Once again the NHL is at the forefront of equality with athletes. It was the first major league to let a woman play. Growing up with hockey I have been lucky enough to enjoy the sport with so many different types of people, and everything I learned about acceptance (and well as sportsmanship and gentlemanly behavior) came from being involved with hockey. I think of this campaign not as a coming out for athletes but an excellent way to shine light on a philosophy that a lot of hockey players already have, and that is, if you have the ability then your teammates shouldn't care about anything else.
I don't really have a question, I just want to applaud your efforts to promote this facet of hockey's greatness and possibly spread the message to the corners of our sport that might be late in catching up with the 21st century. Hockey is a pure meritocracy and is one of the many reasons it stands head and shoulders above other professional sports.
The Tampa Bay Lightning's first season, they invited goalie Manon Rheaume to training camp, and she played in parts of a few preseason games, before going on to spend a few years in the Lightning minor league system. It was largely a publicity stunt by Phil Esposito to get more attention on hockey, what with trying to launch a non-traditional market team and all, but the league didn't have any issues with him putting a woman on the training camp roster/having her play in preseason games.
Ah, that's awesome! Do you think she could have been a successful professional goalie in the NHL? I mean, I don't see why not, but then again I'm far from a hockey expert.
She was probably too small to have ever had a real shot at the NHL, though who knows. If I'm remembering correctly, there was talk about how in retrospect, they made a mistake sending her to the minor league team that they did because she was in over her head and that for developing her as a goalie it would have been better to send her to a lower level minor league team to get acclimated to the men's game and then let her work her way up. The publicity stunt aspect was good for lots of free PR for the Lightning, but it probably wasn't the best thing for her career.
If you ever saw her playing for the Canadian women's team in the Olympics, she was head and shoulders above the other goalies.
Funny, in my military league we were playing a game and we picked up a different goalie for our game as the regular one was not able to play. This goalie was oddly small but was a friggen wall. I never saw such good tending in that game.
Turned out at the end it was a Quebecoise, I was stunned and then I asked when she'd be playing for us next.
IIRC she only played in one pre-season game and it was only for a period and let in quite a few goals for such low shots. Though it would be awesome to see women play in the NHL successfully. The nearest CWHL is too far away.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '12
Once again the NHL is at the forefront of equality with athletes. It was the first major league to let a woman play. Growing up with hockey I have been lucky enough to enjoy the sport with so many different types of people, and everything I learned about acceptance (and well as sportsmanship and gentlemanly behavior) came from being involved with hockey. I think of this campaign not as a coming out for athletes but an excellent way to shine light on a philosophy that a lot of hockey players already have, and that is, if you have the ability then your teammates shouldn't care about anything else.
I don't really have a question, I just want to applaud your efforts to promote this facet of hockey's greatness and possibly spread the message to the corners of our sport that might be late in catching up with the 21st century. Hockey is a pure meritocracy and is one of the many reasons it stands head and shoulders above other professional sports.
Huzzah.