I don’t recall the exact moment goose bumps began to sprout on my arms, and I can’t say for certain when I first reached for a Kleenex to dab at my moist eyes.
What I can tell you is this: What went down at Mattamy Athletic Centre on the first day of this new year tugged hard, but not heavy, on my heartstrings, and I’m not sure any sporting event since Canada vs. the Soviet Union in 1972 has held me in such an emotional grip.
This was a red-letter day on so many levels. For girls/women. For female sports. For the LGBT(etc.) community, shunned by the National Hockey League in the past 12 months but wholly embraced on Monday afternoon, as the dream of a one-size-fits-all Professional Women’s Hockey League gave way to reality.
That reality was Toronto vs. New York in the inaugural skirmish in PWHL history, an ‘if you can see it, you can be it’ moment for so many toque-topped kids among the 2,537 witnesses who’d gathered for the first of what will be 12 sold-out games this winter at Mattamy AC, inside the shell of fabled Maple Leaf Gardens.
It was a landscape-shifting occasion and, seemingly at every turn, it included an LGBT(etc.) presence.
There was a mention of LGBT rights on the public address system, and Billie Jean King, a gay woman and member of the PWHL board, was there to drop one of two pucks for the ceremonial faceoff, the other handled by Jayna Hefford, also a gay woman and senior VP of hockey operations for the new league. Joining them were the team captains, Blayre Turnbull of Toronto and New York’s Micah Zandee-Hart, another gay woman. The two women opted for a hug, rather than a handshake.
Billie Jean also had a sit-down natter with Andi Petrillo of CBC, during which she mentioned her wife, Ilana Kloss, another of the PWHL’s driving forces, and said the players were “so excited. They keep pinching themselves.”
Perhaps the most influential woman in the history of female sports, King entered the Toronto boudoir to shout out the names of the starting six, at the same time suggesting the women absorb the moment.
“This is a day to cherish for the rest of your lives,” said the tennis legend and equal rights champion, wearing a wrist watch with a Pride rainbow band. “I cannot tell you how meaningful it’s going to be as you get older.”
There can only be one first game, and this was it, two teams-to-be-named-later sending the PWHL off on its maiden voyage. For now, they’re just Toronto and New York, but nicknames and logos are in the hopper for all six franchises (Ottawa, Montreal, Boston and Minneapolis/St. Paul are the others).
The final tally, 4-0 for the visiting New Yorkers, was important yet not important.
“Today, it was about soaking it all in,” said Cheryl Pounder, a former Canadian national team player and now a TSN natterbug.
These dovetailing moments had been almost five years in the making, beginning spring 2019 when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was razed to the ground and, scant days later, the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association rose from those ashes.
Rather than throw in with the Premier Hockey Federation (nee National Women’s Hockey League), the finest female players on the planet became a band of barnstormers (Dream Gap Tour), flitting to-and-fro across the tundra and engaging in glorified scrimmages largely ignored by the rabble and mainstream media.
The PHF and PWHPA shared a common interest—one sustainable, professional super league that would allow the women to quit their day jobs—but they didn’t share methodology.
The PHF was an actual league, whereas the Dream Gappers had a beer league vibe and a simple-minded and flawed strategy—trash talk the PHF out of existence; failing that, wait for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to file papers and adopt the Hockey Orphan Annies.
Both sides were prepared to soldier on in conflict this winter, but Mark and Kimbra Walter, at the urging of King and Kloss, opened their vast vault (personal net worth $5.9 billion) in June and purchased the PHF, adding to an ownership portfolio that includes the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chelsea FC, Los Angeles Sparks and a wildlife reserve in Florida.
Detente and one super league had arrived in Ponytail Puck, and what ensued was a six-month sprint, headed by Stan Kasten, taking the Walter group to go-time and all that gay-friendly energy at Mattamy AC in downtown Toronto on Monday.
It’s noteworthy that two of the game’s goal-scorers—Alex Carpenter and Jill Saulnier—are gay, and perhaps the most poignant moment was delivered in the broadcast booth, when the all-female crew squeezed in a mention of gay spouses/retired Olympians Gillian Apps and Meghan Duggan and newborn news (also a pic) of baby Sophie, a sister for George and Olivia.
As a member of the LGBT(etc.) collective, I took nourishment in all the gay-positive attention, especially given Bettman’s buffoonish and idiotic bans on Pride jerseys and Pride tape, which permitted bigotry to take root, if not flourish, in the NHL.
It was a beautiful occasion, this PWHL birth. An emotional occasion. An occasion special enough to make you want to believe that hockey truly is for everyone.
Happy Christivus, kids, and welcome to Sports Santa’s annual gift-giving and airing of grievances, celebrated annually on the day between Festivus and Christmas. Let us begin…
GIFT: Contrary to what the supermarket tabloids tell us or what we see on our flatscreens, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce cooing and cuddling was not the feel-good football story of the year, even if their tryst has attracted more eyeballs than the moon landing.
Instead, I direct your attention to Maya Turner, lady place-kicker extraordinaire and barrier-buster.
Maya delivered the warm-and-fuzzies on a Saturday afternoon of firsts in September, when she a) became the first female to participate in a regular-season U Sports men’s football game, and b) became the first female to score. But that wasn’t the last word on her debut. It got better. There was also the matter of the storybook ending, which Maya authored with the swing of her right leg in double OT, her field goal lifting the 0-fer University of Manitoba Bisons to their first W of the season. Maya finished the year 11-for-14 in FG attempts (longest 48 yards) and 16-for-16 in converts. (Just wondering: Do you suppose she’s a Swiftie?)
GIFT: No surprise that U of M head coach Brian Dobie would pooh-pooh gender stereotyping and give Maya her chance to compete with, and against, the boys. Brian’s one of the truly good guys in sports, and he operates an equal-opportunity program on the south side of Winnipeg. He gets it.
LUMP O’ COAL: Former footy manager/Premier League player Joey Barton overdosed on misogyny pills after England and Manchester United goalkeeper Mary Earps was anointed BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Barton reckons that snooker star Ronnie O’Sullivan or jockey Frankie Dettori would have been more suitable winners, and he described Earps as “a big sack of spuds that plays in goal for a girls’ team.” He also boasted he’d score on Earps 100 times out of 100 penalty attempts, “Any day of the week. Twice on a f—ing Sunday.” Sigh. Barton previously took aim at female commentators in men’s futbol, saying, “Women shouldn’t be commentating with any kind of authority on the men’s game.” And any bloke who disagrees with him is “an absolute fart parcel.” Double sigh.
LUMP O’ COAL: Spain’s now-defrocked slimeball futbol kingpin, Luis Rubiales, celebrated the country’s Women’s World Cup title by planting a smooch on Spanish star Jenni Hermoso’s lips and also grabbed his crotch, which might have been his way of saluting the flag. Rubiales refused to go gentle into the night, but a sexual assault charge and unrelenting international scorn convinced FIFA to give him the official kiss off. He was told to get lost for three years.
GIFT: Christine Sinclair went home to beautiful B.C. to bid adieu to our national women’s soccer side in a friendly vs. Australia, and dry eyes were scarce. It was a lovely, emotional farewell to a footy legend and Canadian treasure.
GIFT: Mark and Kimbra Walter brought great gobs of coin and renewed life to Ponytail Puck when they unlocked the vault to purchase the Premier Hockey Federation in June, then create the Professional Women’s Hockey League. Six franchises to be named later will drop the puck next month, and the three Canadian sides (Montreal, Ottawa, Republic of Tranna) are talking about performing in sold-out barns and/or in front of record-setting gatherings for their home openers.
LUMP O’ COAL: Let’s make it an entire coal bin for Puck Czar Gary Bettman, who exposed the “Hockey Is For Everyone” rallying cry as the National Hockey League’s Trademark Big Lie. First, he gave the NHL’s 700-plus players his official okie-dokie to make anti-gay statements (i.e. refusing to wear Pride specialty jerseys in warmup.) “We continue to encourage voices on social and cultural issues,” he said. (Oh hell, Gary, why not just say, “You have the right to be a bigot!” and be done with it?) Next, to spare bigoted players public scorn, he banned all specialty jerseys, but we all know it was a ban on Pride jerseys. He called them “a distraction” and he was right—the bigotry became a distraction. Then he put the kibosh on Pride tape, outlawing its use pre-game, in-game, at practice, and whenever any NHL player wanted to join in a spirited game of street hockey with the neighborhood kids. Puck Czar Gary stopped short of barring those in the LGBT(etc.) community from purchasing tickets and entering the NHL’s 32 barns, but, hey, the year isn’t over.
LUMP O’ COAL: Ivan Provorov, then of the Philly Flyers, started the NHL’s Rainbow Resistance Movement last January when he refused to play along with teammates while they frolicked, pre-game, on Pride Night. As they flitted about the freeze in special Pride unis, the Russian Orthodox rearguard sat in the team changing room, searching for Bible scripture to support his anti-LGBT(etc.) beliefs. He became Pied Piper to seven other NHLers—James Reimer, Eric Staal, Marc Staal, Ilya Samsonov, Ilya Lyubushkin, Andrei Kuzmenko, Denis Gurianov—and three teams—New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks, Minnesota Wild—to form the Rainbow Resistance Movement. The players cited either religion or Russia’s anti-gay laws to explain their position, whichever was most convenient.
GIFT: Travis Dermott of the Arizona Coyotes, recognizing that the Pride tape ban was a truly dumb directive, flipped Puck Czar Gary the bird (figuratively) and used the Rainbow wrap on the shaft of his stick. More recently, Connor McDavid was observed with Pride tape on the blade of his stick, and New Jersey Devils players arrived at their rink wearing specialty Pride jerseys. Civilization as we know it did not crumble.
GIFT: The man is a motormouth beyond compare and his rants on various platforms, including ESPN, induce hemorrhaging of the ears, but Stephen A. Smith delivered my favorite sound bite of the year. Noting that world-class glutton Joey Chestnut had successfully defended his Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog pigout title by scarfing down 62 tube steaks in 10 minutes, Smith said: “It’s nasty as shit. His significant other does not want to be around him for the next few days. It’s gonna be a lot of gas passed. It’s a lot of gas. I know ’cause I don’t eat hot dogs like that and I pass gas sometimes. Stay away from me. I don’t want to meet you. You might burp and I might smell it from a mile away. I don’t need that in my life. No, no, no.”
GIFT: Also in the favorite-quotes category were New York Mets broadcaster Keith (Magic Loogie) Hernandez and hockey natterbug Greg Millen. First Hernandez, who offered this batting tip: “You want to always be erect when you make contact. Like a telephone pole!” Now Millen, on the Calgary Flames: “If you’re not scoring, ya gotta find ways to score.”
GIFT: Scant seconds after the Winnipeg Jets had been ushered out of the Stanley Cup tournament by Vegas Golden Knights, head coach Rick Bowness was in no mood to pat his players on their delicate egos. Instead, Bones had the (apparent) bad manners to deliver a public flogging. He noted the absence of pushback against Vegas and described the Game 5 effort as “crap,” saying he was “disgusted. Their better players were so much better than ours, it wasn’t even close.” Hmmm. Rick Bowness unplugged. Bravo, Bones.
LUMP O’ COAL: Bones wanted pushback from his players? He got it on garbage bag day. His truth bomb had lower lips drooping in the changing room, and the poor dears boo-hooed their way through season-ending natters with news snoops. The Sad Sack bunch that wouldn’t push back vs. Vegas attacked Bowness, dissing their bench puppeteer as a big meanie who stole their lunch money. And, no surprise, it was now-departed former Captain Cranky Pants Blake Wheeler leading the group pout. It was a pathetic, whine-and-cheesy pity party that confirmed the time for Wheeler to leave the building was long overdue.
GIFT: Many pundits expected Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff to go all Property Brothers and undertake a massive renovation of the Jets roster. You know, strip it to the studs! Instead, the reno was limited to shedding themselves of a very bad contract, Wheeler’s, and peddling sourpuss centre Pierre-Luc Dubois to Tinseltown in barter for Gabriel Vilardi, Alex IaFallo and Rasmus Kupari. They then convinced 30somethings Mark Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck to stay for the duration, signing both to seven-year extensions that kick in next year. Those contracts will age about as well as a carton of milk in a desert sun, but they seem to have already stirred something fresh into Scheifele’s game and the Jets overall brew (see current NHL standings).
LUMP O’ COAL: The Jets season-ticket campaign Forever Winnipeg last spring came across as a buy-or-else threat to the rabble, rather than a rah-rah pep rally. I mean, you might show film of a funeral to sell caskets and long, black cars, but you don’t do it to lure warm bodies to the Little Hockey House On The Prairie. Yet the geniuses in the True North Sports + Entertainment marketing department decided Forever Winnipeg should include footage of Jets 1.0 skipping town in April 1996, a grim reminder of the Day of the Long Faces. That was totally lame-o.
GIFT: Same as last year, Kerri Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Briane Harris brought pebble glory to the centre of the curling universe, winning the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. If you’re scoring at home, that’s four in a row for the Gimli Girls and, if all goes well, they’ll hunt down a fifth title in Calgary two months from now. Go get ’em, girls!
GIFT: I suppose there are some elite curlers who wish JenniferJones would take up another hobby (beach combing, collecting stamps, birding…anything!) to occupy her time at age 49, but our country’s Grand Dame of Pebble People won’t oblige. Jen & the 20somethings— Karlee Burgess, Mackenzie Zacharias, Emily Zacharias, Lauren Lenentine—won the Manitoba title (Jen’s ninth as a skip) and they didn’t stop winning until the final of the national Scotties, when they ran up against the juggernaut known as Team Einarson.
GIFT: The Grey Cup champion Montreal Larks wrote a gripping yarn in Rouge Football, starting with the purchase of the orphaned franchise by media mogul Pierre-Karl Péladeau and culminating in a happily-ever-after finish in the Grey Cup game. Ya, it’s a total bummer that the Larks torpedoed the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ bid to grab the Grey Grail for the third time in four seasons, but I like it when a filthy rich guy buys a sports toy and stays the hell out of the way so the football minds can do their work. And GM Danny Maciocia, sideline steward Jason Maas and QB Cody Fajardo definitely got the job done for Monsieur Péladeau.
GIFT: Amar Doman is another Rouge Football bankroll who has the smarts to let the football people with his B.C. Leos do the football things. Doman focuses on getting bodies into the pews at B.C. Place, and if that means recruiting LL Cool J or OneRepublic to fill chairs, he opens the wallet then steps aside.
GIFT: When he wasn’t rescuing dogs, Brady Oliveira was running over, under and around Canadian Football League defenders. The Bombers tailback topped the three-downs game in rushing, yards from scrimmage and touchdowns.
LUMP O’ COAL: The Football Reporters of Canada were under the misguided notion that Chad Kelly was the most outstanding player in the CFL, even though the Toronto Argos quarterback led the league in absolutely nothing. I’m not convinced he was the best QB, let alone the premier overall player. The George Reed MOP trinket belonged to Oliveira.
LUMP O’ COAL: Davis Sanchez of the CFL on TSN panel compared Kelly to Doug Flutie: “(Kelly’s) that good, that talented.” Oh, put a sock in it Chez!
GIFT: The football writers got one thing right: They finally inducted a woman into the Media Wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Vicki Hall became the first female to join 104 men in the old boys’ club, and it shouldn’t have taken this long.
LUMP O’ COAL: If Globe and Mail jock columnist Cathal Kelly scribbled anything from The Hammer during Grey Cup week, I missed it. How does a national newspaper skip the national football final and the accompanying hijinks? The mind boggles.
LUMP O’ COAL: How does the Drab Slab (Winnipeg Free Press) continue to publish a sports section without a sports columnist?
LUMP O’ COAL: The Drab Slab ran an editorial on the hassle between Soccer Canada and our women’s national side, which stated:“This dispute is not just about resources. It’s also about respect. Women’s sport has chronically been devalued and dismissed, and often ignored entirely. It would be a shame for the beautiful game to continue to be marred by such ugly gender inequalities.” Sorry, but here’s what’s actually shameful: The opinionists at the Freep refuse to recognize the “ugly gender inequalities” on their own sports pages.
LUMP O’ COAL: Damien Cox of the Toronto Star also weighed in on the matter of male/female sports coverage, submitting this nugget of nonsense: “It certainly seems acutely unbalanced” Yikes! It seems unbalanced? That’s like saying Shaquille O’Neal seems to be bigger than Simone Biles.
GIFT: The Drab Slab continues to dispatch scribes hither and yon to cover the Jets, Bombers and big-ticket curling events. That’s how it’s supposed to be done.
GIFT: Paul Friesen, Ted Wyman and Scott Billeck keep fighting the good fight for the Winnipeg Sun, even though the parent company, Postmedia, has their hands tied behind their backs and their feet in shackles.
LUMP O’ COAL: No one is as prolific at airing grievances as Steve Simmons, and the Postmedia Tranna columnist didn’t disappoint in 2023. He spent much of the year yelling at the kids on his lawn, and his grousing included this gobsmacking gem: “I do love watching the Masters, but I wonder: Can we edit out the bird chirping that’s heard in the background?” (Oh, yes, by all means, Steve. And perhaps we can also take a weed whacker to those pesky azaleas at Augusta National. Good grief. You know a guy’s achieved cranky old man status when springtime delights like birds chirping disturbs his couch potatoing.)
LUMP O’ COAL: When Tiger Woods wasn’t missing the cut at the few golf tournaments he entered, he was playing frat boy pranks, like handing Justin Thomas a tampon after out-driving him at the Genesis Invitational. It was Tiger’s way of saying, “You play like a girl, fella.” You know, giggles between buds. Well, tee-hee. Tiger is funny like a bag of Old Dutch potato chips and a Slurpee is French cuisine. And, as an aside, where did he get that tampon? At the neighborhood 7-Eleven or from his teenage daughter, Sam?
And, finally, happy ho-ho-ho to all and may none of your sports heroes fall from their pedestals in 2024.
Even from a great distance, you could feel the good vibe at CBC headquarters in downtown Toronto on Monday.
You could see it in the smiles on your flatscreen TV, in the purple carpet, in the outfits, in the urchins seeking autographs and a word with their hockey heroes. You could hear it in Alina Muller’s quivering voice and in so many other voices, so excited and, at the same time, somewhat disbelieving.
It was the realness of the surreal.
“I keep pinching myself,” Billie Jean King said in a natter with Andi Petrillo of the CBC. “Like, is it really happening today after all these years of working?”
Yes, Billie Jean, there really is a Professional Women’s Hockey League, and Christmas had arrived three months and a week early for the finest female players on the planet, ninety of them wrapped up and delivered to six franchises in a dispersal of hockey talent like we’d not seen before.
Billie Jean was at the inaugural PWHL draft not simply to lend high celebrity to the occasion, but as one of the new league’s founding partners and a woman who knows a thing or two about pioneering in sports.
“Oh wow, what a day,” the tennis legend and equal rights icon said softly after she had slow-poked her way to the dais. (Two months shy of her 80th birthday, Billie Jean isn’t quite as spry as back in the day, when she was winning tennis Grand Slams on the regular, but then who is?)
There was a sense of relief, if not exhaustion, in her voice, as if a great burden had been pried from her mind.
And it had been, actually.
The creation of the PWHL had been a journey of four-plus years, starting with a March 2019 phone call from Kendall Coyne Schofield, one of America’s leading ladies of Ponytail Puck who had a four-word request of Billie Jean: “Would you help us?”
The response was “let’s talk, let’s listen.”
That was ground zero for a startup league that now features six-franchises—New York, Boston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto—with a roll call of six general managers, six coaches and 108 players, 90 of them selected Monday and another 18 signed to three-year contracts prior to this milestone draft.
All six outfits are still teams-to-be-named-later, and we’ve yet to learn which rinks they’ll call home once the puck is dropped in January next year, but that’s part of the start-from-scratch process.
“A trailblazer is one that blazes a trail to lead and include others,” Billie Jean said, peering through a pair of fuchsia-and-purple eyeglasses. “The first person to do something or go somewhere, who shows that it is also possible for other people. Trailblazing is bold, it’s brave, and it can be very scary and lonely. But it’s worth it, it’s really worth it. It’s worth it for each one of us who have fought so hard for this day, and it’s worth it for the generations of women and girls who will come behind us. This is an incredible moment, but it’s not about a single moment, it’s about a movement. Finally giving women professional hockey players the structure, the support and the platform they deserve, that hockey deserves. I proudly stand here celebrating these trailblazers. And the best part? We are just getting started.”
You could have heard a ball of cotton hit the floor as she spoke to a gathering of a few hundred at CBC HQ.
Billie Jean then introduced Taylor Heise as first among the Chosen Ones (to the Minnesota franchise) and 89 women followed her to the stage.
Left unsaid during the four-hour landmark extravaganza was that it was a great day for the LGBT(etc.) community.
Billie Jean King, of course, is a gay icon, and both she and her wife, Ilana Kloss, are PWHL founding partners. Erin Ambrose, the sixth player selected in the first round by Montreal, is gay. Ditto Jamie Lee Rattray (Boston), who mentioned her partner, and Jill Saulnier (New York).
They join other notable out gay players Marie Philip-Poulin and her fiancé Laura Stacey (Montreal), Brianne Jenner (Ottawa), Alex Carpenter (New York), Micah Zander-Hart (New York) and Emily Clark (Ottawa), each of whom agreed to a three-year contract during the PWHL free agent period.
That speaks to where female professional sports is at in terms of diversity compared to the men’s portion of the playground. It’s become a bio footnote with the women, who can be comfortable in their own skin, whereas a male athlete coming out still generates man-bites-dog headlines. There are zero out gay men in North America’s five major pro team sports.
The National Hockey League, for one, talks a good game about diversity and inclusion, but the PWHL lives it.
How long they’ll live it is the million-dollar question, although the financial backing of billionaire couple Mark and Kimbra Walter suggests they’re in it for the long haul.
“For all of our fans, our job now is earning, earning the investment of your time and your support,” said Billie Jean, a Pride rainbow band on her wrist watch. “We have to earn that, and that is a challenge we happily accept.”
Betting on sports has become all the rage, and I wouldn’t want to bet against the gay icon.
We can assume that Mark and Kimbra Walter knew what they signed up for when they staged their bloodless coup and gained absolute control of the female hockey fiefdom at the back end of June.
I mean, it’s not like they’re novices at bankrolling sports franchises, because their portfolio includes one of Major League Baseball’s most-storied outfits, the Los Angeles Dodgers, futbol’s Chelsea FC of the English Premier League, and female hoopsters the L.A. Sparks.
They also own a wildlife preserve in Florida, and they’re zookeepers (Lincoln Park Zoo) which, one supposes, might be beneficial when dealing with professional athletes.
Meantime, Mark and Kimbra aligned themselves with similar been-there, done-that accomplices in the overthrow of the Premier Hockey Federation, and their freshly minted Professional Women’s Hockey League is top heavy with know-how—Stan Kasten, whose hand has been at the wheel of three MLB clubs and he has the World Series rings to prove it, and the gay power couple, tennis legend Billie Jean King and wife Ilana Kloss.
So there’s little, if anything, that these people haven’t heard, especially King and Kloss because the rabble is seldom shy about reminding gay people that they’re the spawn of Satan.
Still, when the freshly minted Poohbahs of Ponytail Puck introduced the general managers of their six franchises and revealed the order for shoutouts at the inaugural player draft on Sept. 18, there was an outpouring of sexism, misogyny, transphobia, ignorance, adolescent smarm and a healthy dose of doomsdayism.
Here are sample comments from the peanut gallery on the Sportsnet website:
“Will the first person chosen be non binary or otherwise?”
“I’m actually thinking about selling tickets so people can watch me sleep.”
“And with the first pick Minnesota picks Lia Thomas. They’ll teach him to skate.”
“I can hear it now…with the first overall pick…Minnesota selects…William Nylander.”
“Hope Bruce Jenner and the Kardashians get drafted, just think of the box office appeal. Sellouts would be common. Heck, I would even buy tickets when they are in town.”
“I would take the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena late in the draft, easy to transition from tennis to hockey. A couple of power forwards in the making with the proper coaching.”
“I heard the Hansons, Ogie Ogilthorpe, Tim ‘Dr. Hook’ McCracken, André ‘Poodle’ Lussier, Ross ‘Mad Dog’ Madison, and Gilmore Tuttle are all going to do the ‘change’ and play in the PWHL.”
“LFL, Lingerie Football League is the one to watch.”
“It’s doomed because very few care about professional women’s hockey.”
“Hasn’t folded yet?”
“How long before the women demand to be paid the same as NHL players? Social justice.”
“Will each team have a quota of a maximum of 3 former (born) males per team, like some leagues (CFL) that have quotas?”
Etcetera, etcetera.
True, it’s nothing but noise (abhorrent noise), but I remember the World Hockey Association startup in November 1971 and I don’t recall the doubters straying so far off-topic with cheesy claptrap about gender and reality TV ninnies.
Oh, sure, there was scoffing and rude laughter aplenty (I confess, I’m guilty) when the WHA carnival barkers announced a 10-franchise operation, stretching from Miami to San Francisco and as far north as Edmonton. I mean, there had never been a pie in the sky that big. A bunch of yahoos (apologies to Benny Hatskin) were prepared to kick sand at the mighty National Hockey League? It was David vs. Goliath, except this time David only had a handful of confetti to try and slay the giant, not a slingshot and a rock. The over/under on WHA life expectancy was about a week and a half.
The thing is, criticism of the WHA and its predicted doom was confined to lack of on-ice talent and the imposing competition.
The PWHL has no such impediments.
Now that women’s hockey is a one-trick pony, the planet’s finest female talent is available for the plucking and it’s the only game in town (six towns to be precise—Montreal, Ottawa, the Republic of Tranna, New York, Boston, Minneapolis/St. Paul).
That, in turn, should prompt an exchange of logical talking points, not bottom-feeder banter from people who’ve spent too much time alone and don’t know how to behave in mixed company.
But that’s what the Poohbahs of Ponytail Puck are up against as they attempt to succeed where the Canadian Women’s Hockey League failed in 2019.
Some suggest the Premier Hockey Federation also failed, but that isn’t so.
The PHF was cruising toward an eighth season, with jacked-up salaries, better benefits and improved off-ice facilities, when the Walters group came along in June and the PHF was swallowed whole—lock, stock and ponytails—by folks who know how to turn one dollar into two dollars.
The fear, of course, is that they’ll be turning two dollars into one dollar with this PWHL venture.
Many of us have long wondered about the market for Ponytail Puck. What is it? Who is it? Where is it? Is there a there there?
Since the CWHL shut its doors in 2019, it’s been a colossal mess, with the PHF and members of the Dream Gap Tour squawking like teenagers squabbling over who’s going to wear what to the prom. The feud sometimes turned ugly, featuring spicy trash talk of a “glorified beer league” and harsh criticism of PHF founder Dani Rylan Kearney.
Meantime, mainstream media, which basically ignored the CWHL out of business, wasn’t doing the PHF or Dream Gappers any favors. Coverage of either group was as scarce as a Stanley Cup parade in Canada.
There’s also the very significant matter of credibility in the eyes of the rabble.
The astute observer will know that our Canadian Women’s National Hockey Team has used teenage boys to prep for Olympic Games, and the results have not been flattering. In friendlies vs. Junior A sides from Alberta, British Columbia and U17 boys from across the country in late 2021, the CWNHT went 0-9 and was outscored 52-9.
Meanwhile, the Dream Gap All-Stars had 11 friendlies vs. teens from the United States Premier Hockey League in early 2021 and went 8-3.
If the finest female pucksters on the planet can’t beat teenage boys, how saleable is the product, right?
Well, the United States Women’s National Soccer Team once lost to a team of teenage boys, yet the NWSL has an average head count of 9,556 league-wide this year, and individual sides average anywhere from 4,033 and 19,690 customers.
If it works for soccer, surely it can work for shinny.
We’ll know soon enough, because the Walter group drops the puck in January, and I’m guessing there’s a healthy appetite for a league that features the elite of the elite female players (give or take a few Europeans).
And the number of gay or non-binary or transgender coaches/players won’t have any bearing on the buy-in from fans or news snoops. I mean, that’s just stupid.
One need not search long or hard on social media to find offensive commentary as it relates to female athletes and sports. Misogyny is as common as prayer in a church.
It is, in fact, the reason I ceased interacting on Twitter.
Kate Beirness with the boys…Davis Sanchez, Paul LaPolice, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall.
After I had mentioned the CFL on TSN football panel in a tweet last August, a reader responded with disgusting, degrading and sexist bile about host Kate Beirness, who does boffo work attempting to harness the egos of the “experts” sitting beside her in the studio.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say it was gross and, although I know Kate only via my flatscreen, I wasn’t prepared to allow a character assassination on my feed. Thus, I deleted the crude comment and have since refrained from engaging in banter on Elon Musk’s play thing.
But what about sexism in mainstream media?
There are different levels of discrimination based on gender, like the extreme, gawdawful examples we easily find on social media, whereby female athletes are reminded that they belong in the kitchen or barefoot in the bedroom. Or it can be the subtle sexism that we find in our newspapers and on our air every day.
Damien Cox tapped into that very thing in a recent essay for the Toronto Star, noting the ocean-wide gap between coverage of the recent goings-on in the National Hockey League and glad tidings of a women’s super league. Between the NHL Entry Draft, the swapping of sweaters and Free Agent Frenzy, an entire forest worth of newsprint was required to accommodate daily dispatches on the men, whereas the biggest story in the history of Ponytail Puck was limited to “oh, by the way” acknowledgment.
“Do we know why this patriarchy still exists?” Cox asked. “Of course we do. It’s about money, and it’s about the way in which women’s pro sports have long been perceived in the North American sports culture.”
Cox also submitted this gem about coverage of male/female sports: “It certainly seems acutely unbalanced”
Yikes! It seems unbalanced?
That’s like saying Donald Trump’s legal team seems to have a lot on its plate these days.
I mean, numerous studies tell us that female sports receives less than 10 per cent of print/air time and, in the 30 years from 1989 to 2019, the needle didn’t move in a favorable direction for the women on TV.
“News organizations spend a lot of money researching what their customers are interested in,” Cox writes. “The clicks tell all.”
No. They don’t. Neither does money.
There’s one basic reason why female athletes don’t sit at the big table and eat with the grownups—mainstream sports media chooses to keep them at the kids’ table.
Too many editors remain locked into the horse-and-buggy thinking of the 20th century, a time when a female athlete was oft looked upon as freakish and sports writers weren’t shy about reminding them of their “proper place.”
Babe Didrikson Zaharias
For example, this is what Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegramwrote about Olympic and golf champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias, aka the Texas Tomboy: “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.”
Williams also had this to say about Babe’s skill level: “The same year she became the greatest woman athlete in history, a comparative chart showed that she had not equaled one record made by a masculine high school champion of the same period. If the best woman athlete in the country is not as good as some gawky kid in high school, why waste the effort, why invite the embarrassment of mediocrity, why—well, why not get a seat in the stands and make the big male blokes out there on the cinder track believe you are nuts about them?”
Does that sound familiar? Sure does. We hear the same refrain today about the Canadian and American national soccer and shinny sides—they can’t beat teenage boys, so they’re either ignored or banished to the back pages of newspapers and the back half of sports highlight shows.
But, again, someone makes the choice to designate female athletes as back-page material. And that someone is most likely male.
Results from a study of 100 newspapers and websites by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) in 2021 showed the following:
Only 16.7% of sports editors were female. Only 24.2% of assistant sports editors were female. Only 19.3% of sports staffs were female. Only 17.8% of sports columnists were female. Only 14.4% or sports reporters were female. Only 24.7% of copy editors/page designers were female.
If we use Good Ol’ Hometown as an e.g., we find that neither the Winnipeg Sun nor the Winnipeg Free Press has a female sports scribe or editor on staff. Zero.
The tabloid’s coverage of women is basically non-existent, while the broadsheet’s record on the female file is a study in neglect, most notably as it relates to local athletes. Although the Sun has ceded the female field to the Drab Slab, the Freep has delivered just 126 articles/briefs exclusive to local female sports in the opening half of 2023. That’s an average of 21 per month. Since the curling season ended, the average is 10 per month. Or one article/brief every third day.
Overall, the Freep published 2,143 articles/briefs exclusive to male athletes January through June, compared to just 394 on women (monthly average: 357-65).
Again, this isn’t down to market research, money or Internet clicks. It’s down to choice.
Every day in every newsroom there’s an editor making the call on copy—what stories to run, what goes on the sports front and what’s relegated to the inside pages. Ideally, they do so based on the significance and/or quality of an article, except the significance and/or quality is often devalued by an antiquated, prevailing and built-in gender bias that too often comes into play. Thus, editors and their scribes choose not to chase down good stories on female athletes.
Perhaps it’s become a subconscious thing, but it’s very real, and it’s the North America norm.
Damien Cox is absolutely correct when he suggests coverage of NHL affairs vs. the landmark news in women’s hockey is “a snapshot of where we are as a sports media culture.”
The avenue to changing that isn’t necessarily getting more women involved in sports media, although that would be a refreshing development. It’s getting the men in sports media to change their outdated perceptions. An attitude adjustment, if you will.
You know, time was when the most stinging insult on the playground was one boy telling another lad “You throw like a girl” or “You run like a girl.” It was the go-to put-down that no boy yearned to hear (trash talk before it was called trash talk). Yet that’s exactly what mainstream sports media is saying in its allotment of space/time to female athletes: “We won’t waste time and space on them because the throw and run like girls.”
While it’s true that Connor McDavid can skate circles around Marie-Philip Poulin, that doesn’t mean editors and writers should reduce her to an after-thought or, worse, ignore her. There’s considerable value in what she does, and the same must be said for a lengthy roster of female athletes, from the sandlots to the citadels of sports.
All female athletes have a tale to tell and they aren’t hard to find. Perhaps editors/scribes are too lazy or too indifferent to go after them, but I say it’s because they’re too entrenched in 20th-century twaddle.
That isn’t just sad, it’s malpractice.
It’s interesting that Cox would wax on about the discrepancy in male/female coverage, because just last October this headline appeared in the Toronto Star, above a column by Donovan Vincent, the paper’s Public Editor: “Women still under-represented in Star’s sports coverage.” Has anything changed in the ensuing eight months? Well, there was a sports front piece on teenage girl skateboarder and Olympic hopeful Fay De Fazio Ebert in Saturday’s edition, and it was written by a female scribe, Kerry Gillespie, so that’s encouraging. Like I said, the stories are there. All it takes is an editor and/or writer who chooses to tell the tale, and all those almighty Internet clicks be damned.
Coach Grunge
Mike O’Shea had no business coaching the Winnipeg Blue Bombers after his first two whirls as sideline steward. The guy was 12-24 and couldn’t have been less popular if he’d put on a Saskatchewan Roughriders jersey, swilled cans of Pilsner and led a Gang Green rally before the Banjo Bowl. Townfolk embraced him the way they do spring flooding. But just look at Coach Grunge now. Winnipeg FC’s 24-11 success over the Calgary Stampeders on Friday night was his 86th regular season W, putting him in lockstep with legend Cal Murphy and 16 in arrears of legend Bud Grant. Add to that two Grey Cup championships, plus twin Canadian Football League coach-of-the-year salutes, and it places him in pigeon perch territory. Oh, yes, like both Murphy and Grant, there shall be a statue of O’Shea outside the Football Field In Fort Garry one day, although they’ll have to put the sculptor on hold since Coach Grunge has no plans to skip town anytime soon. And if they do it right, he’ll be chiseled in short pants, a t-shirt and a tattered ball cap.
Jim Barker was correct: The Bombers-Stamps skirmish was a “slobber-knocker.” Or, as old friend young Eddie Tait would say, “snot bubbles” were the order of the day. When Vince Lombardi called football a “collision” sport, this is what he was talking about. The lads put on their big-boy pants and really had at it. It was a demolition derby in cleats.
So sad to see what’s become of the Edmonton Elks, the one-time flagship franchise of Rouge Football. I’m not sure the Elks still have a pulse, with zero Ws this season (0-5), zero Ws on home soil since October 2019 and more empty seats than a canceled Taylor Swift concert. The great mystery isn’t when they’ll finally win again at Commonwealth Stadium, it’s will head coach Chris Jones will be on the sideline when it happens.
I don’t know about you, but I liked the Toronto Argos better when they wore Double Blue unis, not the robin eggshell togs they’re sporting this season.
Who’s responsible for the 2023 Rouge Football schedule? We’re only a month in and the Argos are already on their second bye week. Not that anyone in the Republic of Tranna will notice. The Boatman attracted just 12,473 of 8 million locals to their last frolic at BMO Field. And, to think, they won the Grey Grail just seven months ago. Pitiful, just pitiful.
Bet you didn’t know that the Snail Racing World Championship was held Saturday at the Grimston Cricket Club in Congham, England. True story. The snails slow-poke their way to the finish line in a 13-inch race, and the world record for snail-level lickety-split is two minutes flat, established in 1995 by Archie, thereafter known as the Escargot Express. No word on whether or not Archie was last seen as an appetizer on a Frenchman’s dinner plate.
That mention of escargot brings to mind one of my favourite all-time sports quotes, from former Major League Baseball player and coach Rocky Bridges, who, when asked why he refused to eat snails, said: “I prefer fast foods.”
Joey Chestnut
On the subject of edibles, no surprise that the king of gluttony, Joey Chestnut, successfully defended his Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog pigout title after a lengthy rain delay last week on Coney Island. But Joey was off his game in retaining the coveted Mustard Belt, scarfing down just 62 tube steaks in 10 minutes, well off his personal best of 76. Just wondering: How many snails do you suppose Joey could inhale in 10 minutes?
Not impressed with the Chestnut tube steak chow-down was ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. “It’s nasty as shit,” Smith said. “His significant other does not want to be around him for the next few days. It’s gonna be a lot of gas passed. It’s a lot of gas. I know ’cause I don’t eat hot dogs like that and I pass gas sometimes. Stay away from me. I don’t want to meet you. You might burp and I might smell it from a mile away. I don’t need that in my life. No, no, no.” And, hey, if anyone ought to know about gasbags, it’s Stephen A.
Observations through week one of Wimbledon: Our guy Milos Raonic plays like he’s bored out of his mind, and another one of our guys, Denis Shapovalov, might be the biggest crybaby on the men’s side.
Kimbra and Mark Walter
The Premier Hockey Federation had 121 players under contract for a season that will never happen now that Mark and Kimbra Walter have bought women’s hockey lock, stock and ponytail, and I’m still waiting for the other skate to drop. I mean, surely some PHFers are royally PO’d, knowing they’ll never draw another paycheque through no fault of their own, and I can’t believe they’re prepared to slink away without a squawk. Once the Walters, Stan Kasten and Billie Jean King reveal the details of their successful Coup de Shinny, I have a suspicion we’ll finally hear some fallout and the voices will be loud.
And, finally, when did Marc Liegghio get a bionic leg? I mean, seven months ago he couldn’t kick a can on the street let alone a football, and it cost the Bombers a third successive Grey Cup title. Yet there he was on Saturday night hoofing five field goals to push the Hamilton Tabbies past the Bytown RedBlacks. Go figure.
The River City Renegade 
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