The future of women’s hockey has never been brighter.
Hockey has been a sport reserved for men as long as anyone could remember. The sport is built on hard hits and vicious backchecks. Every slap shot, every scrape of the ice rink, and every nasty shove onto an end board has dripped in masculine fervor– at least historically. And that intrinsic masculinity that has seeped into hockey culture for decades can manifest itself in gender inequality and misogyny.
Among team sports that are played regularly by all genders, hockey has been the slowest to be inclusive of female athletes. The NCAA began holding a women’s basketball championship game in 1982. That progress was followed by the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) starting up in 1997. The College World Series hosted both baseball and softball championships beginning in 1982. However, both women’s basketball and softball were competing for titles at the college level in some capacity beginning in the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
Hockey was much slower to catch up. The inaugural NCAA championship for women’s ice hockey was held in 2001. This was after years of many colleges having their own teams, but being unable to play for an official title. Women’s sports championships were held collegiately in soccer, volleyball, field hockey, gymnastics, track and field, swimming, and the aforementioned softball and basketball. NCAA hockey was a man’s game up until the turn of the century, largely mirroring the professional circuit. Since 2001, several programs have blossomed with trophy-winning success on skates, such as Wisconsin, Ohio State, Clarkson, Minnesota, and Minnesota-Duluth. Despite the equality between male and female competition at the collegiate level, the men’s television deal for the Division I Tournament is still much better than the women, a sign of the inequality that still persists.
Hockey at the professional level was also solely a man’s game for a century, and still remains largely dominated by the National Hockey League and its minor league affiliates. The first professional league created for women to play hockey came in 1999, when an all-Canadian league sprouted up called the National Women’s Hockey League. It was disbanded in 2007, followed by another all-Canadian outfit– fittingly named the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. Professional competition was largely restricted to Canadians in non-Olympic years. That was until 2015, when a new NWHL began with four teams in the Northeast United States. The league would later be renamed the Professional Hockey Federation (PHF), and achieved decent success during its run, especially given its fledgling status. A part of the reason for the WNBA’s shelf life reaching 3 decades is because of the early support and funding given by its established men’s equivalent in the NBA. The PHF didn’t have that benefit, and partially due to economic concerns, ceased operations in 2023. However, women’s hockey wouldn’t take very long to get back up and running…
The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) served as a direct successor to the PHF and was christened in 2023 and played its inaugural season the following year. The PWHL has already achieved admirable and lasting success in its three years. The regular season schedule and speciality games– dubbed PWHL Takeover Tour– have garnered incredible attendance numbers. The January 2nd, 2024 game in Ottawa, Ontario set the all-time Canadian women’s hockey attendance mark. In this most recent season, multiple games have set successive American fan attendance marks first in January at Capital One Arena, and then in April at Madison Square Garden. Additionally, the PWHL has achieved the first United States national TV deal among any women’s professional hockey league with the free over-the-air Ion television network.
Finally but perhaps most importantly, Olympic competition has put women’s hockey on the map. In 1998, 2018, and last February in Italy, the United States of America national team won gold in international play. This winter, Megan Keller scored the game-winning golden goal for Team USA to bring glory back to American hockey, and capture the hearts of the entire nation. No controversy with the men’s team would dull the shine of the gold medals won by the dominant women’s squad, who wiped out most teams on their way to first place.
Despite slow progress and an extreme masculine environment — women’s hockey has blossomed into a bonafide force. With increased collegiate participation, Olympic success, and burgeoning professional league, the future of women’s hockey hasn’t looked brighter.