The IIHF Women’s World Championship begins this week in Brampton, Ont., the first time the tournament has been held in Canada in its normal spring window since 2016. That was after two Olympic gold-medal-winning goals from Marie-Philip Poulin, but before the third.
It brings with it three key questions. Will any country other than Canada and the United States pull a shock upset and make it to the final game? If not, can the Americans turn around a sliver streak of three gold-medal losses to Canada — two Worlds and an Olympics — in the space of a calendar year? And, what happens to the sport when it is all over?
Let’s start with the easy stuff first. It would likely take something like a 67-save miracle in the semi-finals for one of the other nations to knock off Canada or the United States. One of the weird by-products of the pandemic was that the Canadian and American national teams ended up spending a lot of time training, and playing each other, while other countries with less established programs had few chances to compete. The strong got stronger.
As for which of the two powerhouses will win? Only a fool would attempt to predict such things. Of the last 10 meetings between the two in an Olympic or World final, just one has been decided by more than one goal — a 7-5 win for the States in the 2015 Worlds. Seven of them weren’t decided in the regulation 60 minutes. Canada actually had what seemed like a comfortable 3-1 lead at Beijing 2022, then had to defend a late 6-on-4 power play that saw them scrambling all over the ice and hurling themselves in front of pucks like they were trying to take bullets to save the president. The Americans managed a late score to make it a one-goal game, like the fates ordained.
But the what-happens-after question? That’s the tricky one. The women’s professional game, modest though it is, has been bifurcated since 2015, when the U.S.-based NWHL was formed to compete alongside the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. The CWHL folded in 2019, and after its demise most of its best players, plus dozens more, formed the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. They have spent the four years since, minus the pandemic pause and time spent representing their countries, playing a series of travelling exhibition games while trying to drum up support for what they call a sustainable women’s pro league. That is, one that pays salaries that would not require players to hold down second jobs, and which would cover basics like equipment costs and practice ice.
What the members of the PWHPA have distinctly not done since 2019 is join the NWHL, rebranded to the Premier Hockey Federation. They have instead held out for a new league in what has become a years-long stare down.
A resolution could be coming in a matter of days. PWHPA members have insisted for months now that behind-the-scenes work has progressed significantly. Business partners including tennis great Billie Jean King and Mark Walter, one of the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers, came on board last spring, and the PWHPA boasts blue-chip sponsors for its exhibition events. There were once indications that a new league would begin play this winter, but that start date has been pushed back to the coming fall. A report in The Athletic last month said players had been told at the PWHPA’s season-ending showcase in California that the business plan for the new league had been approved by its backers.
The Women’s World Championship, especially one based in hockey-mad Canada, and with 31 members of the PWHPA on national-team rosters, would seem like an obvious place to make an announcement about the future of women’s professional hockey, even if the announcement is not made under the auspices of the IIHF which, like most international sporting bodies, tends to think of itself as above such things.
So far there has been no indication that news is forthcoming, which could be because there is no news to report, or because the PWHPA and its backers have kept to their strategy of not saying anything until they can say everything. If there has been a consistent message from players and advisors like Jayna Hefford over the last several months, it’s that there is a lot happening and eventually they will tell us what it all is. Last fall, at a Canadian Olympic team event, I asked Team Canada star Sarah Nurse what was happening with the potential new league.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she said then. “We’ve been trying to build something from the ground up over the last three, four years.” It was coming along, she said. “I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.”
That sharing seems like it must be imminent, if the nascent league is truly going to be up and running in a matter of months. And if this event comes and goes and the PWHPA members disperse without news about their professional futures, would that mean that plans have been delayed again? Playing careers only last so long.
For now, at least, there is something else to worry about. A World Championship, and a likely next chapter in one of sport’s great rivalries.
Postmedia News
sstinson@postmedia.com
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