Manon Rhéaume steps onto the ice at the Tampa Bay Expo Hall on the 23rd of September 1992 for the first period of a pre-season clash with the St. Louis Blues during the Tampa Bay Lightning’s inaugural season, she stops 7 shots and records a .778 save percentage.
At this point in her career she had already debuted as the first woman to play in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League and helped push Team Canada to a gold medal at the women’s world championships earlier the same year in Finland.
She remains the only woman to ever dress for and play in a National Hockey League game.
Wives Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey have just won the Walter Cup for the first time with their team the Montréal Victoire, this win adds to their already impressive list of accolades, which include a combined eight Olympic medals and twenty-two IIHF World Championship medals.
They are now both members of the triple gold club. Marie-Philip Poulin is the first hockey player ever to score in four Olympic gold medal games.
Hayley Wickenheiser has 379 international points, she’s Team Canada’s leading goal scorer and sits at the top of the team’s points leaderboard. She has been retired from professional hockey since 2017.
Women have been cementing themselves in the world of ice hockey since 1891, a year before the Stanley Cup was given to the people of Canada and it’s been an uphill battle for recognition since then.
Thanks to blatant societal misogyny deeming not only ice hockey too dangerous of a game for women to be playing but any type sport being none of a woman’s business.
Schools ingraining into young girls that sports is not a place they can thrive, it would never be something they could make a career of, that they would be better suited to the kitchen and the home.
Despite this long history, the Today Show and the Sydney Bears would have you believe that these achievements do not matter and the only capacity in which a woman can attend a live sports game is one where she is looking for love, the only shows she can enjoy is one where hockey is the background but not the focus.
This is a crazy take to have, for anyone, about anything, but especially crazy for a sports team that has very recently tried to increase its appeal to women and girls through a collaboration with a romance bookstore in a last ditch attempt to cling on to any type of relevance.
Let me tell you why.
Liking hockey or sports just because you think the players are hot or because you’ve seen or read something like Heated Rivalry or Off Campus isn’t a bad thing.
I mean Australia was the first country to pick up Heated Rivalry for international release, Jacob Tierney and that show were able to stand toe to toe with The Pitt for ratings because two Australian women pitched it to their colleagues in the United States, they owe their success to us, to women.
Even though Tierney doesn’t believe that hockey has any kind of foothold here, despite the fact the Australians have had a major hockey league here since the Bush administration.
So I’m not going to judge someone on the way they choose to interact and engage with sports, but for a team such as the Bears and a show that’s as widely consumed as the Today Show to make the claim that it’s the only way for women to enjoy sports is bad form.
Sydney Bears club staff are mostly women. A major portion of their volunteer staff are made up of women in their early twenties, from the merch staff to the penalty box workers to the clubs own president Bianca Musico, that team and every team’s season are made possible by the hard work of women.
The amount of girls on a fun night out in the crowd at a Bears game has started to outweigh the men that are in attendance.
Am I supposed to believe that none of these women were available to talk about why they like hockey?
That the only people available from the Sydney hockey community to talk about why women were getting more and more into hockey and sports were Lucas Hermann, Dexton Mozell and Ashleigh Buchanan, who works for a skincare company and is not associated with hockey in any capacity beyond a TikTok that went semi-viral.
The women that share Macquarie Ice Rink with the Bears, the Sydney Sirens who compete in the Australian Women’s Ice Hockey League (AWIHL) during the summer and the Sydney Bears Women’s who compete in the IHNSW winter league must have been busy.
The blame is not entirely on the Sydney Bears though. The majority of the blame can and will lie with the Today Show.
As a woman and a hockey player I find it reductive and borderline misogynistic that myself and the other girls I play with are being reduced to such a simple stereotype.
For Buchanan’s TikTok about dating apps not working so it was time to “look confused at the hockey” to go so viral that she ends up on a show as widely consumed as the Today Show masquerading as a spokesperson for all female hockey enjoyers as she talks about how Off Campus and Heated Rivalry are the sole reason for them getting involved just builds on the age old idea that women do not have the capacity to enjoy sports beyond seeing the players as objects of desire.
An idea that continues to prevent women from playing sports at any age, an idea that makes moves like the Ice Hockey Australia (IHA) cutting 60% of the AWIHL’s funding, whilst the men’s remains unchanged seem like a rational and fair move.
It’s poor journalism from the people at the Today Show, to run this type of news story, when women sports is bigger than ever, It makes them look lazy.
Was it too hard for them to find out when a women’s league game was on? Was the trip too arduous for them to get a camera crew down to a Bears game?
Their schedules must have been too packed for anyone to make a visit to the development days at LCC Ice Rink where there are women and girls of every age trying to get back into sports and trying to prove that they can play the game just as well, if not better than the boys can.
How many people had to approve this farce of a tv segment, that did nothing more than perpetuate the stereotype that women cannot speak for themselves.
It’s embarrassing to see myself and my friends represented like this, how it fair to us that a mens team who are 6th in their league and a woman who does not even care about hockey beyond seeing its as a pool of dating prospects that they have been chosen to represent us and speak on our behalf to the entire country?
Inadvertently the Sydney Bears and the Today Show have legitimised the message that women’s sports do not matter, and they don’t seem to be embarrassed about it.
7 Comments
Fantastic sports journalistic debut! Amazing read 🙂
YESSSSS Morgan, this is exactly how I felt about that segment on the Today Show.
I had planned to write up my feelings via my personal facebook (but forgot about it), as I also felt it was dismissive of women that already exist within both female and male spaces of the sport/fan bases.
If I’m honest it both players looked a bit uncomfortable doing the interview as well.
Well done on your first piece.
I think this article is trying so hard to be offended on behalf of women that it ends up being patronising.
The underlying assumption seems to be that if women discover hockey through romance novels, attractive players, or a fun marketing campaign, they’ll never develop a genuine appreciation for the sport itself. Why? Are women really so one-dimensional that we can’t start with one interest and develop another?
People discover sports through all sorts of gateways. Some come for the atmosphere, some because a friend dragged them along, some because they like a particular player, and some because they saw something on TV. The important thing is that they come. What happens next is what matters.
The Sydney Bears’ job is not to be the standard-bearer for gender equality in Australian hockey. Their job is to get people through the gate, create fans, and generate revenue to support their team, which I remind you, is only semipro and relies on that revenue to exist. If hockey romance books are trending and the club can use that to attract new spectators, that’s just smart marketing.
What I find frustrating is that this article strips women of any nuance or agency. It assumes that women attracted by hockey romance or handsome hockey players will forever remain at that superficial level. In reality, many of those women may end up becoming passionate fans, volunteers, officials, players, or advocates for the sport. The article seems unwilling to consider that possibility.
Not every piece of hockey marketing needs to carry the weight of solving every issue facing women in sport. Sometimes a campaign is just trying to get bums on seats. And if it succeeds in bringing in people who otherwise wouldn’t have engaged with hockey at all, that’s a positive outcome.
The whole piece also feels oddly self-important. The entire argument rests on the bizarre assumption that a local hockey club promotion and a Today Show segment were somehow intended to “represent” all women in hockey. They weren’t. Nobody elected them to speak on behalf of women, but more importantly, nobody claimed they were.
The irony is that while complaining about others allegedly speaking for women, you’re doing exactly that yourself. “Myself and my friends” is not the same thing as “women in hockey.” You don’t get to appoint yourself the official voice of female hockey participants and then criticise everyone else for not reflecting your personal views.
The argument also gives away an oddly low opinion of women. It assumes that a woman who discovers hockey through romance novels, attractive players, or a light-hearted media segment is incapable of developing a genuine interest in the sport. That’s not empowering; it’s patronising.
Couldn’t have said it better myself Ruby! You genuiely hit the nail on the head with everything you raised. Why can’t a group of women choose to spend their time and money watching hockey? To suggest the reason they are attending is inadequate is mysoginistic in itself. The Sydney Bears have made their games a welcoming and comfortable place for women to enjoy watching hockey why intentionally create a negative tone and put women in boxes? Of course the issue of Womens sport not getting the attention it deserves is rampant and forever present but this is not at the fault of The Sydney Bears at all and it honeslty feels like a huge projection of personal experience. I think you need to zoom out and gain clarity on who is the real enemy here and aim the frustration that way.
This article is fantastic, it has summed up exactly how many of us are feeling at the moment with this influx of popularity. Thank you!
This article is fantastic and to the commenter above I think you have misunderstood the point entirely.
Your argument is underpinned by a focus on of how people find hockey rather than what the article is centred on: the issue of representation. The article does not suggesting that women can’t discover hockey through mass media such as TV, BookTok whatever etc. that is not the issue at hand. The issue is WHO gets positioned as representative of women in the sport.
Yes, clubs do need attendance, revenue, fans of course! Not disputing that – however, the way audiences are portrayed directly shapes public perception. When a national mass media platform such as Channel 9 chooses to focus their segment on the stereotype on a superficial agenda rather than highlight the participation of amazing women who are players, reffing, staffing, volunteering and actively work to sustain and build the game.
The saying ‘perception is reality’ rings true here as perception directly impacts how seriously women’s sport is valued and supported. This isn’t about limiting women’s choice or ‘agency’ nor saying there is a right or wrong way to become a hockey fan. This is more about questioning why on earth the women who already demonstrate that agency weren’t the one’s that were given a voice. A hardly famous TikTok influencer? That’s our spokesperson? That’s who gets the microphone?
And that’s where the just getting bums on seats argument falls way short. Perception influences legitimacy, and legitimacy influences support, investment, funding, and media coverage. If women in hockey are consistently framed through the lens of dating and romance, or their physical attraction to players while the contributions of players, officials, volunteers, are dismissed, that does have impacts intended or not on how seriously the sport and the women within it are taken.
The irony is that the article isn’t saying women can’t come to hockey because of romance novels or attractive players. Cool you do you – It is asking why when explaining women’s participation in hockey to a national audience, those were the voices chosen over the women already doing the work…
Hey Siri – Play ‘The Man’ by Taylor Swift.
Love it! Go the girls. Women’s ice hockey is can’t to watch. I never played myself but have been intimately involved in growing the women’s game – alongside the rest.