The best players in women’s hockey finally have their own league
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A confusing and frustrating time is coming to an end for everyone who cares about women’s hockey. Last night, a union made up of most of the world’s best players ratified a collective bargaining agreement and constitution for a new league that has been years in the making before finally coming together rather suddenly over the long weekend.
While the details remain vague – we don’t know exactly where the franchises will be located or even what the name of the new league will be – the bottom line is: players from the arch-rival Canadian and US women’s national teams, who squared off in the having won so many memorable battles at the Olympics and world championships over the years, will finally compete in one professional league alongside many of the world’s other best players.
The genesis of the new league dates back to 2019, when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded. Instead of joining the rival US-based National Women’s Hockey League, members of the Canadian and US national team decided to continue on their own. They founded the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association with the goal of creating their own “sustainable” league – one that would offer better pay, benefits, and benefits than any before.
That proved difficult to achieve. So in recent years, when they weren’t competing for their national teams, most of the top Canadian and American players toiled on the PWHPA’s Dream Gap Tour — a stormy series that lacked the trappings (and fan appeal) of a traditional professional sports league. Meanwhile, the NWHL rebranded itself as the Premier Hockey Federation, grew to seven franchises after expanding to Toronto and Montreal, and began offering increasingly higher salaries.
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As they battled for the upper hand, the rival leagues begged the NHL for help. But Gary Bettman’s outfit refused to subsidize any of them, saying it would wait until there was a single, unified women’s league. There were merger talks between the PHF and PWHPA, but they came to nothing.
The big break came Thursday night when billionaire Los Angeles Dodgers business group owner Mark Walter, who had been working with the PWHPA for more than a year, bought out the PHF to essentially merge the two entities. A CBA and the league’s bylaws were quickly presented to the PWHPA, and the union approved them last night. According to an announcement last week, the league will be “funded” by Walter and his wife, Kimbra, and board members include Dodgers president Stan Kasten and tennis great Billie Jean King, whose company also partnered with the PWHPA.
The new league will reportedly launch in January with six franchises — three in Canada and three in the US — and a minimum salary of $35,000 US. According to Hailey Salvian of Athletic, at least six players from each team will receive three-year guaranteed contracts worth at least $80,000 per year. Stars such as Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse from Canada and Hilary Knight and Kendall Coyne Schofield from the United States would probably qualify.
This is certainly good news for the PWHPA players, and probably also for women’s hockey fans. But not everyone is a winner here. The PHF players’ existing contracts have reportedly been voided, meaning some stars of the old league are missing out on the six-figure contracts they recently signed. Read more about the new professional hockey league for women here.
