Woman’s Hockey Needs A Boost-Headed Toward WNBA-Land?

Following the blow-out women’s hockey games at the Vancouver Olympics – in which Canada and the United States steamrollered everyone in sight – the International Olympic Committee’s president, Jacques Rogge, said that women’s hockey “cannot continue without improvement.”

With games as lopsided as 13-0 and even 18-0, who can blame Rogge’s frustration?  When there’s no competition, the game not only ceases to be entertaining to watch, but can you imagine being on the losing team?  I think I’d throw myself on my own skateblades just to get off the ice.

The problem is that the budgets for the Canadian and U.S. teams are so far out of proportion than any of the other countries.  Most other countries are completely focused on developing their male players which means the ladies teams are left with less time to practice, inferior equipment, lack of pro-level coaching and the unspoken stigma of being a girl playing a man’s game.

And that’s not just hockey. That applies to just about all professional team sports.  If you were a tomboy who grew up playing co-ed sports, you became painfully aware pretty quickly that there was only so far you could go.  If you were lucky, college level and if you were really talented, the Olympics. But that’s pretty much it.  The closest thing we have here in the States to pro-level female sports is the WNBA and I don’t know anyone who watches the games.

If the NHL and the international community could foster a similar program – beginning at the college level or possibly earlier – women’s hockey could become something we don’t watch just during the Olympics, but games we look forward to seeing on a regular basis.

To further put this in perspective, Canada and the U.S. have tens of thousands of registered female players, whereas most countries have no more than 5,000 and some only number in the hundreds.

At the World Hockey Summit, Haley Wickenheiser (regarded by many as one of the greatest female players) met with the NHL and all the stakeholders in women’s hockey in a concerted effort to get the project started.

“[The NHL is] looking at it right now from a sponsorship level to get it off the ground,” Wickenheiser said. “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 elite, WNBA-type league, which I think we could do.”

Wickenheiser also proposed the creation of a league composed of the best post-college players from North America and Europe, which would produce more balanced and competitive teams to compete in the Olympics.

So far, the Toronto Maple Leafs has been the first NHL team to announce they would fully support the idea of a competition that would foster the development of women’s hockey.

If the NHL doesn’t step it up and give the girls the support they so rightly deserve and have earned, women’s hockey will go the way of the dodo or worse, the way of Olympic softball.