The NHL uses women's hockey players for a PR boost. It needs to fund a league instead.
For the past few years, the NHL has worked to integrate women’s hockey into one of its marquee events, NHL All-Star Weekend. In 2018, members of the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team demonstrated drills for the All-Star skills competition. The following year, Team USA star Kendall Coyne-Schofield competed in the fastest skater competition and Brianna Decker aced the passing drill. Both events were met with wide support from the players and the public.
Emboldened by the success of the past two years, the NHL has gone a step further for the 2020 All-Star weekend and added a women’s 3-on-3 scrimmage to the slate. According to the NHL, the event will feature two teams of nine skaters and one goalie, and be made up of American All-Stars and Canadian All-Stars, going head-to-head in a 20 minute game.
For the past few years, the NHL has treated the inclusion of women’s hockey players into All-Star weekend as some kind of social good. It’s a nice, but ultimately meaningless, gesture. There’s one thing the NHL can do to show that it truly cares about the growth of women’s professional hockey, and that is to fully commit to supporting it financially. Everything else, no matter how well-meaning, is nothing but window dressing. Visibility, even on a national stage, means little without institutional support to sustain it.
Over the past two years, the state of professional women’s hockey has deteriorated exponentially and is in a state of crisis. Due to financial concerns, the CWHL has fallen apart. The NWHL is limping along, with top talent boycotting the league over fair pay and better working conditions. That’s why many top players have instead affiliated with the PWHPA, which acts not as a league but instead sponsors events and games across the U.S. and Canada aimed at increasing opportunities for girls and women in hockey — with the ultimate goal of establishing one sustainable league in the near future.
Yet, in all this time, the NHL has offered limited financial support to both women’s hockey leagues. The NHL has also maintained that as long as the NWHL exists, it won’t step into the women’s hockey arena.
It’s a frustrating and ultimately defeating line in the sand from a league that not only makes billions in revenue, but preaches about wanting to grow the game across all underrepresented demographics.
The real issues with making women’s hockey sustainable will not be solved by intermittent promotion from the NHL. If the NHL is really interested in making women’s hockey more than a sideshow at its marquee event, it will do more than pay lip service to the idea by investing actual money. In 2019, the NHL donated a paltry $100K to the NWHL after the collapse of the CWHL. Of the projected 4.5 billion in revenue the league made in 2018-2019, that’s less than a drop in the bucket.
Women’s hockey has long faced an uphill battle, but with broader financial commitments the NHL could ensure its success. The model for this has already been laid out by the NBA, which put its full financial weight behind establishing the WNBA. The WNBA still struggles but has made incredible strides since being founded in 1996. Just earlier this week, the WNBA announced a landmark CBA agreement that raised team salary caps by 30% and almost doubled max salaries (the WNBA remains 50 percent owned by the NBA’s team owners).
The key in all of this has been the NBA doubling down on women’s sports as an investment in the future, even in the face of financial losses. Per the Wall Street Journal, the NBA’s Adam Silver said the WNBA operates at a loss of $10 million a year.
The NHL could decide to invest financially in women’s professional hockey on a significant level, starting small and slowly helping grow the game. Why it has refused to do so is the real question fans should be asking during the All-Star weekend. The NHL has been lauded for “opening doors” for women at the All-Star game, but what good is it if they’re ushered right back out?
During All-Star weekend, the NHL will tout equality and let some talented women shine on national television. Watching the women play will feel good for a few minutes, but what it won’t fix is institutional inequalities that have plagued women’s sport for decades. The NHL is in a position to make real change happen, but all it has done so far is nothing more than some slick PR.