Wicked Angles: PWHL Minnesota's Issues Create a Moment of Truth for the League... and They're Missing It

The history of women's hockey has felt less like a stone tablet than it has a refreshed document screen prior to hitting Save. Words once thought immortal have been wiped out and rewritten, with little to no care for what came before them. While we in the media do our best to preserve what we can, there have been too many deletions for our Undo buttons to recover completely.

Still, if there's one thing I've been adamant about since I entered this space, it's this: women's hockey has, and continues to have, a tremendous opportunity to do something different with its influence. It has a chance to set a standard apart from whatever its predecessors have set, apart from what its male counterparts have set, apart from a status quo that has served precious few in any positive capacity. Outside of those who hold all the power, that is.

Never has that been more clear than in the morass surrounding PWHL Minnesota. The more that comes out of the Twin Cities, the more impressive it is that these players even managed to get out of the semis, let alone win the whole championship in their first year playing together.

The main issue seemed to be good old-fashioned power struggle between ousted GM Natalie Darwitz and head coach Ken Klee, who is now acting GM for the team (for who really knows how much longer). Klee then made a series of interesting choices during the draft, including drafting a player with a history of social media bigotry and then leaving his assistant coach and the mayor of Saint Paul high and dry during the photo op and the resulting boos.

Now, multiple pieces of reporting have come out of that organization detailing the rift between Klee and Darwitz, with players and staff alike seeming to draw their own lines in the sand. They've also illuminated Klee's own issues with abusive and bigoted language and the exodus he's initiated with his dismissal of pretty much everyone outside of assistant coach Mira Jalosuo.

Where has the PWHL been in all of this? Well, outside of an interesting, now-deleted Twitter post THN's Ian Kennedy (who has headed this coverage) wrote regarding pulling back on the story pending a response from the league and team brass, they've been curiously quiet. The Hockey News, for its part, has plunged full steam ahead in the meantime, continuing to report on the ensuing entropy. And we continue to get nothing from those at the top.

To be honest, that's not surprising to me. After Britta Curl was drafted and subsequently addressed the criticism against her in her own statement, the league and Minnesota organization put out identically canned releases acknowledging their commitment to "build an inclusive league that develops, supports, and elevates the best women's hockey players... while fostering a safe and welcoming environment for our growing, diverse, and devoted fan base."

Nothing in there indicating just what they're planning on actually doing to make that happen. And don't even bother asking them for any updates on a gender inclusion policy. But don't worry – they're fully equipped to help an ignorant 24-year-old unlearn her bigoted opinions!

Much has been said regarding the PWHL's desire to chase the NHL's wagon, but if that's the case (and I think it is), they're taking all the wrong lessons from the league they want so badly to notice them in more than just exposure. The NHL, for example, just reinstated the job eligibility of three of its biggest perpetrators of arguably the worst sexual assault coverup in its 100-plus year history – that of the Chicago Blackhawks, who figured Kyle Beach's safety and health were worth completely endangering in order to win a Stanley Cup in 2010. As of this writing, one of those men, Stan Bowman, already has a new role with a team (because the Edmonton Oilers just really seem to enjoy dumpster diving for personnel).

When asked how these three men have demonstrated a will to change their ways, league PR cooked up a word salad Gordon Ramsay would have theatrically spat out had it been served to him.

For a closer-to-home example, Mike Babcock continues to be included in hiring conversations despite a documented history of verbal and emotional abuse of his players. Most recently, he had a brief stint on the Columbus Blue Jackets' bench, but he stepped down before the season even began in earnest, amidst reporting of him overstepping personal boundaries with his players.

And while in women's hockey, Katey Stone and Candice Moxley (amongst others) have been investigated and Stone has been dismissed from her position as Harvard's women's hockey coach, there are still players – big-name, influential players, at that – who seek to excuse or play down her abusive behavior. And, as announced last week, Stone is clearly seeking to leverage that enabling in a lawsuit against the school now.

Hockey on all sides, at all levels, amongst all genders, has seen this power imbalance be exploited and those who wield it do often long-term damage to others. This is the real danger: that those affected find themselves all too soon, all too often, out of love with the sport that once held so much promise for them.

This is what I mean when I say the league is missing the boat for all of their waving and whistling. In too many instances now, those at the top stick to the smile-and-nod routine of public relations that looks pretty and does as little as possible in a way Ronald Reagan is likely smiling up from Hell at. Rather than making statements that actually say anything, rather than quickly implementing any sort of independent analysis or employment review or putting together anything that would indicate action... they've been extremely quiet.

While the PWHL is so eager to embrace innovation on the ice, what with its jailbreak rules and Gold Plans, it is far less likely to innovate any sort of social change at this juncture. And that should be shameful to them. But it won't be – not as long as they can continue to point at the trail they've claimed to have blazed.

So in many ways, the words written prior have been deleted. But in others, they've just been copied and pasted in different fonts, with different names attributed. As Season Two approaches, I'm not optimistic they'll be reworked the way they need to be; still, what else can we do but hope for the best?