The collapse of the Canadian Women's Hockey League occurred in the spring of 2019. Previously one of the top women's ice hockey leagues in the world, the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL; ) announced on 31 March 2019, that it would be folding effective 1 May.
The collapse had a major influence on women's professional hockey, leading directly to the creation of the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA), and the subsequent establishment of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL).
Background The Canadian Women's Hockey League was established in 2007 as a Canadian women's amateur senior league. It was originally led by a group of players, notably Lisa-Marie Breton, Mandy Cronin, Allyson Fox, Kathleen Kauth, Kim McCullough, Sami Jo Small and Jennifer Botterill, all of whom played in the original National Women's Hockey League before it folded the same year. In 2009, the Clarkson Cup began to be awarded to the CWHL champions as the best women's hockey club in Canada. Throughout the first half of the 2010s, the league continued to grow and underwent a number of structural changes, including the dissolution of several teams, expansion into the United States, and the introduction of affiliations with a number of National Hockey League (NHL) teams.
In 2015, former Northeastern University Huskies player and entrepreneur Dani Rylan founded a new National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), after having been in talks to bring a New York expansion team to the CWHL. The league would pay all of its players a salary of at least $10,000, the first women's hockey league to do so. However, halfway through the NWHL's second season the league announced massive salary cuts of up to 50%, a move that the league cited as necessary for its sustainability. Despite the cuts, the NWHL would continue to grow, adding the Minnesota Whitecaps to its roster of teams in 2018. However, the league's relationship with the CWHL was strained, and several players raised concerns about the working conditions players faced in the NWHL.
In 2016, Riksserien, the top flight of women's hockey in Sweden, underwent a restructuring, becoming the Swedish Women's Hockey League (SDHL). In 2018, the league's most successful club, Luleå HF/MSSK, announced that it would begin paying all of its players, the first team in the league to do so. In 2017, the Finnish Naisten-SM Sarja was restructured into the Naisten Liiga, with the Finnish Ice Hockey Association re-ranking the league as the second most important league in the country, having previously ranked it behind all of the senior men's leagues.
In March 2017, the players of the United States women's national team announced their intention to strike ahead of the 2017 IIHF Women's World Championship, after over a year of failed negotiations with USA Hockey concerning wages and playing conditions. The strike was ultimately successful, with the players reaching a four-year deal with USA Hockey, including increased pay and pay outside of the Olympic period. The strike came following similar actions taken by the American national women's soccer team to improve their conditions.
Prior to the start of the 2017–18 season, the CWHL expanded to China, adding the Vanke Rays and Kunlun Red Star. The expansion was part of a major deal with the Chinese government, which was seeking to develop its national women's hockey team ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. In September 2017, the league announced that it would start paying all of its players, with a minimum salary of $2,000 and a maximum of $10,000, with each team having a $100,000 salary cap. League commissioner Brenda Andress cited the Chinese expansion, as well as increased sponsorships and licensing rights, as making the move possible, adding that "we know this plan is sustainable."
#OneLeague
As the NWHL continued to grow and the CWHL began paying its players, discussions intensified about potentially merging the two leagues to form a single, unified professional North American women's hockey league. In October 2018, NWHL commissioner Dani Rylan stated that "One league is inevitable," while CWHL's interim commissioner Jayna Hefford called a merger "a priority."
Despite player support for a merger, and a stated willingness from the leadership of both leagues, negotiations between the leagues failed to produce results. One point of contention was differing visions of the potential role of the NHL in a unified league, and the NHL's refusal to get involved in negotiations, stating that it did not believe in either the NWHL's or the CWHL's models. The different structures between the leagues also proved hard to reconcile, with the CWHL structured as a not-for-profit and the NWHL structured as a for-profit association. Issues were also raised surrounding which teams would transition to a unified league, with uncertainty surrounding geographically close teams (such as the NWHL's Boston Pride and the CWHL's Worcester Blades) and the CWHL's Chinese teams, as well as the respective trophies of each league, the Clarkson Cup and the Isobel Cup.
Collapse In July 2018, CWHL commissioner Brenda Andress announced she would be stepping down and Jayna Hefford was named interim commissioner. That summer, the league's two Chinese teams were merged to form the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays. The league also underwent a restructuring, eliminating its board of governors and introducing an 11 member board of directors with more clearly defined legal responsibilities. The restructuring raised concerns, with some expressing unease about the fact that seven of the eleven members were entirely new to the league's governance. After the restructuring, the league's single largest sponsor, Graeme Roustan of Roustan Capital, announced that he was withdrawing his sponsorship from the league, citing a lack of transparency and a lack of faith in the league's leadership.
Despite the initial turmoil, the 2018–19 season appeared to be a success for both the league and women's hockey. Brianna Decker, along with NWHLer Kendall Coyne Schofield, made history as the first women to compete in the National Hockey League All-Star Game. Teams met their league-mandated $65,000 fundraising goals with success, with some teams managing to meet the goal through ticket sales alone. The 2019 Clarkson Cup final, won by the Calgary Inferno, drew a TV audience of 175,000.
The day before the final, the league held a meeting with its general manager to debrief the season and discuss plans for improving the next season. Chelsea Purcell, the Markham Thunder general manager, was due to leave the team and her full-time job outside of hockey to become the league's full-time head of strategic partnerships.
On 29 March 2019, a week after the final, the CWHL's board of directors met secretly. The ten members present voted unanimously to dissolve the league. Despite having hit record broadcasting and social media metrics during the 2018–19 season, the board believed that private internal documents, including an audit Hefford had been asked to perform before the season, proved that the league was economically unsustainable. Among the concerns raised were the reluctance of sponsors to renegotiate their sponsorships in line with the growth of the league and ticket sales, the average price of a ticket being around $15, and sales varying dramatically between teams with some regularly selling out and others rarely managing to attract more than a few dozen spectators.
At 9:30 in the morning on 31 March, the league asked the heads of the CWHL Players' Association, as well as the league's general managers and coaches, to join a conference call. Half an hour later, the rest of the league's players and staff were asked to join. Most of those who were invited to the call were expecting positive news from the league, such as an expansion, the promotion of Hefford to full-time commissioner, or a merger with the NWHL. However, it quickly became apparent that the call was bringing bad news. A few minutes after the end of the second conference call, the league issued a press release to the public: just one week after the successful 2019 Clarkson Cup finals and just five days before the start of the 2019 IIHF Women's World Championship, the CWHL announced that it would be folding on May 1.
At the time of the league's collapse, the CWHL had six teams in three countries, approximately 150 players, and an overall budget of over $3.5 million, with player salaries ranging from $2,000 to $10,000. The league did not release attendance figures.
The decision appeared to have been made without consulting the league's players or coaching staff, and came as a shock to most of them, especially as many of the league's top players were preparing to play in the World Championships—Canadian national team captain Marie-Philip Poulin told La Presse that her plane had just touched down in Europe when she received the email inviting her to the call. Soon after the announcement, the CWHL Players' Association scrambled to take action, organizing a task force composed of players and coaches and releasing coordinated social media posts from players voicing their disappointment in the decision, stating that: "This morning we were informed the #CWHL is folding. As players, we will do our best to find a solution so this isn't our last season of hockey but it's hard to remain optimistic. #NoLeague"
There were a handful of attempts from various parties to try and save the league. Talks occurred between the heads of the CWHL Players' Association and those of the NWHL Players' Association. Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson held discussions with the league to try and resurrect it. Vancouver-based producer Mark Bishop made a bid for the league, but was rejected as he did not present a business plan to the league and was unfamiliar to them. Former CWHL governor and investor W. Graeme Roustan made a bid to assume control of the league, offering to replace the entire CWHL board and to continue league operations into future seasons on his terms. His bid was also rejected.
Multiple CWHL teams stated that they intended to try and continue to operate, and there were reports of an anonymous, Toronto-based group drawing up legal paperwork to launch a new league. Those plans, however, did not materialise.
After the Canadian Football League asked the Canadian federal government for a $150 million bailout in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was revealed that talks had taken place between the CWHL and the government for financial help to save the league. Despite asking for financial assistance only on the scale of a few hundred thousand dollars, and the government having previously identified insufficient funding as the main barrier to female sport participation in Canada, the talks were unsuccessful.
On 2 July 2019, the league shut down its website and released a final public communication in the form of an open letter written by board chair Laurel Walzak on behalf of the CWHL board addressed to fans, sponsors, donors, and the Canadian government. In the letter, the board detailed their reasons for folding the league, including their belief that it would take an annual budget of at least $5 million to run the league adequately and at least $10 million to run it professionally, as well as the board's support for the emerging #ForTheGame players' movement. The letter discussed the creation of the NWHL in 2015, believing that it had fragmented the women's hockey market in North America and that sponsors delayed necessary investments due to unrealistic expectations of a merger between the two leagues.
Liquidation process