The Women Hockey Left Behind

The PWHL is an outstanding testament to hockey and women’s sports. But for some women, it may have come too late.

By: Nicolette Cavallaro

It was a scene familiar and yet so different. The distinct, crisp smell of ice, with a slight aroma of fresh hot dogs and beer. The bright lights of Long Island’s UBS Arena stream down from the scoreboard, accompanied by the announcer's voice booming in the background, making attendees aware of the latest team updates. Young girls and boys, decked out in a shade of turquoise blue, crowded the home team box, eagerly seeking autographs and high-fives. The men, whose enthusiasm is probably fueled by alcohol, banging on the glass and hollering as the arena fills. It was recognizable for me – habitual even. 

For a hockey match, there were so many more women than usual. Some were with friends, some with their daughters. They held posters with players' names painted in blue glitter and waved rainbow towels above their heads. And then, the most significant difference of them all: As the home team skated onto the ice, their hair whipped behind them. This is not the infamous Mika Zibanejad or William Nylander NHL mullet. These players are women, the pioneers of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). 

The PWHL is the new professional women's ice hockey league in North America. The league currently consists of six franchises named after their area of origin: New York, Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, with 156 players from different backgrounds, including Olympic Team USA, Team Canada, and NCAA College teams.  

This is a monumental experience for me and many other hockey fans. Until January 2024, the idea of women playing at the professional level in an NHL arena like this, where they are respected by men and women alike, was nothing more than a distant pipe dream. These women have etched their names in history as the inaugural draft class and the first official New York team of the PWHL. But they stand on the shoulders of many other women who have played the game before them. 

The PWHL isn’t the first professional hockey league for women. It’s not even the first one in the United States. But it is the first time female hockey players are treated like true professional athletes, with ice time in NHL arenas, decent paychecks, and a slot on cable television. This is a triumph for expanding women’s sports, mirroring the increase in investments in the WNBA and the surge in television viewership for the NWSL. It is further evidence that women's sports rightfully belong in arenas, television programming, and our history books. As we celebrate the fact that young girls can dream of being respected professional athletes,  we mustn't forget about the women who toiled to make this a reality, who fought relentlessly for their place on the ice, even if they will never don a PWHL uniform. 

Just over two hours away from that New York PWHL game, on March 23, 2024, another hockey rink in New Jersey was filled with female athletes. They are a little slower than the previous athletes, but their hair, although some slightly gray, still peeks out from their helmets, and their passion for the ice is still evident. 

These women, decked out in black jerseys with green and white accents, are not professional players but members of the Brooklyn Blades, a recreational National D Level Travel Team. Despite what their name denotes, they can be seen playing games out of rinks in Long Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. The team was formed shortly after the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, where women’s hockey debuted. According to Deborah Glazer, 54, Blades coach and long-time player, it’s mostly a team for women who played at a young age and couldn't pursue it, as well as a space for women who picked up the sport later in adulthood. It was one of the first of its kind – a true recreational adult women’s hockey team. “I mean, the joke was apparently the first year we started, there were girls showing up in football pads,” the New Jersey native said with a chuckle. 

Glazer has become a force for women’s hockey in the metropolitan area, supporting the sport's development among young girls and women in her area and promoting an experience she did not have in her own childhood. She was raised alongside her brothers as an NHL Devils fan, but women’s hockey wasn’t even a thought in her mind. As a thirtieth birthday present, her parents gifted her beginner lessons at Chelsea Piers, but no one had any idea it would lead to the passionate life she has today. 

Glazer joined the Blades in 2001, just a few short years after she picked up her skates for the first time, but has had stints playing for co-ed teams, which showed her what life was honestly like as a female athlete. “I had run into a little bit of a problem with it being late-night hockey, and it's 11:30 at night, and I'm the only female in the building, never mind on the ice,” she exasperates, touching her previously injured knee, “and to be hassled and harassed by a guy on the ice who is six foot eight, who’s punching you and knocking you down, and no one's saying anything – not the guys on my team, not the guys on his team.” Moments like these are why she feels so passionate about creating programs like the Blades for women to play hockey. 

Many girls in hockey start out playing co-ed due to a lack of girls' teams nationwide. This limits many girls' ability to play into their teen years since this is when the boys start getting rougher – checking, boarding, and even fighting. It can be incredibly isolating, leading to many girls quitting hockey during middle school. Even when a girl's team is readily available, these players usually must attend male-dominated clinics and camps. Those who choose not to are at an immediate skill disadvantage and not able to continue into higher levels of play.  

Glazer, when she's not at her construction day job, has worked to make herself present at rinks in the New Jersey area so both young girls and older women know that they have a place in this sport. She has also exposed her own three children to women’s hockey and inclusive spaces as much as possible – so much that her youngest plays the sport as well, as a goalie. 

It’s also why building an actual successful professional league is so important to her.  “I do think that you're seeing two groups at these [PWHL] games. You're seeing these very young girls like, ‘Oh, that could be me someday,’ and you're seeing women my age just happy that it's happening because we didn't think it would, you know, we saw leagues start up, and fail,” she says to me wistfully, referencing teams from the past and the times women’s hockey had been previously abandoned. 

In the mid-2010s, Glazer and other hockey fans were able to watch the formation of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), a small league that the Professional Hockey Federation. The league was women-owned and operated and consisted of six teams, but faced various challenges, from financial struggles to player treatment and compensation disputes. The PWHPA, the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association, played a significant role in advocating for the rights and recognition of these athletes. Still, it collapsed in early 2023 due to newer, more well-known players siding with creating a new, NHL-supported women’s league. 

No matter what, Cherie Stewart, 41, a former New York Riveters player, one of the original teams in the league, still looks at her time there as remarkable. Born and raised in California, Stewart was exposed to both the Mighty Ducks (an iconic children's hockey movie from the 90s) and the subsequent formation of the Anaheim Ducks NHL team, but she had only ever played street hockey with her older brother. 

In her teens, she was recruited by a women’s team and played ice hockey in travel tournaments until college, where she played Division 3 at Manhattanville College. Years after she traded her skates for a marketing job, Stewart was called upon by Dani Rylann, the eventual founder and commissioner of the NWHL.

 Stewart spent most of her time on the New York team as a practice player but eventually made a debut as the first Black player in the growing league before its eventual buyout in 2023.

Stewart admits that there were some hiccups in the old league – a lack of publicity, no NHL support, and per-game pay – but she still looks to her league as a monumental part of history and the reason why the newer league can trailblaze now: “What I think is unfortunate for the PWHL is that they're kind of trying to erase the progress that the prior league did for the women's program; we can't be like, ‘Oh, this is the first professional league.’” These days, Stewart stays true to her street sports roots and plays for a ball hockey league, a version of the sport played on the floor with no skates, with other retired players. In 2022, she even received the International Street and Ball Hockey Federation (ISBHF) gold medal at their masters competition in Laval-Montreal, Canada. 

Although professional ice hockey is not an active part of her life anymore, Stewart still supports the growth of the new league, “Young girls are watching these hockey players, and they want to aspire to be a professional hockey player as well. They have role models. They're out there getting paid and they're skating, and they're getting that exposure, and so they can see it, and now they can attain it. And they can work for it – before it wasn't like that.”

So, having the PWHL significantly helps the women’s hockey world. As we hockey fans look to the future of the sport, we usually look to the college teams, where future NHL players genuinely develop. Young, talented players' aspirations only grow if they are treated like true athletes across both NCAA division teams and club sports programs. Because they lack this support, many young girls will never have the opportunity to go further.

After seeing older girls playing at her local Pennsylvania rink, Caroline Brenek, 20, of West Virginia University’s Division II ACHA Club team, began to pursue the sport through the USA Hockey: Try Hockey For Free program. Luckily, she was in an area that had girls' teams. Still, it didn’t take her long to realize that the boys’ team at her high school and the male-dominated skills clinics were not built for her. “My dad said this many times: the ponytail puts a target on your back, and it was kind of like who could hit me the hardest, who could trip me,” she recalled while talking to me in her car.

But this maltreatment didn’t discourage Brenek or cause any bitterness toward the sport. Hockey is a genuine love for her: It was her escape from school, a way to build bonds with other strong young women, and to make her brand new college a place filled with friends and memories. It’s why she kept playing despite not having a well-paid professional route to take as her male counterparts did. 

When asked if she would have pursued a hockey career if she had seen women treated like true professionals, she was hesitant but said it would have been a possibility. These days, she looks up to Kendall Coyne, the captain of the Minnesota PWHL team, who, in 2019, competed at the NHL All-Star Competition and set the record for the fastest lap time of any hockey player, male or female. “I think seeing that women's careers aren't just going to end at the collegiate level and that it's going to continue and grow, more girls will pursue it. The younger level is seeing that they can play professionally and that’ll keep them motivated throughout all the years of playing hockey.” In Brenek’s eyes, Kendall Coyne is someone young girls can look up to now and dream of becoming, something she didn’t get to have growing up. 

Although Brenek is an athlete who was never given the chance to prove herself on an authentic, respected, and well-paid professional scale, she is still a success story. Other young women, like Natalie Dewitt, 25, never made it that far. Dewitt started playing hockey at age seven but left the hockey world when she was a teenager, despite not wanting to let her super-fan father down. At the time, although she was still close to many of the boys she played with on her St. Louis, Missouri, local club team, The Rockets, she struggled with not having a girls’ team in her area. She told me stories of having to get changed for games in crumbling storage closets or opposing teams ignoring her on and off the ice. 

 “My hockey career always felt temporary,” the Yale graduate mentioned, “but it was always tough not having high hopes and dreams to aspire to and to help you mentally stay later and do the extra work.” Dewitt now sees what she went through as character-building – she became comfortable being the only female in a room, and her unyielding personality is apparent throughout our conversation. She even thanks the sport for being her gateway into lacrosse, which she played in college. 

But she also has regrets. “I think if I had to do it over again, I would have played women’s hockey as I got older. Having a tight-knit community in sports is so special, so I would have loved to have played hockey more in that environment instead of feeling a little bit left out”. While grieving, Dewitt admits she missed out on having something concrete, like the PWHL, to look up to, which may have given her the push she needed to stay in the sport. 

It is hard to imagine how many strong, powerful female athletes the world missed out on because of a lack of guidance, opportunity, and support. Deborah Glazer laughed when asked how her life would have been different if she had the chance to play professionally. “I don't think you know what you're not missing. Now that we see that it's there. I don't want to lose it,” she remarks, her Jersey accent slipping through, “We were at a stage where we can dream but only to a point. But it's there, and if it's going to grow, and we want our kids to believe that this is an opportunity, we have to push to see it grow more across the board nationally.” 

Currently, women’s hockey is accessible in states in the Northeast and northern Midwest. In fact, according to the NCAA, Minnesota-born players make up 31.5% of all their female players.  According to Glazer, the girls' game has grown exponentially in the United States, but it's still limited and trapped in certain areas. One of the things that must be improved upon, with the support of the PWHL, is access to hockey across the country – not just in states with successful men’s teams and a long hockey culture. 

 This is one of the reasons Malik Garvin, Executive Director at Ice Hockey In Harlem, takes the girls in his program to see PWHL games: “The formation of the PWHL validates women's hockey and that there is more to it…it provides role models, right there in front of their face; they can see a woman's skating in a professional arena, and that's the most important thing.” Ice Hockey In Harlem is currently one of the only community-based nonprofit hockey organizations in New York City. It provides access to the game for young girls and boys who would otherwise be unable to participate in such an exclusive, expensive sport. They provide hockey, social, and educational support, ensuring that these young players have the opportunity to pursue their dreams – on the ice and off. For Garvin, one of the program's earliest success stories, taking his players to see a New York PWHL game at UBS arena was a highlight of his career. “They got to walk into the building carrying their bags, feeling like rockstars, and they got to watch, see all the excitement, see the action, and see the fast pace. Then, they got to skate during the first intermission. And that right there, it doesn't get any better. The excitement was there. It was powerful. It was a powerful day.” 

Although the PWHL may not be the first league and won’t fix all the issues surrounding the lack of respect and support for women’s sports, it is a stepping stone. It ensures that the sacrifices of players like Deborah Glazer and Cherie Stewart have meaning. It provides hope for young women like Caroline Brenek and Natalie Dewitt that one day, careers won’t end on a college ice rink. It shows the next generation of players that they won’t be forgotten.