There are two well-known rivalries in North American ladies’s hockey: Canada vs. the USA, and the PWHPA versus the PHF. One rivalry will proceed in perpetuity at each World Championship and Olympic Video games, whereas the opposite is lifeless.
On June 29, the Mark Walter Group acquired the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF). Walter, who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Premier League’s Chelsea FC and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, had been working alongside Billie Jean King Enterprises to create a brand new skilled ladies’s hockey league for members of the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey Gamers Affiliation (PWHPA). Since 2019, the PWHPA, which fashioned from members of the disbanded Canadian Ladies’s Hockey League (CWHL), has performed a Dream Hole Tour throughout North America, leveraging for their very own skilled league.
The CWHL and the PHF’s forerunner, the Nationwide Ladies’s Hockey League (NWHL), had been at odds earlier than the CWHL folded. When the PWHPA fashioned, that competition took on new life. In 2019, solely months after the CWHL closed, American star and PWHPA board member Hilary Knight informed the world what she considered the PHF, and NWHL.
“It’s a glorified beer league to me,” stated Knight, who performed for the PHF’s Boston Pleasure from 2015 to 2017. “It’s serving a goal nevertheless it’s not elite proficient gamers which might be enjoying at a excessive stage.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Kendall Coyne Schofield, longtime Crew USA captain and PWHPA board member who performed for the PHF’s Minnesota Whitecaps in 2018-2019.
“We now have not seen a reliable skilled league thus far…” she stated on the time.
Since these phrases, the chasm between the PHF and PWHPA solely grew bigger, whereas the expertise disparity quickly shrunk, and dealing circumstances within the PHF drastically improved. The PHF expanded groups, added well being care, and raised salaries from $150,000 per crew in 2020-2021, to $750,000 per crew in 2022-2023, and the league was set to extend the wage cap once more this season to $1.5 million per crew.
PWHPA Continues Conflict Of Phrases
Regardless of these positive factors, the PWHPA continued to say there was no “really skilled” league in North America.
In advertising supplies circulated to NCAA and potential gamers in April 2022, the PWHPA acknowledged they aimed to “set up the primary really skilled and viable ladies’s ice hockey league in North America showcasing the world’s biggest gamers,” an announcement contesting the professionalism and viability of the PHF and the 160 gamers competing within the league.
Previous to the acquisition of the league by the Mark Walter Group, the variety of gamers signed to six-figure salaries within the PHF had reached double digits, and continued to rise. As did the caliber of gamers with seven American Olympic and World Championship gold medallists within the league, former Olympic star Alina Müller of Switzerland, future Hockey Corridor of Famer Noora Räty, six members of the 2023 World Championship bronze medal-winning Crew Czechia, World Championship all-star netminder Emma Soderberg of Sweden, and former Patty Kazmaier winners because the NCAA’s prime participant Daryl Watts, Loren Gabel, and Elizabeth Giguere.
However because the PHF made positive factors, the narrative from the PWHPA continued. Solely 9 days after American Olympic and World Championship gold medalist Kacey Bellamy signed a contract for $122,000 with the PHF’s Connecticut Whale, Canadian nationwide crew member and PWHPA board member Brianne Jenner informed the world that exterior present Canadian and USA nationwide crew members, solely one in all whom, Becca Gilmore, suited up within the PHF final season, that ladies nonetheless wanted to work day jobs to make a residing. To many within the PHF, it was a false message, however one acquainted to the narrative they’d been listening to because the formation of the PWHPA.
“For our era, it’s irritating that exterior of the highest 50 gamers which might be enjoying on their respective nationwide groups in North America, gamers 50 by means of 200 should get 9-to-5 jobs and by no means have the chance to appreciate their potential as professional gamers,” Jenner stated.
In June of 2023, Hilary Knight, who captained Crew USA to gold on the 2023 World Championships, put out her personal message in reference to the PHF, echoing her sentiments from years prior.
“What bothers me is the phantasm of professionalism and what ladies’s hockey needs to be, and settling for what it’s. And I feel that’s the massive distinction is let’s name it what it’s,” Knight informed the Related Press. “For individuals who actually wish to change the sport and make it skilled and provides hockey, ladies’s hockey notably, the legs that it wants to really stand up and go in the appropriate route and make it sustainable, that’s what it’s all about.”
PWHPA Unaware of PHF Acquisition to Type One League
Little did Knight or Jenner know, the Mark Walter Group and Billie Jean King Enterprises, who had been working with the PWHPA, had been additionally concurrently brokering a secret deal to amass the PHF. The truth is, on the time of Knight’s assertion, these conversations had almost reached a conclusion.
“It grew to become obvious to us that there is perhaps a deal to be made with the PHF, and if we might try this, then we might do what actually everybody has known as their dream come true, which is let’s have one league the place all the very best ladies’s gamers on this planet can play, and now now we have that,” stated Stan Kasten of the Mark Walter Group, who can be the president and half proprietor of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
As Kasten, who has served because the consultant for the Mark Walter Group to the PWHPA, and the remainder of the Group realized, in the event that they had been to launch their promised six-team league, they would wish extra expertise and a bigger participant pool to attract from because the PWHPA’s membership had shrunk from over 200 gamers initially, all the way down to 97 final season. That quantity included 30 members of the PWHPA who had since jumped to play within the PHF.
“We at all times knew that once we began our league, there have been solely 97 union members on the time, so we at all times knew we had been going to wish extra gamers and we didn’t know precisely the place they’d come from, now the pool has gotten greater due to our acquisition,” stated Kasten.
The necessity for extra gamers, nonetheless, will even have wide-spanning impacts because the variety of groups in North America is about to fall from 11 (4 PWPHA, seven PHF), to 6 whole groups. This lower will outcome within the lack of greater than 100 jobs for girls’s skilled hockey gamers in North America.
Kasten, and new possession, nonetheless, consider the acquisition was a possibility for either side to develop the sport.
“We noticed the work that [the PHF] had completed, we thought it was an attention-grabbing basis, however what we had been trying to do was once more, have the one league that might accommodate everybody,” Kasten stated. “I feel from the PHF standpoint they noticed this as the very best and quickest method to get to this objective. That was a objective of theirs as effectively, they didn’t know whether or not it could be within the PHF incarnation or another league, however once we got here together with what we had been doing, had already completed when it comes to reaching a collective bargaining settlement, had the possession and the help that now we have, I feel they felt this could be a superb time for them to make a deal like this, as a result of as I stated, it could be the very best and quickest to get that one league that accommodates everybody.”
From a PWHPA standpoint, the acquisition got here as a whole shock. As Kasten confirmed, his first name following the completion of the deal, was to PWHPA lead Jayna Hefford, to tell her of the transfer. Within the days following the announcement, the PWHPA put out an announcement thanking the Mark Walter Group and their gamers for the achievement of their objective to launch a brand new league.
Former Boston Pleasure Proprietor Criticizes The Deal
In keeping with now former Boston Pleasure proprietor, PHF board of governors member, and chairman of the Boston Pleasure, Miles Arnone, it wasn’t so easy. His league knew there was disdain towards their choices, however tried to take the excessive street. “[I]t’s at all times described as friction between the teams, nevertheless it was actually animosity on the a part of the PWHPA towards the PHF, it was not bidirectional.”
Whereas the messaging remained fixed on the a part of PWHPA members, Arnone stated the PHF by no means fired again. Now, he needs they’d; to not disparage, however to make clear.
“It’s very clear…they’ve had nothing however disdain for something and every little thing that [the PHF] would possibly do. You possibly can equally see that within the public report we by no means took that place as a league, and I personally assume that was a mistake. Not a mistake in that we should always have been vituperative or cantankerous or derogatory, all of these issues which they had been, however quite we rather more forcefully ought to have acknowledged why their assertions had been false.”
Regardless of the perceived animosity and “disdain,” the PWHPA and PHF had mentioned on a number of events the potential for a merger. Arnone himself sat in on three of these conferences in particular person, together with within the presence of Ilona Kloss who’s a part of Billie Jean King Enterprises, PWHPA lead Jayna Hefford, and PWHPA board members together with Hilary Knight, Kendall Coyne Schofield, and Sarah Nurse. These conferences included mediation from the NHL, the place in keeping with Arnone, the PHF continued to pursue a merger, working to satisfy the PWHPA’s “necessities” with little to point out. As Arnone remembers, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman additionally felt the PHF had made progress, and provided a possibility for the PWHPA to maneuver ahead, collectively.
“I feel that [Bettman] very clearly heard and understood that the PHF was prepared to satisfy any and the entire PWHPA’s explicitly acknowledged necessities – besides laying down and dying as a league – however that the PWHPA was in truth unwilling to maneuver in any respect,” Arnone stated.
Arnone remembers Bettman turning to PWHPA representatives and saying “Properly look the PHF is prepared to work with you and to go ahead and determine a method to make this work.” Arnone stated Bettman requested PWHPA management, “if they’d be prepared to work with the PHF,” however the PWHPA “indicated that they’re not enthusiastic about doing that.”
“We had been prepared to provide them possession, seats on the board of governors stage, participation for his or her management on a parity foundation with our management,” stated Arnone, “this was by no means about subsuming them and subordinating them, it was at all times about let’s clear the sector and collectively we’ll simply kill it.”
Now, nonetheless, with a brand new guiding possession, the Mark Walter Group, one league might be fashioned. There are now not two rival sides, as a substitute, there is just one group with a singular proprietor, and a singular path ahead.
In Arnone’s eyes, it was a “victory” for the PWHPA that got here with a major value to the way forward for ladies’s hockey.
Arnone was additionally crucial of the now-ratified collective bargaining settlement (CBA). The PWHPA had lengthy been negotiating with their traders, primarily the Mark Walter Group and Billie Jean King Enterprises for a brand new CBA, which they ultimately acquired. Throughout the eight-year deal, which expires in 2031, the gamers negotiated a $35,000 league minimal wage, and a $55,000 common league wage. The settlement additionally designates that every crew within the league will signal not less than six gamers to three-year contracts price not less than $80,000.
“[T]he prices are very heavy to them they usually’re very heavy to all gamers however a small handful of main gamers there. The price may be very excessive to gamers for the longer term for the following eight years,” he stated.
“They traded eliminating [the PHF] in alternate for a CBA that pays them much less, and grows slower than inflation over these eight years and the character of it’s such that the wage distribution is structured to actually favor a really small variety of US and Canadian nationwide crew gamers who might be paid on the prime of the dimensions, and also will proceed to gather their compensation from their nationwide affiliation in addition to sponsorship cash.”
A protracted contended level in ladies’s hockey, as famous by Brianne Jenner and others, has been the power for girls to work as hockey gamers alone, with out holding secondary jobs. In keeping with Arnone, he doesn’t consider the vast majority of gamers shifting ahead will be capable of obtain that objective.
“The PWHPA insisted for years that what they needed was a residing wage for all skilled gamers, the power to play hockey full time and never should tackle different work, medical advantages (which they’ll get within the new league), however they actually should not going to have the ability to; 80 % of the gamers in that league should not going to have the ability to solely play hockey…”
One League, One Aim Shifting Ahead
Now, nonetheless, there’s just one method ahead: collectively. The PHF is now not. Within the early days of the NWHL, the league was fraught with poor participant circumstances. Within the remaining years of the league, together with because the PHF, the league made leaps and bounds, to some extent the place it was a viable competitor, and a helpful asset to traders within the largest single funding in skilled ladies’s hockey the sport has seen. That stated, the league nonetheless voided a whole lot of well-paying contracts with out discover, sending their gamers into uncertainty.
Quickly, the problems of the previous might want to keep there as Knight and Coyne Schofield, Marie-Philip Poulin and Brianne Jenner, and NCAA stars like Taylor Heise and Emma Maltais who had been destined for the PWHPA, are joined by previous PHF MVPs Loren Gabel, Kennedy Marchment, and Mikyla Grant-Mentis, defender of the yr and former USA nationwide crew member Kali Flanagan, and NCAA stars who had signed within the PHF like Alina Muller and Emma Soderberg.
For these incoming stars, this may quickly be their league to hold. The getting older stars of the PWHPA and PHF who fought individually however in parallel for the betterment of girls’s hockey will ultimately retire, and the following era might be left to hold on, with out the divisiveness of the previous. Even Arnone, who was tied tightly to the PHF by means of his Boston Pleasure and his seat on the board of governors, believes the longer term is shiny, even when the trail to reaching this level was not clear.
“I don’t assume the PHF ever begrudged the PWHPA for having a special perspective of how issues needs to be and eager to pursue that,” he stated. Arnone solely hopes members of his league, the PHF, should not missed as he believes they had been “pioneers” for the sport.
The PWHPA made apparent impacts on the visibility of elite ladies’s hockey, and in elevating consciousness of the inequity ladies within the sport face. The PHF made comparable impacts in being the primary group to offer livable wages, well being advantages, and supporting the worldwide progress of the sport. Each pushed one another to higher the sport. Now, they’ll be working collectively to create one profitable and sustainable league. When the puck drops on the inaugural season of the brand new skilled ladies’s hockey league, all events hope the previous stays previously, and that the brand new league finds the success and stability ladies’s hockey has fought to search out for many years.
