Well, it happened. There is now only one professional women’s league in North America, as so many have clamored for. Unfortunately, it played out in the ultimate nightmare scenario. This not clickbait or exaggeration when I say that this may be the worst possible thing to happen to professional women’s hockey in North America, outside there being no leagues at all. July 29th is the day women’s hockey in America went backwards. All the gains made by the PHF are gone. I really don’t know how professional women’s hockey in this continent recovers after this. The most stable league and the only one that showed genuine promise in sticking around just sold themselves to basically get folded. I will warn you, this won’t be the most journalistic article. My opinion will be inserted quite often in this article. My goal isn’t to “both sides” this or “present just the facts”. I’m here to explain what’s going on, and more important, what this means for women’s hockey moving forward and why this is destructive.
So, first: what happened? The PWHPA acquired the PHF. Second: why did this happen, and more importantly: “why now?” Simple: to union bust. Get a load of this information:
So, in recap: the PHF players were looking to strike, quite soon, so that they wouldn’t be considered “at will” employees and be actual employees with protections. Unfortunately, thanks to this union busting acquisition, the contract of every single PHF player has been voided. Every. Single. One. Think it can’t get any worse? Think again.
Yep, you read that right. PWHPA players get preferential treatment. Ok, you might be thinking, “well, it can’t be that bad because they’ll clearly just combine the teams from each league into one bigger league, right?” Lol, no. So, the PHF had seven teams, the PWHPA had four. If they were to combine each team into one bigger league, there would be 11 teams. Instead, there will be six. They will be taking six existing PHF teams, stripping their rosters and filling them with PWHPA players, and then ridding of one franchise completely. The PHF built this infrastructure, the league, namely the players, did so much to create a quickly growing stable league, only to get screwed over and not reap any of the benefits. The PHF players are who built the league and grew women’s hockey. Now, they’re about to get shut out so that a bunch of petty Olympic players can attempt to benefit off it. But, that’s not all. The PWHPA players are now voting on a new collective bargaining agreement and league constitution that will last through 2031. PHF players don’t get to take part in the vote. So, their league is getting taken over, having their union busted by another union, lost their jobs, and now don’t even get a say in the future of the league they helped create. But the people who didn’t help create that league get all the say. I don’t know, that seems messed up to me.
120 players are now without jobs, and I don’t know the number of people working in these franchises offices that no longer have jobs either. Hundreds of people who were fully expecting to be employed this upcoming year and are suddenly without jobs. College graduates had job opportunities they could have taken but didn’t because they thought they would be playing professional hockey. Some players signed leases on homes, and now can’t pay for those homes. Others are Europeans, working to move to America, or may have just come and now must find a new place to play hockey. All their time, emotional and physical energy, and money, wasted.
Now, let’s talk about these Olympians that will be reaping the benefits of that which they did not sow. I was working on an article that I was planning to release tomorrow about the PWHPA, lambasting it for its continued broken promises, transphobic board members, and their open scorn for the PHF. Since we’re talking specifically about the players, focus in on that last point: open scorn for the PHF. The PWHPA was created in response to the PHF because they believed the PHF wasn’t moving fast enough to give women good pay, benefits, etc. Since then, it’s been the PHF leading the way in giving the players benefits, rights, and most importantly: a living wage. The PHF has been doing what the PWHPA promised to do, but didn’t. The founding players, especially Hilary Knight, have been making their displeasure known, taking frequent pot shots at the PHF. It’s beyond petty. They’re upset that the PHF is doing what they wanted to do, but aren’t. Now, they have chosen to take over the PHF and get rid of the previous players, but keep much of the infrastructure, and presumably broadcasting rights, to benefit themselves out of spite. That’s all this is. The PWHPA board, which is run by players, decided to use their union to union bust the PHF and then force them out of jobs and then consolidate the league out of pure spite. They couldn’t achieve an actual league on their own, and this is how they’re trying to achieve it now.
Alright, now I need to address a MAJOR elephant in the room that no one is bringing up: why the hell is a union owned by a billionaire? The PWHPA is a union of players, members of the proletariat. They’re operated by a member of the bourgeoisie: Mark Walter. I don’t know, doesn’t that seem suspicious? The point of unions is to protect their members from the bourgeoisie. This is a conflict of interest. The board is acting against the interests of their own players and the sport in general. Because understand, it’s not just PHF players who are getting screwed over, PWHPA players get screwed over as well. Don’t get me wrong, PHF players get the worst of this, but a whole lot of PWHPA players are about to be out of jobs as well. There are definitely a decent amount of PHF players who will beat out PWHPA players for jobs, and they’ll be in the same boat as all the current PHF unemployed players, but expected to have been employed this upcoming year. The only people this move benefits are Olympic players, who also just happen to make up the board. If you aren’t a national player, you are screwed and harmed by this. Only those at the top of the sport win from this move. If you are just beginning or in the middle, you are harmed. The PWHPA board, who directly benefits from this move, made this move in their own self-interests, not even considering the players they’re supposed to represent. So, in other words: a union is owned by a billionaire and run by people at the top of the sport who act to benefit themselves and don’t act for the benefit they claim to represent. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t seem like a good union.
But, that’s not all, friends. No, there’s more to the union, things even more concerning than listed in the previous paragraph. So, there’s reportedly a union vote going on, but there’s also no public evidence of said union existing. That’s right! Legally, this union doesn’t exist. According to Erin Brown, they never certified the union, but they’re currently voting on a Collective Bargaining Agreement. I don’t even understand how this could happen. I genuinely don’t even understand how this all works. How on earth can you vote on a CBA when, legally, there is no union? The more I look into the PWHPA the less I understand about it. Everything about the PWHPA stinks, and the deeper you look, the worse and more confusing things get.
I’m not done laying scorn on people in this whole situation. There is one group of people I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is PHF ownership. I haven’t forgotten you, and I’m not letting you off the hook. From the beginning of the PHF, ownership worked to screw over the players as much as possible. It’s the players who grow the league, the players from whom the money is made. These owners do nothing except take money from the players, money the players create from their labor. Yet, let like all bourgeoisie, they sought to exploit their workers, and did. All the time. The worst crime they committed was forcing players to sign “at will employment” contracts, and it all culminated in this. The PHF ownership did NOTHING to protect their players at any point, and now over a hundred, not including staff at these franchises, are jobless. The ownership decided to cash out at the expense of their workers. More importantly, they seemingly did so just to union bust. It’s genuinely sickening.
Speaking of PHF ownership, the PHF released a statement today. I’m not going to spend much time on it because frankly, there’s not much to say. At no point did they mention PHF players in this statement, but a lot of statements about how this league is “good” by owners who will financially benefit from this. It’s a nothing statement that says nothing other than how excited the owners are to make money. My favorite part of the statement isn’t from the statement at all, it comes from the tweet made by the PHF announcing this.
Notice how it says, “Has PWHPA and PHF Support”? It’s only the owners who support this, not the players. Amazing how the only support that apparently matters is those who do nothing but make money off the labor of others. Those actually doing the labor don’t matter and don’t deserve mention. It’s only the owners’ opinions who matter. Just an astounding amount of disrespect for those who built the league and made it what it is today.
Finally, the PWHPA has released a statement. Not going to spend much time on this, similarly to the PHF one. It’s another spit in the face of fans and players. This time, they do mention players, but only PWHPA ones, treating them as if they’re the reasons why women’s hockey is as big as it is, not PHF players. The PWHPA did nothing to grow the game, the PHF did, and this statement pretends otherwise. Of course, a good chunk of it is spent praising a billionaire as well, to finish the slap in the face. I want my team and favorite players back. Not you patting yourselves on the back for making sure I’ll never to get to see most if any of them play ever again.
As of this morning, other details have come to light. Connecticut, Boston, and Buffalo are on the move. In addition, PWHPA ownership doesn’t like current team names, so there will be plenty of brand shakeups coming. There will be three American teams, and three Canadian teams. The league schedule will be this: camp in November, exhibition play in December, and regular season starts in January. I haven’t found anything about the post-season yet. In addition, PWHPA players were on a call with owners today, PHF players not addressed. In this call, these things were learned, reportedly:
$35,000 minimum contract with $80,000 as the maximum.
Players will get a housing stipend.
No previous staff or coaches will be brought back. All new staff and coaches for the upcoming inaugural season.
A few hours later, the league finally reached out to PHF players, and here’s what we learned:
European players will be deported. They will not be able to stay while they find out if they get to play in the new league or not. The PWHPA will not help them.
PHF players will get 1/12th in lump sum of their previous contracts. There will be a $1M split between those who don’t make it to the new league.
PHF players cannot collect unemployment.
Two other quick things I want to hit before I end this article are more personal objections I have to this:
This new league will almost certainly not allow for trans players. To my knowledge, and I did look into this, the PWHPA does not allow for trans hockey players. The PHF did, and famously had Harrison Browne play for the Riveters and Beauts. The PWHPA also has transphobic members on its board. I fear that the days of inclusion of trans players in professional hockey are over.
I am a fan of the PHF, the Minnesota Whitecaps in particular. The entire roster is gone. Any connection apart from the name (and likely the logo as well) are gone, and that’s assuming they keep the Whitecaps around. There is no connection between what the PWHPA Whitecaps would be, and what the PHF Whitecaps I came to know and love were. I just find myself struggling to care about what the future of the Whitecaps is, assuming they’ll still be around. To be honest, this is the end of my being a fan of the team. I’m not interested in watching a group of players I don’t care about who just stole jobs from ones I already loved.
And with that, we will end this article with a few final thoughts from others. Last night, as I couldn’t figure out what to write or how to address all this. These four tweets helped shape the direction this article went, and I want to thank them for the inspiration:
These are the tweets that really helped form this article, and how I went about discussing this. So, thank you to those who tweeted these, and for helping inspire me.
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