Exciting news has been revealed in the world of professional women’s ice hockey! After a long-standing feud, a new league featuring many of the world’s top players is set to launch in January. Announced on Tuesday, the inaugural season will showcase six teams split evenly between the United States and Canada. These teams will be based in Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, the New York metropolitan area, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, with team names and arenas yet to be revealed.
Jayna Hefford, a five-time Olympian for Canada and the new league’s senior vice president for hockey operations, expressed her excitement stating, “The journey to get us here has been long and twisted.”
The new league comes as a response to dissatisfaction with the Premier Hockey Federation (P.H.F.) which struggled to provide substantial compensation to players and lacked prominent television coverage. This led to a boycott by members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association, including many top American and Canadian Olympic athletes.
In June, the union and the P.H.F. agreed to merge, forming a new league owned by the Mark Walter Group and Billie Jean King Enterprises. Players have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement, and each team can sign three players as free agents before an upcoming draft in September. The upcoming season will see each team play 24 games starting in January 2024.
N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman and Los Angeles Dodgers’ Stan Kasten are showing support for the new league, with plans for collaboration to organize neutral-site games in various cities beyond the six home sites.
