The Other Hockey Season

NHL grinds on a little more, but PWHL is done for the season.

I try to tune out NHL altogether. For me, once the Walter cup has been hoisted, it is the end of the ice hockey season. There are reasons why that is, which I will discuss.

I was always repelled by the toxic masculinity encouraged in men’s and boy’s hockey. Over a decade ago I had gradually become interested in women’s athletics. I discovered there was such a thing as women’s hockey. I started attempting to follow it.

Some might say I rebelled against the cromagnon mentality in hockey. I believe the cromagnons would have had a much different attitude than that. To connect cromagnons to NHL would be to insult them.

From what we know about cromagnons, they did not act that way. Women were fully respected. It is the same way in the remnant hunter gatherer societies.

They have no patience for jokers who want to act aggressively, pushing for prestige and status against men, trying to dominate women. It upset the biologically healthy social order in which consensus decided the leaders, and women controlled mating. It caused needless conflict, threatening group survival in precarious times.

All this behaviour seems to have begun with neolithic, farmer /herder societies. It never became universal but it did come to predominate. We could get deeply anthropological as to why.

Instead we could just say, it can be assumed that cromagnon males were fine with letting the girls play, too. This is confirmed by what we know about hunter gathers. There does not seem to be enough study done of the kinds of athletics they engage in among themselves.

Much of the fun of performing athletics is in having people watch you.  Much of this would have been about impressing prospective mates, and assessing prospective mates. So, much of this was originally about watching ones opposite sex perform.

It is said that men demonstrate themselves, women display themselves. Cromagmen would have demonstrated power and stamina; ability to bring in the mammoth meat and chase off the sabre-tooths. Cromagwomen would have displayed themselves in more complicated ways, showing a wider range of abilities and thus, greater overall fitness.

Thus, Cromagwomen would have watched cromagmen’s athletic demonstrations with some interest. However, cromagmen would have watched female athletic displays with even more interest. This was about what it revealed about her desirability as a sexual partner, which is really about her suitabilty as a breeder of the next generation of capable cromagnons.

This was important because there was usually a considerable male shortage in such societies. Males were more expendable. A lot were expended dealing with the kind of wildlife that was around in those times.

Physical attractiveness is a sign of good genetics, good body structure. Gracefulness signals good neuromotor development and efficiency. Ability to master a wide variety of physical challenges and activities indicates a good brain.

Human history moved on to the age of metals. Male athletic contests came to be about who the best warriors were. Thus, who should be in control of societies based on force and dominance.

The weak became the slaves. Women, being weaker, became a special type of slave. Athletic women were disruptive to this kind of narrative.

In ancient Greek times, women fought to be allowed to be athletic. This was, of course, the women of the dominant warrior castes. The old Spartans said that strong women produced strong sons, and so let their women get strong in all sorts of athletic contests.

However, they could not play in the presence of men because they had to be naked. Lycra was not yet invented. They could display their prowess in the Hera games, which men were banned from.

It is often noted that the countries with the most effective warriors also tended to let their women be tough and brave. The ancient Scyths ruled the Asian steppe for centuries and their women gave rise to the legends of the Amazons. Countries which suppressed women tended to be less effective at war.

However, warrior countries tended to be small in population and less productive. Greater numbers and ability to produce armaments generally prevailed over time. As the ancient political philosopher put it; an age of warriors gives way to an age of “acquisitors”, which leads to an age of decadence.

He also thought that women came to be suppressed in these subsequent ages. Men became generally weak and cowardly. Strong women shamed them.

The Romans partly went against this rule. Their ruling classes were often very acquisitive, or plain greedy, as well as cowardly, but women had a lot of status. It is notable that aristocratic women kept demanding to become gladiatrices, female gladiators.

There is a myth about the Romans, that all gladiator contests were to the death. They would have quickly run out of gladiators. They usually fought until someone drew first blood.

Often, free people would volunteer to be gladiators. It was considered disgraceful for noble people to do this, but they did. Even one emperor fought slave gladiators for fun.

There is much evidence for gladiatrices. There are surviving writings from men who were surprised by female gladiator contests and wanted more of them. Other men raged about the disgrace of it.

Several imperial decrees over centuries banned women from fighting in arenas. Sometimes they were also banned from things like chariot racing. The mosaics of Pompeii are full of pictures of women in bikini like outfits, engaging in various sorts of athletics.

From the rise of christianity up until recent times, there was great hostility, in western civilization, to women doing anything remotely athletic. Especially, to do it before an audience. Usually aristocratic women were allowed to play tennis inside their chateaus.

Gradually, things opened up again for women athletes. With the second modern Olympics, year nineteen hundred, some women were allowed to compete. Women’s sports grew.

However, many men, including ones who owned newspapers, disapproved. The theme that began then was that women were too weak for athletics, and risked damaging themselves. Fake stories were planted of women collapsing and dying on the track.

At the Antwerp olympics of year nineteen twenty, it was reported, and still often taken as fact, that half the women in the ‘thousand meters’ final fainted after running the course. As late as the seventies, it was claimed that running a marathon was too dangerous for women. In the earlier part of the last century, women trying to hold athletic events like rugby or lacrosse were often chased off the field by swarms of aggrieved men.

Women who played ice hockey in Canada in those times encountered less resistance. This may have been because Lady Isobel became a top player. She was the daughter of Lord Stanley, the Governor General who encouraged the growth of ice hockey and donated the Stanley cup.

Women’s ice hockey teams were common until the nineteen thirties. The the game slowly turned from it’s more gentlemanly origins to being a thug’s game. The old joke was that a professional hockey player was identified by his face full of stitches and his lack of teeth.

We are now in the modern era. That means, the common era, the new order of things that opened up after the world wars. Different social groups and activities entered the modern era in different ways and at different paces.

Some athletic activities such as ice hockey were slow to embrace modernity. It was still mostly played in Canada, which itself was a little slow to adopt The Enlightenment in many areas. The cultural struggle in the hockey universe centred on the adoption of body protection.

Even with protection, hockey can still be a dangerous game. People get moving fast on skates. If they ran head on into each other at full speed they would probably kill each other.

Pucks are dangerous. They hurt when you stop one in an unprotected area. They can injure or kill if they hit you in the wrong place.

The change came gradually during the nineteen seventies. It came from public pressure for macho hockey players to stop being jackasses. In Canada it also came from the examples out of other countries which were starting to play ice hockey.

Body protection gradually became mandatory in the NHL. There was resistance from older players, like this was interfering with their personal freedom. New players had to sign agreements to wear all the sissy stuff as a condition of employment.

The old guard died out. They did not literally die, they just retired or were too injured to continue. I suspect they had a lot of trouble competing with helmeted and padded opponents.

It usually happens that when a goon sport is cleaned up, made safer, made to be more about athleticism, the girls start wanting to play, too. So it was with ice hockey. However, they had the problems of finding a place to play, and people to show them how to play.

Many older women players have stories of passing as boys in order to play. Creating girl’s leagues was a struggle. Other old timer stories are about having to waken everyone at five o’clock to get some practice ice time.

Finding space need not have been so hard. There are still debates about whether boys and girls should play together until age twelve. Yet the truth is, there is no significant difference in physical ability between genders before that age.

In fact, girls may have an advantage. But no, we cannot have girls playing tough, male sports like hockey with boys. The boys might hurt them. Or, they might beat the boys and hurt their feelings.

Girl’s leagues steadily developed from the elementary school level up unto the high school and the tertiary education level. University women’s hockey scholarships became a thing. National teams were developed.

However, once outside of these systems, women still had no where to play. The dream began, of a professional women’s league. However, the dream was hampered by the impracticality of most women’s hockey advocates.

I have written before about this history. Two bad ideas long impaired the development of a professional women’s hockey league. One was that such a league could only be developed as an adjunct of a men’s league, especially the NHL.

One would think that with all the nonsense about the NHL and many of these junior leagues, the women would want nothing to do with it. Male hockey players are noted for a conceited, entitled attitude. They are unfortunately encouraged in it.

It has changed somewhat in recent years, but for a long time, ice hockey was something for working class men. They played as a way to improve their social standings. With luck, they got into the NHL, made a lot of money for a few years, then retired with their concussed brains and stitch faces, and lived off their earnings and glory for the rest of their lives.

What is really appealing about women pucksters is that they really like playing. They also seem to like each other. They respect their fans. They are also said to be much easier to coach because they listen.

Perhaps this will change if PWHL is very successful, starts paying huge salaries, and the players get greedy. Already their games are getting less accessible for people without a lot of money, or with mobility issues. I remember, not long ago, watching the old Toronto Furies play for ten dollars, and having my choice of seats.

Alas, this brings me to the other idea which impaired the development of women’s hockey. It was really more of a frame of mind. They did not demand a proper league to play in, to maintain their skills.

Instead, the players kept trying to set up something on their own. They lacked skill at setting up and running an organization. They got taken advantage of by grifters and ‘nonprofits’ careerists.

Here is how this process played out before it finally lead to a real women’s league. Our present PWHL could have come about much sooner.

The pattern was for the players to start something ‘ad hoc’ just to have a place to play. When it fell apart they would piece something else together on the fly and hope it would work out. It never occurred to them to ask that Sport Canada create a league, like the government sponsored federations in many European countries.

In the beginning there were provincial leagues. I do not know what they did in the United States. These were ‘pay to play’ organizations; the players had to cover most of the cost out of their own pockets.

About 1999, these leagues were linked to form the National Women’s Hockey league (NWHL). For awhile there was a Western Women’s Hockey League (WWHL). The problem remained that they did not know how to create an adequate funding system.

NWHL collapsed in 2007. A few players got together and started Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL). The idea was that it would try to advertise that women’s hockey could be a viable thing if someone would come along and fund it. They would also keep looking for someone to fund it.

The trouble with CWHL was always two competing, but non viable, visions. One faction was focused on figuring out how to get NHL to adopt them. The other wanted to organize women’s hockey as a ‘non profit’.

‘Non profit’ means, to find some cause or socially useful function which could be considered worthy of being funded under ‘charity’ tax rules. Unfortunately, management of the league was allowed to come under the control of people with this mentality. This was problematic to any idea of allowing the game to grow.

It meant that CWHL was not allowed to make a profit. It needed to find some ‘sugar mommie’ to fund it out of the goodness of her heart. Also, for that ‘charity receipt’ for tax purposes.

The real aim of such a structure is to was to create a permanent job for one or a few career social agency managers. Allowing the league to expand would wreck the plan of these ‘apparatchik’ types. As well, it was very hard for teams or players to get income from ‘endorsements’ and other advertising forms.

CWHL did at least pay most of the players expenses; equipment, travel, hotels. It had a proper insurance plan through Sport Canada. It was still called a ‘glorified beer league’.

The players were next abused by a ‘startup’ grifter from the USA. First, she got close to the nonprofit apparatchiks, under the pretext of starting another CWHL team. Then Dani kicked Brenda in the teeth and started up the women’s hockey ‘startup’.

At first she called it the NWHL. Then it became the ‘Premier Hockey Federation (PHF)’. ‘Startup’ meant, of course, that she did not have any real money behind her.

Dani promised to pay players real wages, and to gradually create a real league for them. Her idea from the start seems to have been to get NHL to buy her out. NHL had long run out their routine that they did not want to start a women’s league while another one was in existence.

Dani repeatedly stiffed players, staff, and suppliers. PHF operated with no insurance. In one case, when a player suffered a really bad injury, paralyzed from the neck down, she was left with nothing.

The best players, especially national team players, were contemptuous of the league. Yet second rate players kept signing up to play in PHF. It had fans and could generate some cash flow.

CWHL abruptly failed in twenty nineteen. I do not think it actually just ran out of money, as was generally assumed. Rather, the apparatchiks realized that the kind of funding they were hoping for was never going to happen and so they jumped ship, leaving the players to pick up the pieces once more.

The PHF decided it had won the fight for control of women’s hockey, and had plans to expand into Canada. Everything from ‘CWHL’ was going to default to them. The CWHL players had other ideas.

They created the Professional Women Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) and began organizing their own tournaments to keep themselves in practice. These soon became very popular. However, the main focus was to finally solve the problem of a serious professional league they could play in.

The problem with PWHPA was that it now became dominated by the other faction, the NHL push. They had trouble seeing other options. Everything was also slowed down by the covid wave of the early twenties.

In recent years, changes have been happening to the way the professional sports industry works. Old style, giant ‘franchise’ based leagues, like NHL, are no longer as successful. Smaller, centrally organized leagues are becoming more profitable.

NHL is really a big real estate racket. Many teams are mere billionaire’s tax write offs and no good. It is a prominent base for reactionary conservative politics.

There were now examples of women’s pro leagues in other sports. The American women’s soccer league has functioned less problematically than the basketball league. The basket ballers are an extension of the men’s league, the soccer ladies fly on their own.

Some investors were now interested in funding a women’s league. They wanted PWHPA on side with it; these were the best players. These should have been attractive to PWHPA; people with real money behind them, and expertise in running sports organizations.

The situation deadlocked for four years. It looked like PWHPA may fail. NHL was not responding to them. The investor group was growing impatient.

The PHF had thrown Dani out and was beginning to be more effective and able to actually pay the wages promised. Many PWHPA players were deciding they needed some money coming in, and taking the lucre of the despised PHF. PWHPA was destined to fall apart if it did not soon achieve its aim.

Finally, the law firm hired by PWHPA made the decisive move. They forced PWHPA, PHF, and NHL to sit down together and actually talk about how to create a unified league. This created the breakthrough.

The “we must have NHL involvement” faction among women players saw what NHL management was really like. It seems the latter made complete asses of themselves at these meetings. The former finally saw the better option waiting for them.

After that, things moved very fast. PWHL was formed. PHF quickly collapsed and the grifters were paid a small amount to turn over its few assets and go away. Within months the first PWHL game was played.

Post cromagnon female hockey players now have a much more satisfactory venue in which to display themselves. They can now make a living at it, in decent conditions. Post cromagnon males are now able to watch the best female specimens of the human species display their desirable characteristics.

There are still issues in this. I still have reason to be a little melancholy. I have not seen a live hockey game in five years.

Partly this is due to covid considerations. But tickets are now more expensive. The seats I want are out of my price range.

PWHL games are easy to find on the tube, now. That is, when they are available. I would prefer that this organization decide on a single platform on which to broadcast its games.

I already have a cable subscription. It lets me get most PWHL games, and record them so I see them when I want to. However, with PWHL games so often running into double or triple overtime, setting the recordings requires planning.

I was a big Toronto Sceptres fan. I am not so happy with them since they put their playoff games on another service, requiring a pricey subscription. I became an Ottawa Charge supporter for the rest of the playoffs.

I suggest to PWHL that it put all its games and other events on one service. I like to pay only for what I actually watch. I do not want to take out a subscription just to see the four games I want.

I would point out to them the system of the world rugby association, including its women’s division. It simply set up its own cable channel. It has not even charged money for it, so far.

If I get really annoyed with PWHL, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), and its affiliate organizations, are gradually becoming an option. IIHF gave us a well produced championship in Czechia this year. Women’s European league games are now turning up on Canadian cable.

Actually, my favourite hockey moment of the season came from the IIHF championships. The Canadians were mugging the little Japanese girls, nine to one. I often root for the underdog and do not mind unequal games.

So I loved it when Canada got a bit sloppy and Mei Miura was able to scoop up a loose puck. She rocketed down the ice with surprising speed, surprised Canadian goon girls scrambling after her. Japan had played Canada eight times and had never even scored a goal.

Kris Campbell misread it, Mei shot from distance, and beat Soups high right side. Ah, so, Canada! The Canadian faction in the arena was on its feet, cheering Mei louder than any one.

I am a little disturbed about the casualty rate in PWHL. There are too many injuries. Play gets a little too rough. The refs are not calling things when they should.

This is a partly a problem of televised sports. The producers do not want to slow the game down while the stripes check out the playbacks to see what should be called.

I do not want my ideal female specimen’s perfection ruined by brain problems from concussions. Such problems do, usually, show up in later years. Concussion is a growing issue in sports.

The human body is not really designed for most contact sports. The evolutionary disadvantage of a big brain on top of a long neck is that forces can accelerate. Women are said to have a higher concussion rate than men.

Some take this as more evidence that women should not play rough sports. They are to dainty and delicate. However, some theorize that women are just more likely to report concussions.

Women also get physical injuries more often than male athletes. PWHL women seem to spend a lot of time on the injured list; especially goalies, for a reason. Goalies can be vulnerable because they have to wear all that extra padding, which can be a risk if they get out of their crease and somebody shmangs into them.

Women pucksters are not deterred by the injury risk. They still slam each other around eagerly. Yet they will not drop gloves and start punching each other in the head.

There is also the covid factor in sports, now. Some PWHL players have gone on the injured list for months without having been injured on ice. When they come back, they are often not like their former selves.

There are still plenty of non cromagnons around to denounce women’s athletics. They cannot get the point of it. You say pro women’s hockey teams are regularly beaten by ‘A’ league high school boys? Okay, so go watch ‘A’ league boy’s games.

There is still the debate about whether women athletes are ugly and mannish. This is just ‘the boys’ being jealous and insecure because fewer people want to watch them. The truth is, the characteristics which make women good athletes tends also to give them a special kind of beauty.

I will continue to watch female athletes display themselves on the screen. I will follow Ice hockey and, often, seven a side rugby, because they work best, are most watchable, on video. I will blog about it when it is time to blog something, and time for a break from doom and disaster.

The women’s world cup of Rugby is coming up. I might write about that. The Canadian women’s team has rebuilt from the problems which wrecked them a few years ago, when they rebelled against a meat head coach. They have medal potential.

The winter olympics are next year. Multisport events are always the best. You do not get tired of one thing, over and over. You can see the best of everything all at one time.

And PWHL will be back for season three. It is thriving. It has expanded to eight teams, and to the west coast.

On PWHL media, we can talk all summer about what to name the Vancouver and Seattle teams. As well, about who will be on those teams. There is now an abundant pool of female homo sapiens with superior ice hockey skills.

Ottawa did not even make the playoffs in year one. This year they made it to the finals, and fought mighty Minnesota into overtime, four times, before they went down. What will they do next year?

In sports, there is always next year.