Calgary Journal Online

Lack of professional leagues in Canada leave women hockey players in limbo

It is common knowledge among Canadian hockey fans that young hockey players, if they are good enough, can go on to play professionally when they’re older, whether it’s in the National Hockey League or a subordinate league elsewhere in North America or Europe. If you’re male, that is. Despite there being more than a thousand men playing hockey for a living in the world today, that number is significantly less for women players due to a lack of professional female hockey leagues.

Former Olympic gold medallist Danielle Goyette always had to work outside the rink to fund her hockey career.

Photo: Derek Neumeier/Calgary Journal

“In men’s hockey, after junior you can go to the NHL or to Europe,” she said. “You can play and make a living out of it. In women’s hockey the only way you can go and make money is if you’re on the national team. If you’re not on the national team you’re not getting money from anywhere. Instead of having thousands of jobs like in men’s hockey, you only have about 20 in Canada. That’s the difference.

“I always worked on the side, I never just trained. I would have loved to see, if I could have just trained as a hockey player, how good I could have been.”

During Winter Olympic years, which happen every one in four, the members of Canada’s women’s team are funded by Sport Canada and Hockey Canada to the point where they can focus full time on their training during the months leading up to the start of the competition. The problem, however, is that the roster for the team only consists of 26 players (it’s narrowed down to 21 right before the event begins), meaning that players that aren’t on the national team aren’t given the same level of support.

Even more challenging is that the funding drastically decreases during non-Olympic years, leaving those same 26 players to their own devices as to how they will support themselves financially.

“The one full-time year they sign a player contract, and for the time that they’re with us they can pay their bills and look after everything, but the other years definitely not,” said Melody Davidson, head coach of the women’s national team. “They supplement that with part-time jobs or sponsorship or whatever might come their way.”

With a lack of professional hockey leagues for women, the difficulty, according to Goyette, is the vicious circle of finding time to play hockey at the top of your ability, while also having to make money in some other way.

“If you don’t pay them they cannot train full-time, twice a day, because they have to go to work,” said Goyette. “If you don’t train twice a day, their level of hockey is going to become lower because they’re not in top shape all the time. If you don’t have that money, what’s going to push you to keep going? A lot of people have a big passion in life, but at the end of the month we all have bills to pay.”

Shannon Davidson (no relation to Melody Davidson), a fourth-year forward with the University of Calgary Dinos women’s hockey team, has dedicated a large portion of the last four years of her life to the sport of hockey, but fears that it might all go to waste when she graduates, due to having nowhere else to continue playing. Apparently, she’s not alone.

“It’s an issue that a lot of girls are facing this year on our team,” Davidson said. “It’s either play your fifth year or don’t do anything with hockey. They have a couple senior women’s teams but it’s not the same. There’s nowhere to go right now. Not in the West, anyway.

“There are girls who just love the game and are only in university because of hockey. To know that once they graduate it’s either make the national team, make Olympics or play (recreational) hockey, it’s hard.”

Although there are two female hockey leagues in the country, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, based in Ontario and Quebec, and the Western Women’s Hockey League here in the West, both aren’t yet considered fully professional leagues. Relying on corporate sponsorship and donations to survive financially, the leagues have enough money to continue operations, but not enough to completely support the players, leaving them in limbo.

“There aren’t any opportunities for women to make a living playing hockey,” said Julie Healy, director of female hockey at Hockey Canada. “If you’re looking at all kinds of money through corporate sponsorship plus people going to the game, unfortunately that isn’t in place yet.”

But why is there insufficient support for female leagues, while male ones thrive?

According to Hayley Wickenheiser, who made headlines in 2003 when she played hockey professionally in the men’s Suomi-Sarja league in Finland, age comparison is a large factor. Men’s hockey has been well established in the world for nearly a century, but women’s hockey is relatively young in comparison: the first time that women’s hockey was a part of the Winter Olympics was 1998 in Nagano.

“It’s come a long way, but it’s got a long way to go,” Wickenheiser said. “I think the development of our sport is younger than the men’s game, so if you give it some time I think we’ll see the same opportunities.”

“If you look at it, men’s hockey has been around for years,” added Goyette, now 43, who played hockey from ages 15 to 41. “When I started to play hockey we didn’t have funding from the government. We had nothing. We would play hockey because we loved to play hockey. It was almost a social thing that I was doing every weekend. We’ve been there for a long time, but you didn’t start to hear about women’s hockey until the 1998 Olympics.”

Despite the current troublesome state for female hockey players, there is still a glimmer of hope for the future. Women’s hockey is growing and gaining more notoriety, especially at younger ages where new opportunities are opening up for girls.

“If you compare 1998 to right now, minor hockey is growing,” Goyette continued. “Girls can play hockey now. In my time we couldn’t play hockey, you had to play with the boys or your parents wouldn’t allow you to play at all. The Olympics allowed a lot of things for young girls.”

“That’s why it’s getting so much better now, because there are programs that go down to Atom and Bantam; good, solid girls’ programs,” said Davidson. “Now that programs are set in from when the girls are young, moving up through the different levels, it’s going to become bigger and you’re not going to have another choice but to put more emphasis on it.”

Will these grassroots developments be enough to change the tide? It’s difficult to say for sure, but Wickenhesier, who has already broken much new ground for female hockey players during her career, said she believes so.

“We’re on the horizon of some form of professional women’s hockey within the next five to six years,” Wickenheiser said. “I think it’s just a matter of time and corporate sponsorship, and the best players in the world playing in one spot.”