PHF to increase salary cap, add two teams in ‘huge’ boost to women’s hockey

Taylor Woods wasn’t frightened to be taught of an upcoming announcement from the Premier Hockey Federation on Monday, even when main information surrounding ladies’s hockey hasn’t at all times been of the constructive selection in latest weeks and years.

“The way in which that issues have been going, even during the last two years that I’ve been concerned (with the PHF), I used to be solely anticipating constructive issues,” Woods stated. “Issues are going up.”

The PHF rewarded the Toronto Six stalwart’s religion, saying on Tuesday the league is increasing from six to eight groups — together with one in Montreal, one other someplace in the USA — and growing every crew’s wage cap from $300,000 to $750,000 (U.S.), a part of an general funding from the league’s board of governors that totals greater than $25 million over the following three years.

Full health-care advantages for gamers, up to date amenities, new gear, elevated ice time and an expanded 28-game schedule are additionally on the docket, in response to a league information launch. Gamers can even acquire a ten per cent fairness of their respective groups and have management over their likeness for advertising and marketing alternatives.

The increase within the cap from $300,000 this season will result in a median wage of $37,500 based mostly on a 20-player minimal roster, or $30,000 for a league-maximum 25-player roster. There can be no limits positioned on a participant’s wage so long as the crew’s general payroll stays underneath the cap.

It’s the largest funding into ladies’s hockey Woods has seen since she began taking part in professionally within the now-defunct Canadian Girls’s Hockey League in 2016, three years earlier than it folded. Woods additionally beforehand performed with the Skilled Girls’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation, earlier than becoming a member of the PHF in April 2020.

“It’s enormous,” Woods stated. “I don’t suppose there’s any higher information, as a member of the PHF, that might come. Very excited for the longer term.”

That sentiment was echoed by Woods’ teammates and league-mates on social media on Tuesday. And the broader hope is that it's going to additionally resonate with members of the PWHPA, which was fashioned by members of the Canadian and American nationwide groups in 2019, in a united bid to ascertain a single North American skilled league — ideally backed by the NHL — with a long-term sustainable financial mannequin.

Members of the PWHPA need to date balked at becoming a member of North America’s lone skilled ladies’s hockey league, which overhauled its enterprise and possession mannequin, and underwent a rebranding by altering its identify from the Nationwide Girls’s Hockey League final summer time. The NWHL, which started as a four-team startup in 2015, beforehand managed all its franchises and relied on outdoors traders to make up the income hole from ticket and merchandise gross sales to pay for wage, journey and administrative prices. The instability of the enterprise mannequin led to the NWHL slashing gamers salaries by greater than half in its second season, eroding its gamers’ confidence and resulting in an exodus to the CWHL, earlier than it folded, after which the PWHPA.

PHF commissioner Ty Tumminia instructed the Related Press she believes the most recent funding within the league — whose franchises at the moment are privately owned, although some possession teams management a couple of group — and the inclusion of health-care advantages meets the PWHPA’s imaginative and prescient. The PWHPA didn't instantly reply to a request for remark from the Star.

Toronto Six president Digit Murphy stated Tuesday’s announcement is what is required to convey ladies’s skilled hockey to the following degree, a “first step of many” that’s going to raise the platform.

“It’s at all times taken an infusion of capital to get ladies’s hockey on the map, so what this does is it will get a bunch of like-minded house owners and leaders within the sport to commit … on a long-term foundation in order that we will construct a sustainable enterprise mannequin,” Murphy stated.

Woods thinks extra gamers will contemplate the PHF after Tuesday’s announcement, particularly given the league’s stability throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“That is what they know,” she stated. “It’s a league, it’s going to have 28 video games, it’s one thing that has a bit of bit extra backing. It’s one thing that gamers will acknowledge.”

A expertise growth coach when she’s not taking part in, Woods is happy for what the PHF’s funding means for the following technology of feminine hockey gamers in North America. She is relieved to know the sport is rising.

Tuesday’s announcement gave PHF gamers cause to cheer, and inspiration to persist, Woods stated.

“That is large for our sport and, heading into the second a part of our season, we’re simply extra motivated than ever simply to indicate a fantastic product.”