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NHL in talks to start women’s hockey league
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By Jeff Z. Klein
August 27, 2010
Toronto, ON — Faced with the threat of their sport being excluded from the Winter Olympics after 2014 because of a lack of competitiveness, women’s hockey officials have held preliminary discussions with the NHL about forming an NHL-supported women’s league, representatives from both sides confirmed Thursday.
“I was in a meeting just this week with the NHL and all the stakeholders in women’s hockey, and I think we have the ear of the NHL,” said Hayley Wickenheiser, 32, a Canadian forward regarded as one of the game’s greatest female players and the keynote speaker at the final day of the World Hockey Summit here.
“They’re looking at it right now from a sponsorship level to get it off the ground,” Wickenheiser said, referring to the NHL “We’re not talking about big salaries, just sensible steps to get it on the ice to entertain people and see where it can go, and then down the road having an elite, W.N.B.A.-type league, which I think we could do.”
Bill Daly, the NHL deputy commissioner, said that the talks had taken place over a number of months and were very preliminary but that they were aimed at setting up a “women’s league or women’s competition.”
“We’ve talked about potential structures that might work, the need for a business plan and our efforts to be helpful to the extent we can be,” Daly said.
Brian Burke, general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, said his team, the wealthiest club in the NHL, supported the idea of a competition that would foster the development of women’s hockey.
“This morning Richard Peddie told me that we want to be leaders in this,” Burke said, referring to the chief executive of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. “We think that women’s hockey is important and we intend to be involved.”
The sense of crisis for the sport emerged after the Vancouver Games. As in the previous three Olympics, it was one-sided, with skilled teams from Canada and the United States dominating their European opponents. Canada beat Slovakia, 18-0, in one game; the United States beat Russia, 13-0, in another.
On the eve of Canada’s 2-0 victory over the Americans in the gold medal match, the International Olympic Committee’s president, Jacques Rogge, said that women’s hockey “cannot continue without improvement.” The comment raised the specter that the sport might go the way of softball, which was dropped from the Olympics because of the dominance of the United States.
The crisis is so acute, Wickenheiser said, that “the first question the media asked me in Vancouver after we won an Olympic gold medal was, ‘Do you think women’s hockey should still be in the Olympics?’ ”
The women’s game has experienced healthy growth in Canada and in the United States, where Title IX legislation has led to well-financed college women’s teams.
Peter Elander, who coached the Swedish women at the last two Olympics and now works with the University of North Dakota, said Thursday that the U.N.D. women’s program had twice the budget of the Swedish national team.
Certainly the robust condition of women’s hockey in North America is not in dispute.
“We had 5,000 girls playing hockey went the first national team started in 1990, and now we have 60,000,” said Angela Ruggiero, a four-time Olympian for the United States.
Canada has 80,000 registered female players, but of the next 12 countries that play women’s hockey, none have more than 5,000 and most have only a few hundred.
The problem is in Europe outside Scandinavia, where centers of men’s hockey like Russia, Slovakia and Germany devote virtually no resources to the women’s game. Even the International Ice Hockey Federation does not have a director of women’s hockey, although Murray Costello, an I.I.H.F. vice president, said Thursday that the idea would be put to a membership vote next month.
In her speech here, Wickenheiser proposed the creation of a women’s league with teams composed of the best post-college players from North America and Europe. Such a league could produce a more internationally balanced competition at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and ensure the presence of women’s hockey in 2018 and beyond.
Wickenheiser said her goal going into the 2014 Olympics, which she said would be her last, was to step off the ice after the last game and not be asked if women’s hockey should still be on the Olympic program.
“If I can accomplish that, then I think we’ve come a long way,” she said.
• NHL News Archive Index:
2010, 2009
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