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I had a blast this week participating in a Senators Alumni event as well as several other commitments. Next weekend, I will be traveling to the Philadelphia area, where I still have family and many friends. Among other planned activities and a scheduled professional engagement, I am looking forward to taking in a Philadelphia Flyers game.
At any rate, someone recently asked me whether I thought women's hockey, specifically because of the thrilling Canada-USA gold medal game, would continue to grow. I think the Olympics can only help, but women's hockey is already on the rise.
In answering the question more thoroughly, I decided to turn the question over to a better authority than myself on the topic: my daughter Madeline.
Before I turn the blog over to her, I want to thank all of you who have sent me blog ideas and questions. Keep them coming, and I will be happy to answer them. Now on to the topic at hand.
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Hey, HockeyBuzz. Brad’s youngest daughter Madeline here! I play NCAA hockey for the Middlebury College Panthers in Middlebury, Vermont, and grew up playing hockey with my dad as my coach.
This past February I was one of the millions of people who tuned in to watch the Canada-USA Women’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal Final. I streamed it live from my computer in my dorm room before sprinting to class where I made sure to brag about the victory to all my American friends. Being one of the few times that women’s hockey is in the spotlight, there are always some interesting comments during the Olympics coming from people not used to seeing ponytails flowing down the backs of jerseys. One comment that stood out to me was made by one of the CBC broadcasters. Sometime between Marie-Philip Poulin’s game-tying and game-winning goals, he said that not only was it a great women’s hockey game, it was also a great hockey game.
Huh? Is there a difference between hockey and women’s hockey? While I’m sure it was meant to be a compliment, it ended up being kind of a disguised insult, like when someone tells me I’m really strong…for a girl.
I’ve played girls’ and women’s hockey my entire life, so comments that undermine female sports generally don’t get under my skin. I’m used to them by now and I probably make as many jokes about female athletics as my older brothers do. But when you’ve just witnessed an amazing hockey game (I mean really, you couldn’t script a more exciting gold medal game than that!) and most of the comments are about how surprised people are that a women’s hockey game could be exciting, it’s hard not to get mad.
This distinction between women’s hockey and hockey is one that creates endless frustration. Whether it is people saying things like “ah, it’s just women’s hockey… or the difference in attendance at the men’s and women’s hockey games at my school, this disparity comes up constantly.
Fortunately, we’re making progress. A lot more than many of our critics think.
An excellent example of the growth of the women’s side of hockey is Team Canada’s goalie Shannon Szabados. She’s been in the news a lot since her success in Sochi. She was invited to skate with the Edmonton Oilers and now plays for the Columbus Cottonmouths in the Southern Professional Hockey League – yes, that’s a men’s league.
Before the Olympics, she played men’s junior hockey where she once split a game with Carey Price (who let in more goals than she did, I might add), and played men’s collegiate hockey. Interviewed following her skate with the Oilers, she summed up the frustration perfectly: “as a female hockey player, you just want to be seen as a hockey player and as a goalie.… With her recent success, I think it’s safe to say that she is doing a good job of making a name for herself as a goalie.
We’re getting closer to eliminating the gap and making people reconsider what they think of the “less feminine… sports. Yes, the rules are different. No, we don’t have the big body checks and fights. It’s a different speed, it’s a different style, but it’s still hockey and it gets better and better with each passing year. There’s still passion, rivalries, and trash talking.
Trust me, you’ve never heard trash talk until you’ve heard girls do it. We work just as hard as the boys, we’re just as committed as the boys, and we do it all with everyone telling us that it’s “just girls’ hockey.…