However, yeah, it may be a few years before this can actually come into being, but all I wanted to do with this article was at least to consider it and raise awarness that we need one. Even if today people decided they wanted a female professional league, it would at least be another year or two before it could get past the planning stage. I know that it’s impossible for a women’s league to start up tommorow, but that’s not what I’m expecting. I’d be happy that, at least in a few years, a pro league was to start up, because I feel the women deserve it.

-DG

-DG

The point I wanted to make is that if you really want to do this right, I think you’d need at least 8 teams. And there just isn’t enough players to form that many teams right now. And the European depth just isn’t there to tap into yet. Maybe after the next Olympics, the international competition will be better.

The hotbeds of men’s European hockey, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, are not producing a lot of women’s hockey players. Finland won bronze at SLC, but they are considered well below the US and Canada. It may be a few years before a real women’s pro league comes to fruition.

That said, I still believe it is time for a women’s professional league. A lot of the comments made say that no one will watch it, and, while I believe it is a valid point, I believe that idea has more to do with current societal attitudes more than anything else. People in the early 1900s never believed that women could be given the vote because they didn’t think women could be “smart enough” to make such a decision and, with changing attitudes, we’ve learned that what we once held before was not true. The same I believe can be said about women’s hockey. I think that most can’t see women playing sports because of society’s perception that men are warriors and women run the house, notions that have existed for thousands of years, and thus, since sports players are “warriors” it is odd for women to be thought of as sports players because that would mean they’re “warriors”. However, I believe that if people forgot that “women” are on the ice they’d see a pretty good game and I believe because of it, people would start watching it because the games are good. Still, the notion that women cannot play sports has to disappear before this can happen, so, yes, we’re still a long way from it. However, unless we start small- with four or five teams and maybe crowds of 10,000- it’s impossible for it to gain any exposure that would get it to that point. Even if we start it now we’d be years- perhaps even decades- before a women’s league would get to the ideal point, but, unless we start we can’t get anywhere in the first place.

-DG

Still, though, if we can’t start with something small there’s no way it can get bigger, plus, if girls see that they can “make it” playing hockey, I’m sure that the number of girls playing hockey will skyrocket. There was virtually no European players in the NHL in the early 1970s, but once the NHL started to look over there for players, more Europeans started playing. Plus, after Jarri Kurri broke out, Europeans had someone to look up to and even more Europeans started to play hockey, leading up to the European boom we’re in now. If girls, thus, saw that women are making a living playing the sport they love, I’m sure there would plenty more giving hockey a try because they wouldn’t feel their careers would end once they’re cut from the Canadian Olympic Team. Hey, the men never got to their point if something like the NHL didn’t exist, so what’s to say that a female pro league wouldn’t do the same thing?

-DG

jk