s players have gotten showcases, like at last month’s all-star weekend, which for the first time included a three-on-three game between the USA and Canada.
In addition to the other showcases provided by the PWHPA’s ongoing Dream Gap Tour, the five-game Rivalry Series, in its second year, has provided opportunities for real competition and put the spotlight on the women’s game. All five games this year were broadcast on national television in the U.S.
The Americans took the series four games to one, establishing bragging rights with authority in Saturday night’s 4-3 victory before a crowd of 13,320 at the Honda Center — the largest ever to watch a women’s national team game in the United States.
Carpenter has travelled to North America for the Rivalry Series games — finishing with four points in five games — and all-star weekend, and will be back for the world championship, but says she’s glad to have been playing in a more traditional league situation this year, where she’s leading the WHL scoring race. “It’s nice to have that competitive environment. where you’re ultimately working with a team for an ultimate goal,” she said. “I think that helps me, myself, carry that over to here, knowing that when it’s ‘go time’ during the games, I’ve been working on that all year.”
With all the international travel, Carpenter’s passport is getting full.
“It is. I need a new one soon.”