THE CANADIAN WOMEN’S HOCKEY LEAGUE TO DISCONTINUE OPERATIONS

[unicornduke]

The Board of Directors of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) has made the decision to discontinue operations effective May 1, 2019. Unfortunately, while the on-ice hockey is exceptional, the business model has proven to be economically unsustainable.

Holy shit.

Comments

[redstapler]

😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

[unicornduke]

me: what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

[tielan]

whaaaaat?

(I mean, I don't follow ice hockey and even I know this is big! Is the American Women's Hockey League still going?)

[unicornduke]

The CWHL has been around for 12 years now and it has had 6-8 teams depending on the year. This year they had 6 teams and so they just dumped 150ish players with nowhere to play in Canada/USA/China (don't ask about the China thing, it's weird all around). And a lot of players can't move because they have lives and pro hockey doesn't pay a full time wage unless you manage to get on the Canadian or American national teams so this is a huge deal! In fact, all but one Canadian national team players played in the CWHL and four or five USA national team players did too. They apparently didn't tell anyone about this until literally a phone call this morning just before the press release went out. They're were a non-profit so I guess the board can just do whatever.

The NWHL (USA cities only) has been around for 4 years now and they're slowly expanding and they're doing pretty well and just released a bunch of metrics about it. But they weren't planning to do anything with Canada, since the CWHL was there (also crossing a border logistics). They had four teams and just got their fifth this year and there has already been some logistics snafus with travel because team five is flying distance compared to bus distance like the other four. But I don't think they'd be able to handle everything. The CWHL was much more established and settled in. In fact, a bunch of the CWHL players jumped ship when the NWHL started.

It's just a giant mess! And with World's starting literally in four days, a lot of the players were on their way to Finland!

Just! A mess!