NWHL responds to comments about league on Sportsnet

On Friday night’s Sportsnet broadcast of the Elite Women’s 3-on-3 Game at the NHL All-Star Skills Competition, analyst Cassie Campbell-Pascall spoke about the current state of women’s hockey with Ron MacLean.

Campbell-Pascall started by explaining how the teams were picked before moving into a discussion about the PWHPA and NWHL. She makes claims that “lawyers and agents” are telling players that they could “potentially be liable to the investors ... They don’t know if they would be liable to potentially pay those businesspeople back.” She continues on to say that the PWHPA is a union, which the PWHPA has asserted previously that they are not.

"The PWHPA, that's a union" HNIC straight up broadcasting misinformation. The PWHPA is NOT a union. pic.twitter.com/y5suZag4kB

— Medha (@monjaury) January 25, 2020

Her interview only aired on Sportsnet Canada but quickly made waves on Twitter. The US broadcast on NBCSN had their own crew.

Today, the NWHL responded to Campbell-Pascall’s comments about investor liability in an official statement.

It reads, in part:

So that there is no misunderstanding, the report by Sportsnet is illogical. The statement that players may be personally liable to investors in our league is inaccurate and not in line with laws in either the United States or Canada. So let us be clear: under no circumstances are NWHL players liable to NWHL investors.

We believe Ms. Campbell’s rhetoric is intended to scare our current players, along with the many players considering joining or re-joining our league in the seasons to come.

The statement continues to call for “courtesy over destructive discourse.” It closes with “When we try to tear each other down with reckless reporting or malicious comments, women’s hockey does not move forward.”