I was recently watching the Boston Pride and Buffalo Beauts of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) play live on YouTube. Buffalo were the eventual winners of the game, after a 10-round shootout.
The keynote of the game was the performance of the goaltenders, with Brittany Ott of the Boston Pride most likely making the save of the year, in any league. It was former Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings Dominik Hasek-esque, in that Ott flailed and flopped around praying for the puck to be stopped. It was impressive, to say the least, but some of the comments on the YouTube stream were pretty predictable and verged on disgusting.
Anyone who thinks women don’t make great athletes have never played against them. My first rugby club, in Oakville, Ont., didn’t have enough female players to make a U-14 team at the time, so they would come play with us and boy, did they have a bone to pick. It was down-right frightening. There was no one tougher than those girls, even during practice. They felt they had to prove they belonged and for many, mostly parents, they did. Parents and opposing players would often make remarks of ill-taste and even resort to name calling but at the end of the day, most of the players were happy they were on the team.
This was roughly 12 years ago but it’s still something you see in sports today.
On Jan. 22, former NHLer turned analyst Ron Duguay made a poor comment about the officiating during the postgame segment of the New York Rangers game against the Los Angeles Kings. “I think these guys would have been better off doing women’s hockey, the way they did the officiating - because they were kind of soft,” he said.
The comment was answered by his fellow pundits with silence and then awkward and nervous laughter and while he did have a point with the officiating being lacklustre, the women’s hockey comment was out of line. He apologized and the NWHL invited him to a game to witness the talent in the league, composed of former and current Olympians. Duguay isn’t the first and he won’t be the last person to make a disparaging comment about women’s sports. A lot of men, even friends of mine, have called it boring or lacking talent. I think Ott and the Boston Pride proved them wrong otherwise.
Women in professional sports may not be as physically imposing as their male counterparts but that doesn’t make them devoid of talent. Mocking women’s sports is good for no one, especially when this type of behaviour pushes participants away from the game.