#pwhpa

[womenshockeydaily]

Where to watch women's hockey

[grantmentis]

ehowe27: Dear hockey, thank you for the past 27 years.

I have you to thank for the friends l've made, the places I've been and the person l've become. You taught me to be brave, embrace challenges and to love with my whole heart.

I will never forget the early mornings, late nights, killer workouts, big losses, bigger wins, bus rides, tears, laughter, euchre, spikeball and most importantly, the teammates who were by my side during it all.

You gave me more than I could ever ask for, and you will always be my first love. My heart is so full and I am the luckiest person alive.

[stereax]

oh boy...

[icedenceladus]

maybe I’m being presumptuous but if the issues are limited to PWHL Minnesota rather than being widespread in the league, I’ll eat my left shoe

[grapefruit-personified]

It may have taken 3 months for the USPS and Canada Post to finally get this here but she has arrived!! Thank you so so so so so much @pwhl-mybeloved this means the world to me 🥹

[mitchmarner]

via truetemperhockey on tiktok

[coffee-at-annies]

Welp. Congrats to the places getting Woman’s Hockey next year

[arsonandhockey]

The PHF was wonderful for me as a person and as an artist. Here are some of the pieces that the league commissioned from me. I was truly devastated by what happened with the PHF. I’m still processing but im hoping the future is bright

[justbackgroundnoise]

a five and a half hour drive to Montreal from Toronto on Friday and a five and a half drive back home today meant a lot of stops at Tim Hortons which also meant I got a ton of hockey cards (I cant help myself) and these are the fun ones I got. women’s hockey cards are my kryptonite.

[gerrypleasedefaultme]

As someone who personally believes in committing to the bit, I can tell you that people generalizing all women's sports as boring is such bullshit. And not just because obviously generalizing tends to lead to nowhere due to the fact that nuance is an important part of arguments but also because it's just plain misogyny.

People could argue that women's sports are boring because they don't play as hard and are less skilled than men, but here's a question: Why are we trying to compare women's sports to men's sports?

Even if anything about women being less skilled was true, it is fundamentally important to understand that most women's sports tend to play other women's teams or women in individual sports tend to play other women. They're not playing men.

Nobody's asking how skilled they are compared to men, which is the fatal flaw in that type of viewing. If you're constantly watching women's sports and asking why they aren't like men's sports, you're not going to enjoy them anyways.

More importantly, these women are playing at the highest level they possibly could be in their sport. Obviously there's varying difficulty depending on whether or not someone is playing for an olympic or national team, but these women are still playing at a high level and generally the highest level they could be playing.

Women playing in slams, women playing for their national team, and women winning gold medals are quite literally playing at the highest level they could possibly be playing.

Because here's the thing: Bringing this up will only serve as a reminder that it was never about skill but rather consistently viewing women's accomplishments as less because they are women.

Acting as if women who are professional athletes aren't skilled is ridiculous.

Generally, most people understand the type of skill and hard work you have to put in to be a professional athlete. Why would it be any different for women's sports? How could women put in the same amount of work and be less skilled? Because women supposedly don't have the same skill that men do?

Women are skilled. Women are skilled at what they do and the sports they play and trying to compare them to men is so ridiculous. Women currently hold more slam titles than men. Jackie Mitchell's contract was null and void after striking out two hall of famers.

Why are women less when historically women have always competed at just as high of a level?

Another argument I've heard is seeing women hurt in their sport makes people want to help them and ask, "Are you okay, sweetie?". While it is normal to be concerned when seeing anyone injured in any sport, it is important to remember that professional athletes are not children and do not need to be treated as such. If violence and serious injury is a problem in a sport and it becomes a recurring issue versus a one time thing, then it needs to be handled within the sport. It is not a reason to not watch women's sports.

If you won't watch women's sports for serious injury, then you can't watch any sports if you're worried about seeing serious injury. It's not to say it's not concerning to see someone seriously injured, it is to say that you can't make serious injury specific to women's sports and act as if you're fine seeing it in men's sports.

I think I may need to circle back to the beginning part of this post of committing to the bit: I believe you can become a fan of any sport if you are willing to root for one team hard enough.

I have never been a soccer fan. I didn't watch it growing up and I don't really know the rules. Am I going to root as hard as I can for my hometown when their game notification shows up on my phone? Yeah.

Am I going to root as hard as I can for the USA during this women's FIFA world cup because I'm American and know they're going for a three peat? Also yes.

It is easy to be a hometown fan. It is easy to be a fan of the underdog. It is even easy to be a fan of a team that wears your favorite colors.

To act as if it is difficult to be a fan of women's sports is bullshit and deeply misogynistic.

A lot of men's teams, simply for the fact that there are so many of them, suck. It is reality. It's not because men's sports are automatically bad or all men suck at the sport they're playing.

It's because there's just a lot of them and not every player you sign is going to be the next coming of whatever great player played for that sport or franchise. It is because not every team is going to be cohesive. It is because one or two great players do not make a great team. Nothing else.

But this logic doesn't seem to be applied to women's sports. If a women's team sucks, then they're not worth watching. If a women's team sucks, then they're not worth rooting for. If women suck at their sport, who cares anyways?

But some fans seem to have no problem rooting for their hometown men's team that sucks but will refuse to root for their hometown women's team that also sucks.

Another point people seem to like to bring up is the fact that people don't really watch men's gymnastics or don't want to. However, this is just a generally sexist remark as it plays on gender roles and assigns genders to specific sports instead of accepting the sport as it is. And the reality is if men's sports are more interesting, then all men's sports are more interesting. Not just some.

Calling women's sports boring or difficult to watch or acting as if women are boring is bullshit. Women's sports are interesting because it's a sport and sports are meant for entertainment.

[womenshockeydaily]

If you have children someday When they point to the pictures Please tell them my name Tell them how the crowds went wild Tell them how I hope they shine

[grantmentis]

“I really do think people are kind of missing the whole story. Yes, this will put the best players in women’s hockey in one league, and definitely promote it, definitely get better over the years. But it kind of did ruin a lot of people’s lives in a very quick, 10-minute Zoom call,” she says. “I think people should really see the other side of it. You know, all the people in the PHF that signed contracts were relying on this money, relying on the job for next year. And now there’s a very big [sense of] uncertainty.

“With the limited amount of teams [in the new league], that means not everyone’s going to get a spot. Someone that’s at the bottom of the PHF probably could have made $50,000, and is now thinking, ‘I have to go get a full-time job because my likelihood of making this league is not very high.’ So, you know, I feel for a lot of people that are now trying to think, ‘Do I want to continue playing hockey, or should I just start my life and figure out if I need to go back to school, get a full-time job?’

[thepassionthatunitesusall]

Gonna try and summarize what I've seen about the women's hockey news:

Billie Jean King Enterprises and the Mark Walter Group have purchased the PHF

This is NOT a merger between the PWHPA and the PHF

Jeff Marek is classifying this as "a buyout"

All PHF contracts for the upcoming season have been voided

PHF and PWHPA athletes will play under one roof

[readinginthestarlight]

Miscellaneous thoughts on the whole PHF & PWHPA situation

This is a hockey post. Also, much of this is based on what I've seen on twitter and tumblr since there's currently very little veritably true information about this situation. Scroll past this if you don't care, read more if you do.

Ok, moving on.

It sounds like the news leaked on twitter. I wonder if the press around this would've been handled better had it not leaked.

This is a shitty situation for the PHF players.

I'm wary of the supposed "early 2024" start date for a new league, which I think is what the PWHPA previously announced as their league start date. If my memory serves correct, the PWHPA has pushed back their league start date several times already.

A January 2024 league start means a gap of several months between the start of the hockey season overall and the start of the league. Professional women's hockey is still new and small in North America. I can't see this gap, combined with all the teams changing, doing anything other than hurting the sport. How many fans will move on to other teams? There's no shortage of college teams or men's teams. Ideally this will just be a dip in viewership, which will recover within a few years as the new league gets more established, but it's not a good start.

Season tickets at still on sale for the 23-24 PHF season. That should maybe be turned off.

I don't understand why the plan is for none of the PHF teams are going to persist through this whole thing. Some of them were regularly selling out games (Boston Pride maybe sold out all of their games this past year). Is there a legal issue with the trademarks or something?

At will employment is stupid and mostly shouldn't exist. This is only tangentially related, but I feel strongly about it.

Professional women's ice hockey leagues in Europe and Asia are maybe going to get a bunch of good talent out of this.

This has been mentioned by others, but the PWHPA players are not to blame for this. The group that owns the PWHPA bought the PHF. Getting mad the PWHPA is like getting mad at Pixar because Disney bought Marvel.

The PWHPA members are voting on their CBA this weekend. This will not include PHF players. People are mad about this on twitter. I think it's inane that people are arguing about it on twitter.

I'm maybe going to buy some Boston Pride gear before it's all gone forever. Probably a swearshirt.

The new league had better have a good inclusive name. For anyone who is unaware, the PHF (Premier Hockey Federation) used to be the NWHL (National Women's Hockey League). They changed it because they wanted a name that was inclusive for players of different gender identities [source]. I do think that "Premier Hockey Federation" is a stupid name, so maybe the new league can go with something else such as the North American Hockey League (NAHL) or American Ice Hockey League (AIHL) or USA & Canada Hockey Association (UCHA, best acronym imo).

Also good inclusive policies of course, but hopefully the players won't stand for anything less.

This will hopefully lead to an NHL partnership, which would bring advertising, viewership, and financial stability. The NHL has been unwilling to consider such a partnership while there were two different leagues at odds with each other.

Good places to find more information:

Melissa Burgess on twitter

@letabbyfight

PHF official news

PWHPA on twitter

The Hockey News (website)

[grapefruit-personified]

Another book review with grape

“As fast as her” by Kendall Coyne Schofield

So I’m fairly confident this is classified as middle grade nonfiction/autobiographical so I try and go easy on writing and pace as it’s for children.

I would give it a 4/5⭐️

I think it is well written especially for their target audience.

Now for the contents. I will say, the amount of emotional and mental ab*se she and other players went through is insane. And you can tell it was the norm by the way Kendall talks so nonchalantly about it. Kind of puts into perspective the perceived relationship with Ken as he was the present coach leading up to the teams 2017 boycott and how to the players he was fired out of nowhere.

It’s a very easy short read that I do suggest. I think it shows a side to Kendall that isn’t always the focus and that’s the charity work she has been doing for nearly a decade.

[alithesportsfan]

🫶🏽