op-ed by Laura Everett

“Future PWHL player” the sign in the stand reads, and a ruddy-faced girl child in an oversized hockey jersey peeks above the sign. Catnip to nearly every cameraman and beat writer assigned to the inaugural matches of the Premier Women’s Hockey League. 

She was in every sell-out arena. Every home game. Nearly interchangeable girl children with nearly identical signs.  “Future PWHL NY Player” or “Future PWHL Ottawa Goalie,” perfectly tuned to a story that this was the future every girl child had been waiting for. 

And if she wasn’t in the stands with the sign, she was on the ice with her famous father, a professional male athlete walking on to the ice to drop a ceremonial puck. NHL players bestowing their blessing upon the league, but ensuring that they did so with their children to show that this mattered not just for the present, but for the children of the future. 

And this precisely is the additional burden that every professional athlete in the women’s league carries: on the backs of every player who took the ice this week in the Professional Women’s Hockey League was foisted onto them a girl child. 

This was not by choice but by design. And it is wildly unnecessary. We need to free women and non-binary athletes from the additional burden of constantly playing for little girls. 

Athletes of the PWHL have enough in front of them playing in a new league after the dissolution of the prior PHL and PWHPA, and the quick, 6-month start of the PWHL. What they don’t need are the additional burdens of being asked at every single turn what this means for little girls. The double standard, while being paid and supported far less than their counterparts in professional men’s hockey leagues is so self-evident as to be obvious. The men are not asked at every turn what it means to inspire little boys. 

And yet, almost every question asked by every (male) reporter in the post PWHL Boston/Minnesota press conference was about what it means to play for the little girls in the stands. Not a single question was about what it meant to play for the Boston’s first women’s hockey team, the Massport Jets, or the generations of older women who came before. 

Of course it matters to play for future generations. Of course, “if you can see it, you can be it.” Many PWHL athletes find deep meaning in playing for future generations, in being what they themselves were not able to have. This request is in no way to deny that reality or that meaning. 

But, a good song is not a single note. But far too many PWHL stories and columns have been stuffed full of “Girl Dad” platitudes and saccharine drivel that “this is the moment girls have been waiting for.”

Bullshit. 

We have not been waiting. You all just got here. 

You failed to invest. You failed to see. You failed to cover. 

Girls have not waiting. We had the moments you missed: 

Female Goaltender Manon Rheaume playing in the NHL in 1992. The first USA women’s hockey victory in the Olympic Games in 1998. The first NCAA championship was in 2001. There have been the formation of so many women’s pro leagues that you all failed to adequately invest in and cover.

This isn’t bitter grapes; this is hockey history. Welcome. 

Stop heaving the additional weight of girls onto these PWHL player’s backs and just let them play. 

Hockey is a beautiful sport, with deep indigenous roots. On its best days, hockey is fast and free and wild and brave. When the athletes of the PWHL are allowed to play free, little children and elders and middle aged folks will be attracted to it because it’s a damn good game and wildly entertaining. For years, women’s pro sports has been marketed as “family friendly inspiration,” as if there is only this one note to play.  

With a new league in the PWHL, we can also play some new songs. Songs of inspiration for girl children, sure. But also power and self-determination and teamwork and the joy of women and non-binary athletes just playing for themselves. These athletes and a new league deserve no less.