Women’s under-18 worlds may yet happen

The 2022 women’s world under-18 championship is not dead yet with Hockey Canada president Tom Renney encouraging IIHF president Luc Tardif to reconsider the cancellation of the event and the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association offering to host it.

“We talked with the IIHF every day since we’ve been here (at the world juniors) and we brought it up yesterday with Luc (IIHF president Luc Tardif) about maybe a postponement over a cancellation,” Renney told The Star. “We certainly think that it’s worthy of discussion. But we’re not really the ones that are in a position to dictate the terms. We’re certainly happy to participate in any discussions. That’s really as much as I can say right now, because it’s not our call today.”

This is the second year in a row the women’s U-18s were cancelled, rather than rescheduled, and that irked many, including OWHA executive Fran Rider. She’s been holding out hope the international hockey community will come to its senses and find a way to hold the event cancelled earlier this week by the Swedish federation over concerns about COVID-19.

Rider’s organization expressed via social media and privately to Hockey Canada and the International Ice Hockey Federation that it would step in to hold the U-18 event if Sweden won’t or can’t.

“Our goal is that this event is held,” said Rider, the executive director of the OWHA.

“We’d love to host it. We’d be honoured to host. We’d love to work with Hockey Canada, and the IIHF and the federations to make this happen. The key thing to us is that it does happen,” she said.

“These are huge events for the players and it was disappointing that we lost that age grouping of people who actually qualified for (last year’s) event,” added Rider.

Given the women’s tournament — scheduled for January — was cancelled just as the men’s under-20 championship was beginning, it was quite the hot button issue, and a clear indication to many the IIHF treats women as second-class citizens.

Athletes inside hockey, like Hayley Wickenheiser, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, Ray Ferraro and Shannon Szabados, as well as celebrities like Gerry Dee, took offence at what they saw as a double-standard.

“Nothing to do with safety,” tweeted Wickenheiser, “if they call pull off the (world juniors). Where there’s a will, there is always a way. I question the ‘will’ part.”

Adam Steiss, spokesperson for the IIHF, did not deny the economics between the men’s world juniors and the women’s under-18s were a factor.

“There is always going to be an economic incentive to play the world championship and world juniors, simply because the revenue generated from these two events supports all our other IIHF tournaments, including 12 senior women’s and under-18 women’s international events,” he said.

“It is a COVID-19 issue and not a gender issue. The medical committee’s recommendation to cancel the six January events (two men’s U-20, four women’s U-18) took into account the travel risks that the teams playing in the January tournaments would have faced. There is a firm belief within the medical committee that the Omicron variant will peak through January, and that the tournament organizers for these events would not have been able to safely manage an outbreak. The protocols that the IIHF created for these events also were no longer applicable due to the Omicron variant.”

Steiss said the reason this didn’t affect the world juniors was that they were in the bubble on Dec. 15, prior to the spread of the variant.