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Emily KaplanESPN
The Canadian Women's Hockey League will retire on May 1, the league announced Sunday morning, a news that has caused a shock wave in the hockey community.
The CHLW, founded in 2007, was one of the best players in the world, including Hilary Knight of the US team and Canadian Marie-Philip Poulin. The news comes one week after the league's Clarkson Cup recorded a record 175,000 spectators as the LCHF negotiated a last-minute deal with NHL Network to broadcast the game to an American audience. There were rumors that the league had little money, although the news that it was shutting down was shocking, both in timing and in size.
"Unfortunately, although ice hockey is exceptional, the business model has proven to be economically unsustainable," the league said in its press release.
On Sunday morning, several CHLT players tweet coordinated statements: "This morning we learned that the CWHL is going to bed, and we will do our best to find a solution, so it's not our last hockey season. but it's hard to stay optimistic. #NoLeague "
In 2017, the CWHL began paying its players for the first time. The range for players last season was $ 2,000 to $ 10,000 Canadian for the year. "We do not even call it often as a salary because in my mind it's not really necessarily [a] Jayna Hefford, acting commissioner, told ESPN earlier this month, "I see this as an allowance for players to pay back their expenses."
Since the US-based NWHL debuted four years ago, there had been a call to merge the two leagues. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has repeatedly stated that he did not want to intervene in any of the leagues as long as they existed in their current state, mainly because the NHL would not give the league any money. impression that his choice according to NHL sources. However, with a division in the league, the NHL could now play an important role in women's hockey.
The NHL contributed financially to the CWHL and NWHL last season, although one industry source said the amount paid to each league was "less than six digits".
The LHSL had six franchises, including one based in Shenzhen, China, which was an independent property and paid for its own operating expenses. It was expected that when the league expanded to China in 2017, the agreement would help make it more financially viable.
The league has not disclosed attendance figures for the 2018-2019 season, nor does it sell merchandise.
Hefford, recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, has been appointed Acting Commissioner of the CWHL. (She is a former CWHL student, and the most outstanding player award in the league is named after her.) The CWHL is not for-profit, an important distinction from the NWHL. CWHL has an 11-member board of directors that meets monthly. According to Hefford, the board approves a budget at the beginning of the season and after that, there is not much flexibility.
"Founded in 2007 by players and community members, the league's mandate was to grow women's hockey and, to that extent, it has been more than successful in achieving its goal," the league said in a statement. press congratulating Hefford's leadership this season. because the league has "experienced a new level of success, new energy and new credibility".
Asked earlier this month about what an ideal professional women's hockey league should look like, Hefford told ESPN: "For me, an ideal league would be four to six teams, and the players would receive a living wage, whatever their description, hundreds of thousands, but it's a salary that you can live in a big city because that's more than likely where the teams will be.You would like the best players in the league I think the NHL involved would be I would not say it's the NHL, but their involvement, their brand and their resources are important to her, that's where I see the first leg. "
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