Women's Hockey

The Junior AA Oakville Ice wait for the Zamboni to finish up.

I like women.  I like hockey.  Most Canadian males can say the same.  So how come it often seems that I'm the only fan at a women's game who isn't "with" one of the players?  (By which I mean, 'Where's the crowd?' not 'I want to go out with one.')  Often the turnout to an NWHL game is something like 50 spectators, most of whom seem to be a parent or a significant other.  The whole country marvels at the gold medal exploits of the National Women's Team, but no one can be bothered to watch the same players play for their club teams.  Ingrained patriarchal thinking?  Yep, partly.  But mainly I think it's ingrained consumer behaviour.  We're all trained from birth to believe that the only good hockey is professional, and the only worthwhile professional hockey is NHL.  We're such hockey snobs in Canada that we can't even name the top clubs in other hockey countries, or for that matter the top women's clubs in this one.  So I'm going to use this blog to follow the fortunes of the NWHL (top women's league in the world) as well as CIS university hockey, and occasionally the Swedish women's league.  (US college hockey  gets plenty of coverage already.)  Maybe I can get some other people out to the game.

Douglas

Comments

[Alan]

We are heading to SLU v. Dartmouth this Friday to see Gillian Apps and will report on the crowd size.

[Douglas]

I bet there'll be a full house. They're nutty for college sport in the US. I have Gillian Apps' Aeros hockey card around here somewhere.

[Alan]

I dunno. The men's team doesn't fill at LSU and they are a top team as well. We've seen both Vermont and Yale there so far. Seeing a game at Cornell is a different matter. We only got to see them against Niagara last winter due to it being reading week when we happened by.