Women’s hockey players still divided
Just under a month since over 200 professional women’s hockey players announced they wouldn’t play this season, there still are more questions than answers.
The only gleam of clarity has been the divisiveness that still strains women’s hockey.
On Monday, the players announced the formation of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, headed by leaders of the movement such as Shannon Szabados and Kendall Coyne Schofield, along with former Canadian Women’s Hockey League PA head Liz Knox.
Players from the United States, Canada and Europe hope the association serves as “a vehicle to support the creation of a single, viable women’s pro league in North America.”
“We are prepared to stop playing for a year — which is crushing to even think about — because of how important a sustainable league will be to the future of women’s sports,” Szabados said in a statement from the association that circulated around social media Monday. “We know we can make this work, and we want the chance to try.”
Two women’s hockey veterans signed Monday with the National Women’s Hockey League, days after the league’s free agency opened. Kaleigh Fratkin reupped with the Boston Pride, while the league’s all-time leader in goals and points, Madison Packer, resigned with the Riveters days after their partnership with the New Jersey Devils was rescinded.
Fratkin’s deal is worth $11,000, included in the press release as the first public salary since the 2016-17 season, when the league initially sliced salaries in half.
“It’s easy for me to stand up for the NWHL because it has done a lot for our sport and provided many opportunities for me personally,” Fratkin said in the league’s release. “I will never be able to fully express how much it means to me to be a founding member of the NWHL. It’s something I don’t take for granted. From the very beginning I’ve witnessed the positive impact our league has had on so many aspiring young players.”
Entering her third season with the Pride, Fratkin has played in the NWHL since day one, after playing with the Boston Blades in the CWHL and winning a Clarkson Cup.
Both Fratkin and Packer — who will make $12,000 this season — have been vocally opposed to the #ForTheGame movement, along with NWHL PA president Anya Battaglino, but the group of NWHL loyalists have been in the minority.
What the movement is asking for, though, is a big ask: to give up prime years of playing years in what already is a short career as a pro player, while the NWHL still is alive and fighting through the road blocks that have recently emerged with the players’ refusal to play and NHL deals wiped off the boards.
Ballard Spahr attorneys provided pro bono support to help create the PWHPA, according to their release. Their website also includes a page to support members of the PWHPA, listing financial, ice rental, training, health and medical, events, clinics, and volunteering as options.
Since announcing they wouldn’t play this season, some who are now representatives of the PHWPA have spoken about the trials of the NWHL, such as not having proper equipment and skate sharpeners and a lack of transparency, and their desires for a sustainable league.
As of now neither they, nor anyone else, has painted a picture of what that league might look like. The statement Monday was the clearest, looking for a “league that also will provide support to training programs for young female players, promote diversity and inclusion at all levels of play, and raise awareness of hockey as a sport that is open to all.”
In their collective mind, that’s not the NWHL, and with more than 200 voices on board with that, there’s something to it.
There are some who, at this point in their careers as hockey players, are ready to just play now, too. And for now, they’ll play on.