It’s been a whirlwind since the National Women’s Hockey League first announced its existence on March 26, 2015 to its first game on Sunday, October 11. Headed by Dani Rylan, a former Division I hockey player from Northeastern, located in Boston, Massachusetts, the league seemed to come from nowhere. Now that it’s here, it could signal a step forward in the battle for equality in women’s professional sports.
Though it’s currently the newest professional hockey league, the NWHL has a counterpart in North America – the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, or the CWHL. The CWHL is a five-team league situated mainly in Canada, with just one team, the Boston Blades, in the U.S.
In contrast, the NWHL is entirely an American league, with four teams including the Boston Pride, the Connecticut Whale, the New York Riveters and the Buffalo Beauts, who are all based in the northeastern U.S. It is the first professional women’s hockey league to pay its players. There are 72 players signed in the NWHL, and each will earn a minimum of $10,000 per year. The higher-skilled players can earn up to $25,000 each year. While it’s nowhere close to the NHL’s minimum salary of $525,000, it is a step for women in professional hockey.
Even though the NWHL does pay its players, it’s not enough for their athletes to play professionally full time, so nearly everyone who’s signed with the leagues has another job to supplement the paycheck they receive from the NWHL. The league helps players find jobs and places to live as well as helping them get acquainted with their new home. The NWHL has also been attracting players from other countries, including Russian superstar Lyudmila Belyakova and Japanese goalie Nana Fujimoto, who was recently named best goaltender in the 2015 Women’s World Championships.
There are around a dozen current and former Olympians playing in the NWHL, a testament to the league’s high caliber of talent. Stars like Molly Engstrom of Team USA and Yekaterina Smolentseva, captain of Team Russia along with more current names like Team USA’s Hilary Knight, Brianna Decker, Gigi Marvin and Kacey Bellamy, among others, are just some of the big-name players who joined the NWHL.
Women’s professional sports don’t often get a majority of mainstream media coverage, but 2015 has been a banner year for women in sports. It started with the U.S. Women’s National Team winning the Women’s World Cup, the top title in soccer, this year. Their victory spurred New York to host a parade for them, making them the first professional women’s team to ever have a parade in a part of Lower Manhattan.
Ronda Rousey burst onto the sports scene shortly after the World Cup, where she entered into the discussion as one of the best athletes on the planet. She’s currently undefeated in MMA fighting.
Then there’s Serena Williams, one of the top tennis players in the world who fell just three sets short of taking home the first calendar Grand Slam since Steffi Graff did it in 1988.
Now there’s the NWHL, the first professional women’s hockey league to pay its players, and it’s been getting a lot of media attention since its inception. The league had its first day of games this past weekend, and it was covered by media outlets including Sports Illustrated, Buzzfeed, ESPN, and the New York Times, to name a few. The game against the Riveters and the Whale was sold out, and over 1,200 attended the game between the Pride and the Beauts.
