WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — The business of women’s hockey has never worked as well as the faithful would have hoped. Professional leagues have popped up, tweaked their models, changed their names and sometimes disappeared before ever getting on the ice.
The promise of women’s hockey, on the other hand, is something to behold. It is skating and passion. Slap shots and smack talk. It is dozens of young competitors with helmets and ponytails running drills with professional players during clinics at AdventHealth Center Ice on Friday evening.
The Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association brought its tour to Tampa Bay this weekend with instructional events Friday night and two games each Saturday and Sunday. It’s entirely inspirational to watch, and slightly heartbreaking to ponder.
These are some of the best women’s players on the planet, and they are biding their time while waiting for the financial backing, the sponsorships, the infrastructure necessary to create the next sustainable professional league with real crowds, paychecks and glory.
In the meantime, they are growing their sport one little girl at a time.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen one 7-year-old after another trying to perfect headfirst slides on the ice and, in the middle of the drill, being joined by professional players diving, sliding and laughing along with the children.
Or a modified game of tag played entirely within a faceoff circle with 10 little kids reaching out to tag a professional athlete who skates, dips and ducks to avoid all the overstuffed gloves reaching out for her.
“Whenever we go to a city and the organization hosting us is putting on one of these clinics, they’re always incredible,” said Lee Stecklein, a three-time Olympian with the U.S. women’s team. “We love it. It’s always super fun to see the girls and tell them a little bit more about us, if they haven’t heard about us, and to get to know them. I do love it. I don’t coach often, just busy with my own stuff, so when I get to be here, I really enjoy it.”
The instructional part of the clinics is handled by the Lightning Hockey Development department and coordinator Kelley Steadman. A two-time gold medalist in international competition with the U.S. team, Steadman has spent the past year putting together clinics and rec league teams around the bay area to help grow the sport, particularly with young girls.
The Lightning’s success, both on the ice and in the community, has obviously made hockey more visible in a nontraditional market, but there is still a long way to go. As girls transition from the basics to actual competition, they typically play in co-ed leagues because their options are so limited.
Steadman, 32, is optimistic that opportunities are growing, but she also understands the heartbreak of trying to hold down a second job while playing for a professional team that offers stipends instead of paychecks and could go belly up at any moment.
“It’s way better today — with the (women’s pro league) Premier Hockey Federation and the (Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association) — compared to what I had. There’s more opportunities for women, once they’re out of college, to continue playing,” Steadman said. “It was exciting and awesome for me to be able to keep competing and playing at a high level, but there were moments of like, ‘All right, we’re doing what we can for the sport, but at some point we need to be compensated.’
“We started off getting paid, but they ran into some financial issues and had to cut the salaries. I was driving my own car to most (away) games. It was pro hockey in the sense that I was still playing and we had a fan base, but, yeah, not when it came to getting paid.”
The league minimum for the Premier Hockey Federation was $13,500 last season but is expected to grow with the league’s board of governors announcing in 2022 that it was committing $25 million in salary and benefits over a three-year period. Players who joined the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association were essentially protesting the lack of livable wages in professional hockey and instead were committing to growing the game through showcase events while trying to get their league off the ground.
And so they spent their Friday afternoon playing a pair of exhibition games, and then a handful of players joined Steadman and other Lightning instructors for two clinics Friday night for girls 7-11 and 12-16.
Cliff Stoufer of St. Petersburg was sitting in the bleachers watching the younger girls on the ice while waiting for the clinic to begin for his 15-year-old daughter, Sydney. Stoufer, who officiates youth hockey games in the area, watched his son go through rec leagues a few years ago and is now enjoying the experience a second time with Sydney in co-ed games.
“Watching them at this age,” Stoufer said while nodding toward the younger girls on the ice, “is so pure. So fun. So wonderful.”
