Women In The NHL? Don’t Bet Against It
By Adam Savard
The Anaheim Ducks and USA Hockey teamed up on Friday for what was surely intended to be a promotional purpose when two-time United States Olympic silver medalist Hilary Knight suited up with the team for a practice to promote a week of activities meant to encourage female athletes to engage in hockey. You can read more about Knight and her experience here (http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=732949&navid=nhl:towheads).
I certainly hope this entire week is successful in recruiting top level athletic talent into the greatest game on the planet. But I assume more than a handful of these young women would have questions about where the ceiling is. There is not a women’s professional hockey league in the USA right now and even the Canadian Women’s Hockey League has a grand total of five teams. You certainly have the Olympic stage as Knight and other top female players can attest to, and those USA/Canada gold medal games are some of the most intense games you will watch at any level.
But there just isn’t money to be made for sponsors and owners in a North American professional women’s hockey league. The WNBA has made tremendous strides in attendance and enjoys additional exposure through a television contract with ESPN, something the NHL can’t boast. But the economics of the country in professional sports is far from balanced between mens and women’s sports and there is no Title IX to try and protect this balance. Men’s sports are where the money is made and that’s going to be where the continued investment is.
Which leads to the obvious question: what is the possibility of a professional female hockey player? For someone as immensely talented as Knight and the vast majority of her colleagues, it’s not high. And it’s not about the talent level. I watched a fair share of Olympic women’s hockey and I have no doubt there are players that have the talent to compete for NHL roster spots. And the game is evolving as well. The role of the enforcer is rapidly deteriorating and technology allows for players to shoot harder and be better protected today than at any other point in league history.
The concern is more of a social one. Thanks to the National Football League and Commissioner Roger Goodell throwing up on themselves over the Ray Rice saga, there is more focus on violent crimes against women now in sports than at any point in my recent memory. And that’s a good thing for society at large. But it absolutely kills the idea of the NHL allowing a female position player suiting up in a game. Hockey is physical and I’m not going to dive into the science of how men and women are physically different. While talent in open ice has the potential to hold up, you can bet your house that the NHL does not want to put out a Department of Player Safety video of a female player involved in a suspendable play.
But we haven’t talked about goaltending yet and there is already a precedent at that position. Remember Manon Rheaume? She played in a handful of exhibition games with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992 and 1993 and did nothing to set back this conversation with her play. And over twenty years later Shannon Szabados was invited to practice with the Edmonton Oilers while waiting for the newly acquired Viktor Fasth to arrive. Szabados garnered enough attention from fans and her play that she has recently debuted and resigned with a mens professional team in the Southern Professional Hockey League.
To put it in context, least season in 32 games Devan Dubnyk went 11-17-2 with a 3.36 GAA and .894 save percentage. If you are telling me Szabados can’t put up at least those numbers if not better solely because she is a woman I would find that completely inaccurate based on Szabados apparent talent level and purely sexist. Taking it a step further I completely expect to see a female goaltender start and finish a regular season NHL game within the next 20 years. And I will be among the first in line to buy the jersey.
But it won’t be about marketing. It will be about talent. As the NHL has said before in it’s marketing in support of the LGBT community, “If you can play, you can play.”. And the day is coming sooner rather than later to see a woman challenge that.