In May 2019, approximately 200 of North America’s best female hockey players decided they would not play for a new league until there was a serious and sustainable league, with the “resources professional hockey needs and deserves.” Previous leagues, such as the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, had either gone bankrupt or, in the case of the Premier Hockey Federation, were cash-strapped and offered substandard working conditions. For example, the players wanted a decent wage. They also felt they deserved the same kind of protections, such as health insurance, that other professionals – athletes or otherwise – are usually afforded without question. They wanted more than just a new place to play. They needed a destination, and others needed it too.
Some of those breakaway players were at Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto on Friday evening during “the Battle on Bay Street,” a midseason game between Montreal and Toronto’s new Professional Women’s Hockey League teams. The PWHL, which launched in January, is a product of their 2019 decision. And the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association, formed during that boycott, is now a union with a collective bargaining agreement with the PWHL. The CBA runs through 2031 and guarantees salaries of up to $80,000, match bonuses, life and health insurance, workers’ compensation and parental leave. In other words, the same deal men have been making for centuries. On Friday, the two women’s teams got something different that was normally only offered to their male colleagues: an audience of 19,285 people, the highest attendance ever for a women’s hockey match.
A significant portion of those fans were young girls wearing their own team jerseys, with the seats a sea of local minor hockey guns vying for a spot on the huge screens above center ice. They watched as third-place Toronto and second-place Montreal started nervously before settling into a tight, physical encounter that saw Toronto take most of the penalties. The second period produced no goals, but five minutes into the third period, Toronto’s Jesse Compher scored scored her first of the season to make it 1-0. The roof blew off and all the pent up energy was released. A second Toronto goal from Hannah Miller with four minutes to go, followed by an empty net from Victoria Bach, made it 3-0 for the home side.
TORONTO GOAL
BEDLAM AT SCOTIABANK ARENA
Jesse Compher gets this crowd into a frenzy. Her first of the season. Toronto leads Montreal 1-0 in the third period. pic.twitter.com/1SFVwfjxRf
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) February 17, 2024
The atmosphere in Scotiabank was concert-like all night long. No businesslike drunken seriousness from the crowd of the Maple Leafs, the building’s usual tenants. Comparisons to the men are worn out, but they remain an inescapable part of these first PWHL games for now. Friday’s event was primarily an attempt to build and secure a healthy fan base, but it was also a necessary statement.
In 2010, then-IOC president Jacques Rogge considered ditching women’s hockey from the Winter Games if the talent gap between the North American teams and those from the rest of the world could not be closed. That summer, Hayley Wickenheiser, the captain of the Canadian team, explained why this disparity existed. Funding was part of it – Canada and the US had more. But there was also the matter of career paths. “We have to keep players in the game,” Wickenheiser said. “So many women simply leave the game after they graduate and have nowhere to play.” That is obviously not what happens to the men. They have development pathways, cultural and social support and access to education and jobs through hockey. The men have infrastructure – not just a place to go, but ways to get there. All of this is ultimately downstream of one thing: the NHL.
Before Friday’s puck dropped, Lindsay McLelland of Rockwood, Ont., stood on the second floor. When asked what the existence of the PWHL meant to her and her daughter, Brynn, a young hockey player, she said it simply meant “a future in sports.” Below, 9-year-old Victoria from Brantford, Ontario echoed that idea. “It’s not just about the boys playing hockey, it’s about the girls too. I’m glad they have a competition.” Nearby, a woman named Jennifer, from Kitchener, Ontario (who did not give her last name) recalled her own experience. “I played as far as I could and chose not to pursue it… because I knew there was no future opportunity for myself,” she said.
“You saw the crowd today. It’s just super exciting to hear the fans and give them something to watch,” Compher said after the game. “We have worked for this for a long time and to see people supporting us and giving us what we deserve is something very special.”
It did indeed take a while. One evening, a long time ago, another women’s hockey game was being played in downtown Toronto. At the Mutual Street Rink – later the site of the Mutual Street Arena, home of the Toronto Arenas, St Patricks and, later still, the Maple Leafs – Toronto’s Wellington women’s hockey team defended their championship against nearby Waterloo. It was Thursday, February 14, 1907 – 117 years ago this week. Toronto won 6–0, but “although the better team won, the score is not really a criterion for the evening’s game,” the Toronto Daily Star reported the next morning. “The girls were very serious throughout and, considering the handicap posed by three-quarter length skirts, they put on a very good exhibition of Canada’s national winter pastime.” A larger crowd than usual had shown up that evening. They were unexpectedly impressed. The Daily Star reporter admitted: “Many came to laugh but continue to admire.”
The point is, you can’t take a sport seriously unless the sport takes itself seriously, and that’s what professional leagues are for. Of the many differences between men’s and women’s hockey in North America, the eagerness to professionalize one but not the other has been the most damaging. As well as limiting practical issues such as financial support for women’s football at all levels, it has also unfairly meant that for decades girls’ hockey dreams of stardom were less credible than boys’. Because without a serious and sustainable professional league, the perception of women’s hockey has been allowed to remain unchanged since the turn of the last century: a joke. Even though everyone knew all along that it was anything but.
Friday was great hockey. The best possible professional exhibition of Canada’s national winter pastime. It belongs in this place, it always has.