NWHL Commissioner Dany Rylan dropped the ceremonial puck for the Connecticut Whale’s Jessica Koizumi and the New York Riveters’ Meghan Fardelmann to open the league’s inaugural season.
Last Updated on Thursday, 15 October 2015 09:44
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
In case you missed it, and many good hockey folks especially in the Midwest may have, there is a new women’s professional hockey league and it just played its first ever games. The new league is the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL). Its smallish footprint is in the Northeast U.S.
We have had the Whitecaps here in Minnesota, but the NWHL is different. First of all, while it has only four teams, it is a league with an 18-game season. Secondly, the women are being paid, anywhere from the league minimum of $10,000 to as much as the league’s highest paid player of $25,000. Each team has a salary cap of $270,000. Teams may salary 18 players and can roster another four non-paid players who can fill-in when injuries or other absences occur.
The teams are all located out east – Connecticut, New York, Buffalo and Boston. Minnesota native Jake Mastel is the head coach of the Connecticut Whale. Sunday night, the Whale won their first ever game in the NWHL by a score of 4-1 over New York at their home rink in Stamford, Conn., in front of a packed arena.
Mastel, a graduate of Tartan High school, played for me way back in a day for the St. Paul Vulcans. We had an excellent team that year and Jake was one of our “hard-hat” guys. On a team with a lot of talent, Jake was one of our worker bees, one of our D-men who did all the hard work, killing penalties and being physical. Jake went on to a nice career at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
Jake has been in the dental supply business out in Connecticut for many years now. I was lucky enough to reconnect with him and get to know his family while my son Eric was playing at Quinnipiac, a school not far from Jake’s home. Jake and his wife Regina are raising a beautiful family in Connecticut. All three of their children play hockey, with their oldest daughter Brianna currently playing collegiately at Harvard.
Jake has been involved in girls’ hockey for the past 10 years, coaching both his kids teams and various “elite” teams from the region. He has given a lot of his time to women’s hockey, and his hard work has been acknowledged by being named the head coach of the Whale.
Jake is excited by the style of play already being exhibited by the women. “The game seems a little more ‘pure’ to me,” he told me Monday after their first ever game. “The game is not as physical as the men’s game, so skill is really emphasized. I think it already is a very nice and exciting style of hockey.”
It will be interesting to see how it evolves.
The players are coming from everywhere, with the majority being former Division I college stars. Jake is expecting the arrival of a yet-to-be-named Russian veteran of three Olympics. His team has two U.S. Olympians and the league also has a number of elite players from Canada. These women, while being paid nicely, are training to continue their careers on the world level as well.
Personally, I love the style of play of our Minnesota Lynx and the WNBA. If the women of the NWHL can duplicate the quality of play of the WNBA, hockey is in for a treat. And this new league, if successful, is going to give young girls everywhere a group of role models to follow and aspire to.
Kevin Hartzell is the director of player development for the NA3HL’s Twin City Steel. A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. He was the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen from 2012-14. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s. His book “Leading From the Ice” is now available at amazon.com.
Photos: Troy Parla
