The Edmonton Oilers stomped the Los Angeles Kings 7-4 on Monday to open the third straight playoff clash between the Pacific Division rivals. Battles at both ends of the ice will influence what happens in the rest of the series.
Kings vs. Oilers PP
Codie McLachlan / Getty Images
The Kings won't be able to finally oust the Oilers if their adept penalty kill caves. Their 86.4% kill rate was the NHL's second-best in the regular season. In Game 1, though, Edmonton's three goals on four power plays inflated Connor McDavid's ridiculous stat line and recalled a previous assault.
Edmonton's power play went 9-for-16 in last year's Kings series on a mere 2.67 opportunities per game, one of the lowest totals around the league in the round. The combination of brisk puck movement and blasts from the flank or point from the McDavid-Leon Draisaitl-Evan Bouchard trio - a brilliant constellation of shooting threats - proved overpowering. Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored Monday because of their wheeling and dealing.
The Oilers led the 2023 postseason in power-play goals with 18 despite playing 10 fewer games than the eventual Stanley Cup champs, the Vegas Golden Knights. Their eye-popping 46.2% conversion rate over two rounds is easily the best mark in the NHL historical database, which dates to 1978.
The unit slipped this season, but only as low as fourth in the league at 26.3%. Of McDavid's 100 assists, he dished 37 with the man advantage. Draisaitl sniped 21 power-play goals, some at sharp angles from the corner or the bottom of the faceoff circle. A worker bee with deft touch, Hyman can score by cleaning up rebounds, tipping Bouchard's bombs, or redirecting McDavid's visionary backdoor feeds. Nugent-Hopkins' presence is a luxury.
Guarding the whole quintet is difficult. McDavid and Hyman were enough of a handful at even strength in Game 1, connecting for multiple goals on McDavid's spinning passes. Hyman had a hat trick, four of McDavid's five assists were primaries, and Kings penalties drawn by Hyman, Draisaitl, and Vincent Desharnais were punished on the scoreboard. The Kings' season will end soon if they're swamped on special teams.
Oilers vs. Kings attack
Curtis Comeau / Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
Gaffes and oversights in their own end - be it giveaways, falls, negligent coverage, or halfhearted backchecking - undermined talented Edmonton teams in past postseasons.
These Oilers can run up the score, but they're also stingier than their predecessors. The same defensive personnel that narrowly resisted the Kings last spring tightened up this season. Edmonton ranked fifth in goals allowed (2.68 per night) over Kris Knoblauch's 69 games as head coach.
The misadventures of Darnell Nurse (deflection off skate) and Cody Ceci (detonation of stick) helped the Kings score but happened too late to matter Monday. The Oilers' sturdiness in front of Stuart Skinner earlier in the game helped spark their outburst. Rushes that produced Edmonton's first few goals originated with strong work in the defensive zone.
Edmonton is equipped to avoid last year's issues, like the inability to hold leads. The Oilers led in all six of their 2023 playoff defeats to the Kings or Golden Knights. Feeble once the floodgates opened, they gave up three straight goals within a period in every loss to Vegas. They didn't shield the interior in big moments, like when Jonathan Marchessault's gritty natural hat trick sealed Edmonton's elimination.
In Game 1, Skinner's breakaway save on Viktor Arvidsson bailed out Mattias Ekholm, who'd committed a neutral-zone turnover, and promptly led to Hyman's second goal. Cleaner breakouts that Ekholm initiated by coolly eluding Kings forecheckers facilitated tallies from Hyman and Adam Henrique. Edmonton protected the house, then headmanned the puck to turn defense into offense. That formula wins games and series.
It feels strange to question the finishing ability of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Eastern Conference leader in goals, and wonder if they can score enough to take revenge on a playoff foil.
Toronto's 298 goals in the regular season were four off the NHL lead. Sparked by Auston Matthews' flirtation with the 70-goal milestone, the Leafs iced one of the best offenses of their Core Five era. But this strength vaporizes in the postseason. Saturday's disheartening 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins provided the latest example.
Over six regular seasons since John Tavares' celebrated arrival in 2018, the Leafs scored 3.52 goals per game, allowed 2.98, and posted a .645 points percentage. Over 38 playoff outings in that span, they've averaged 2.71 goals, let in 2.95, and won a single series. The Leafs fire the same amount of shots on net at this time of year, but goalies like Boston's Jeremy Swayman tend to swallow them.
Blame's easy to assign. Toronto's expensive stars fade when the playoffs start. Only William Nylander and Morgan Rielly approximate their usual production.
Since Tavares joined the team, Matthews tops the NHL in goals by a wide margin, while only Connor McDavid has dished more primary assists than Mitch Marner. On a per-game basis in the playoffs, those Leafs barely crack the top 20 in either category.
While Nylander missed Game 1 due to an unspecified injury, the remaining Big Four failed to convert a long 4-on-3 power play. Matthews beat Charlie McAvoy and a wandering Swayman to a loose puck but rang it off the near post. After topping out at 69 goals, none of Matthews' 22 shots in Toronto's past three games found twine.
Brian Fluharty / Getty Images
Swayman improved to 4-0 with a .962 save percentage against the 2023-24 Leafs. Though he's hard to beat from distance, his denial rate on high-danger chances this season ranked in the league's pedestrian 52nd percentile, per NHL EDGE. Slot shots can trouble Swayman. That said, his early kick stop thwarted Nick Robertson from close range and let Bruins rookie John Beecher respond with the opening score.
Boston's supporting cast shone Saturday. Jesper Boqvist put the puck on Beecher's tape when the fourth line struck off the rush. Morgan Geekie's screen blocked Ilya Samsonov's view of Jake DeBrusk's first power-play tally. David Pastrnak's muted night (three shots, no goals for a sixth straight game) didn't slow the onslaught.
Brian Fluharty / Getty Images
Series around the NHL are irresistibly dramatic. The Battle of Florida between the Panthers and Lightning starts Sunday. Out west, the Kings will get a third straight crack at the powerhouse Oilers. But nothing compares to Leafs against Bruins. Boston infamously vanquished Toronto in Game 7s in 2013, 2018, and 2019 - once in a blowout and twice by erasing third-period deficits.
Old-timers recall that the Bruins have won six straight playoff matchups with the Leafs going back to 1969. That was shortly after Bobby Orr's NHL debut. If the stars don't score, another opportunity will slip away.
While flowers bloom in April, preseason predictions wither. Those who doubted the Washington Capitals expected their year would be completely different.
Rather than snipe at will for a lottery team, Alex Ovechkin drove less offense than usual for a surprising playoff contender. The Capitals rank 28th in the NHL in goals scored (2.69 per game) and are 27th in goal differential (minus-35) entering Wednesday's action. Somehow, they're a point back of third place in the Metropolitan Division.
Six Eastern Conference foes and five Western clubs are on track to miss the playoffs with stronger goal differentials. The improbability of Washington's push is historic.
Contrasts define this former Stanley Cup champion. Only two teams - the lowly Sharks and Blackhawks - get blown out more often by three or more goals, per Stathead.
When a result's undecided, the Capitals salvage points. Their record in one-goal games is 18-2-10. That amounts to a .767 situational points percentage.
Their roster took hits throughout the season. The degeneration of Nicklas Backstrom's hip, combined with trades that shipped out Joel Edmundson, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Anthony Mantha, weakened Washington's depth. But Dylan Strome has scored reliably, and in net, the breakout of 30-year-old career backup Charlie Lindgren offset Darcy Kuemper's abrupt decline.
The Flyers, Red Wings, and Islanders stalled in the standings as certain Capitals stepped up. A 13-7-2 run since mid-February helped Washington catch those teams and the sluggish Devils and Penguins. Twelve of Ovechkin's 26 goals, nine of Connor McMichael's 17, nine of Sonny Milano's 13, and six of Hendrix Lapierre's eight were tallied during the hot streak.
The Capitals are tied in points with ninth-place Detroit, but have two more regulation wins and a game in hand. Both teams, or one plus the Islanders, could make the playoffs if Philadelphia slides below the wild-card cutline. The circumstances give Washington a chance to do something rare.
Charlie Lindgren. Julian Avram / Icon Sportswire / Getty ImagesBrett Hull (left) and Wayne Gretzky teamed up for the 1995-96 Blues. M. Desjardins / Bruce Bennett Collection / Getty Images
The last statistically bad team to advance in the postseason iced seven future Hall of Famers. Wayne Gretzky's arrival in a February trade helped the aging, underperforming 1995-96 Blues (minus-29 goal differential) belatedly discover their scoring touch. Those Blues dragged the powerhouse Red Wings to Game 7 of the second round. Steve Yzerman's famous slapper finally eliminated them in double overtime.
A recent comparable, the 2011-12 Panthers (minus-24 differential), tied an NHL record with 18 losses after regulation. Key players for the lackluster Southeast Division champ included Tomas Fleischmann, Stephen Weiss, Kris Versteeg, and the Jose Theodore-Scott Clemmensen goalie tandem. Florida scared the eventual Stanley Cup finalist Devils in the opening round but fittingly gave up OT winners in Games 6 and 7.
Revitalized after a creaky start, Ovechkin's trying to complete a record 18th 30-goal season. He needs 46 more goals to equal Gretzky's career benchmark of 894. Give the Capitals credit: Without winning a series since their Cup breakthrough, they've found new and unique ways to stay relevant.
The NHL is in Sweden this week, and fans of the Maple Leafs, Red Wings, Senators, and Wild can't be faulted for fearing they'll arrive home weary. Flying overseas during the season is a fun novelty, but it disrupts a team's rhythm.
The four-game jaunt faintly resembles the NHL's most elaborate Eurotrip. In the spring of 1959, the Bruins and Rangers faced off 23 times in 26 days in 10 European cities. The Original Six rivals experimented with an orange puck as Bobby Hull began his ascent to superstardom.
Chicago loaned Hull to New York for the grueling exhibition series. To conserve energy for sightseeing, he deliberately put in less effort on the ice. Hull coasted to the slot to focus on burying passes, signaling how he'd snipe 913 goals between the NHL and World Hockey Association.
"Boy, it was suddenly a whole new ballgame. I was lasting a lot longer on each shift and the goals started to go in like clockwork," Hull told the Toronto Star late in his career. "I pinpoint that European tour as the turning point in my life as a hockey player."
On this day in 1959, the Bruins and Rangers began a 23-game exhibition tour of Europe, playing games in England, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany and Austria #Hockey365#NHLBruins#NYRpic.twitter.com/PbbrS8nkdC
This weekend's finale in Sweden will be the 42nd NHL game played abroad, be it in Europe or Japan, since 1997. Preseason visits to Australia, China, and Puerto Rico have gotten people talking about the league in distant markets.
At the time, one precedent existed for the Bruins-Rangers odyssey. The Canadiens and Red Wings met in nine offseason matchups in England and France in 1938. Games were paused intermittently so that Detroit coach Jack Adams could explain the rules to the crowd. The squads combined to pot 96 goals but threw disappointingly few hits, as an expat in London reported in a letter to the Montreal Gazette:
Neither Canadiens nor Detroit tried too hard and that reflected on their showing as a whole. The English are pretty hard to fool, even about things they know little of. I think the biggest disappointment for the press and public alike was the lack of body-checking … Over here the press has made everybody believe NHL hockey is murderously rough, and there was nothing in the Earls Court show to support that idea.
In 1959, the Habs rejected a Swiss sports goods dealer's invitation to return to Europe for a month. The dealer, retired hockey pro Othmar Delnon, was undeterred. Through a New York intermediary, he convinced brothers from the legendary Patrick family - Muzz, general manager of the Rangers, and Lynn, GM of the Bruins - to barnstorm the continent following the Stanley Cup Final, which neither team reached.
The point of the series was to make money. Players earned $1,000 and a Swiss winemaker covered their expenses. Bruins forward Johnny Bucyk and head coach Milt Schmidt were among the Hall of Famers showcased to fans in six countries. Notable Rangers included goalie Gump Worsley, a future Vezina Trophy winner, and rugged defenseman Lou Fontinato, whose nose was broken that season in an epic fight with Gordie Howe.
Forbidden by NHL rules from traveling together, the teams flew to London separately to open the series. They traded close wins before Bucyk's hat trick in the fourth game fueled Boston's emphatic 12-4 triumph in Geneva.
"For the losers," United Press International reported, "the best performances were turned in by three members of the Chicago Black Hawks: Pierre Pilote, Eric Nesterenko, and Bobby Hull."
The Rangers recruited those ringers, plus Chicago captain Ed Litzenberger, to fill holes in the lineup. Hall of Fame forward Andy Bathgate, winner of the Hart Trophy in 1959, skipped the trip because his wife had just given birth. Howe agreed to replace Bathgate if the Red Wings granted permission, but he ultimately bailed because of a rib injury.
That allowed Hull, an 18-goal scorer that season at 20 years old, to tag along and dominate. Europe is where his confidence soared. Hull netted or set up dozens of goals alongside Litzenberger, an adept passer and finisher, and Rangers agitator Eddie Shack, the line's puck retriever.
Hull also saw the sights, climbing the Eiffel Tower on foot one afternoon in Paris.
"I didn't have too much in the way of legs that night," he told the Star. "I guess I only got two or three goals."
Hull (16) pursues the puck early in his NHL career. Bettmann / Getty ImagesBruins coach Milt Schmidt (right). Boston Globe / Getty ImagesOnce Rangers teammates, brothers Lynn (left) and Muzz Patrick (right) managed the clubs that clashed in Europe in 1959. New York Times Co. / Getty Images
The competitive series - New York went 11-9-3 and outscored Boston 104-101 - was violent at the outset. Bruins center Bronco Horvath threatened to fly home in the first week, citing fatigue from the season and annoyance at the Rangers' headhunting. Bruins captain Fernie Flaman sat down with Rangers counterpart Red Sullivan to defuse the tension, Horvath said in NHL.com's 2009 retrospective of the trip.
The relentless schedule took a toll. Off days - there were three in total - were dedicated to traveling long distances. Certain performances were lethargic, and others drew small crowds. Ticket prices, unfamiliarity with the sport, and the warm spring weather were blamed for poor turnouts of 700 people in Paris and 500 apiece in Antwerp and West Berlin.
"Maybe They Don't Like Hockey," surmised an Edmonton Journal headline following the games in Belgium.
"The hockey tour has been laying an egg of monstrous proportions," famed sportswriter Red Fisher opined in the Montreal Star. "The Rangers and Bruins are strangers to Europeans, and with nobody to root for, apathy sets in."
Other observers came away impressed. Geneva's arena welcomed 18,000 spectators over two nights. Foreign reporters praised the precise passes, slick stickhandling, and timely defensive interventions the NHLers exhibited. France's L'Equipe newspaper remarked, "It's been a long time since we saw such virtuosos on ice."
"The Russians would be chased out of the rink by these ice hockey players," Austrian journalist Walter Schwarz wrote in a dispatch for the Associated Press. "As concerns speed, lightning-fast reaction, body control, and sheer physical power, the North American professionals have no equals."
Multiple winning streaks - first in Games 8-10 in Antwerp and Zurich, then in Games 15-17 in Essen and Krefeld - enlarged New York's series lead. In the clincher, Hull scored in the opening minute of the first and second periods as the Rangers won 3-2 in Berlin. Shack tallied twice in the spirited 4-4 tie at Vienna that closed the tour.
"Several players received major penalties for fighting in Sunday's rough match," the AP reported, "but all was serene afterward as Red Sullivan of the Rangers received a big cup for his team's series victory."
The scene was significant for a few reasons. Czechoslovak players crossed the Iron Curtain to watch the finale in Vienna, foreshadowing that the NHL would internationalize late in the Cold War.
The series was a graceful sendoff for Hall of Fame official Red Storey, who refereed all 23 games. Storey resigned from the NHL weeks before the Eurotrip, stung when league president Clarence Campbell slammed him in the press for missing calls during the playoffs.
"Can't understand the fans over here," Storey wrote in a postcard from Paris to the Toronto Star. "They even appreciate the officials."
Referee Red Storey separates Gordie Howe and Ted Kennedy during an NHL game. Bruce Bennett / Getty ImagesGump Worsley (right) guards the Rangers' net. Hy Peskin Archive / Getty ImagesClarence Campbell (right) presents the Norris Trophy to Pierre Pilote. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
The trip deterred Campbell from making a radical rule change. The Bruins and Rangers packed 288 pucks that had a bright orange side, agreeing to test the designer's hunch that they'd be easier for fans and goalies to track.
"We paid all that excess weight charges on those dizzy things and they were a pure flop," Muzz Patrick told reporters after the series, per the Detroit Free Press. "The players said they couldn't see the puck and wouldn't use them after the first try. They would be good only on black ice. European teams are going to use them, however, because we gave them away free."
The Black Hawks ringers sparkled when NHL play resumed. Hull edged Horvath by a point to win the 1960 scoring title. He teamed with Pilote - a budding three-time Norris Trophy winner - and Stan Mikita to lead Chicago to the Stanley Cup in 1961. Litzenberger and Nesterenko also helped deliver the franchise's only championship of the Original Six era.
In retirement, players retained fond memories of European restaurants. They ate palm-sized steaks at an upscale London hotel, Pilote marveled in his 2013 autobiography. Waiters laughed at Rangers coach Phil Watson, a Montreal native, when he bungled Parisian pronunciations of French words while trying to get a beer, Schmidt recalled in the NHL.com retrospective.
The only gripes about the Eurotrip were minor, Sullivan told the Canadian Press when the journey ended. Some players got stomach aches from overindulging at meals. Rushing to the next game minimized their time in each country.
"But what we saw was pleasant. Girls are pretty and have good figures, the food was good, and the crowds were friendly," Sullivan said. "They have one thing in common: They like to see something for their money. And believe me, our games were no picnic."
Apps like theScore didn't exist when Michael MacCambridge grew up in Kansas City in the 1970s, back when it was harder for a kid to follow the hometown team. Late Royals games that ran past his bedtime sometimes ended after the morning newspaper went to print. The sports section relayed who led through seven innings.
The suspense dogged MacCambridge, now an author of sports history books, as he left for grade school.
"Only when I came home and got the afternoon paper could I find out the final score of the game that had been played nearly 24 hours ago," MacCambridge said. "That is what's so hard to explain to modern sports fans: What a wasteland it was. Maybe you could get lucky and get a final on the radio. But it was a challenge."
MacCambridge lived through a transformation. Everything about sports changed in the '70s. The debut of "Monday Night Football" popularized nighttime broadcasts and helped condition a national audience to crave round-the-clock coverage. The creation of free agency and rogue leagues empowered and enriched players. Gains were made that promoted racial integration and women's inclusivity.
The decade's innovations and iconic athletes, from Hank Aaron to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Muhammad Ali, inspired MacCambridge's latest work: "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America," which was published this week. Every era sparks change, but this rollicking period is when the games we love became a cultural phenomenon, commercial juggernaut, and 24-7 obsession.
Supplied by Grand Central Publishing
Before his book launched, MacCambridge spoke to theScore about the decade's key characters, indelible sights, and lasting effects.
"By the end of the '70s, you could see the broad contours of what sports has become today, which is this multimedia, pervasive common ground that has insinuated itself into all the different parts of American life," MacCambridge said.
"At a time when America is more balkanized, narrowcast, and divided than ever before, sports is the last really big tent. You could start seeing that happen by the end of the '70s in a way that didn't exist at the beginning of the '70s."
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
theScore: How did you experience sports in the 1970s?
MacCambridge: I was 7 years old when the decade began. Fans tend to romanticize sports when they were growing up and falling in love with sports. Your sense of wonder is activated in that decade. I wanted to take a step back from my own emotional experience and try to understand the larger themes.
Growing up in Kansas City, I lived in an apartment complex. There were players from the Chiefs who lived in my building and the next building over. It was an era when players lived in apartment buildings instead of owning them. The Chiefs' offices were about 10 minutes away in the middle of a park area. There were only about 10 people working there and a practice field out back.
Sports were much less corporate, much less sophisticated, and the stakes were a lot lower then because players were being paid a lot less money. Sports was something different by the time we got to the end of the '70s.
How did the '70s legitimize sports fandom? What happened that enabled millions of people to obsess over them?
You have to go back to the assumptions that were made at the beginning of the '70s. There was still a feeling that pro football - which, by then, was America's most popular sport - was too male, too marginal, too parochial to succeed on prime-time network television. But with the advent and success of "Monday Night Football," that showed there was a broad audience.
It's not a coincidence that in 1971, a year after "Monday Night Football" debuts, we have the first World Series game in prime time. In '72, the Olympics goes to every night in prime time. In '73, the NCAA has the first national championship game in prime time. "Monday Night Football" opened the door.
Fans had been so regional in their interests and awareness. As more sports were on TV, as more sports pages became national in their outlook, fans were more national. By the time you get to the '80s and the launch of ESPN, fans are able to follow the games in a way they couldn't (in the past).
Focus On Sport / Getty ImagesRoss Lewis / Getty ImagesFocus on Sport / Getty Images
The decade's top athletes included tennis legend Billie Jean King. She beat Bobby Riggs, the chauvinistic retired major champion, in straight sets in the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" as 45 million viewers tuned in. As you note in the book, it's possible no athlete ever delivered under so much pressure. What did her victory mean to some of the women you interviewed?
The match was played in Houston, of course. There was a big viewing party in New York City. It gathered a lot of the women who were at the forefront of second-wave feminism. A lot of them weren't sports fans, but they knew this was a moment. There's a scene in the book with the actress Marlo Thomas, who starred in the TV series "That Girl," sitting in front of the TV and saying this was the most important moment of her life.
Talking to women coaches, athletes, and administrators, it was clear that across the country that night, there was this thing. It was a circus, and there was nothing tangible improved by it one way or the other. Billie Jean King would have been the first to say that she could not have beaten one of the top 100 male players at the time. But because that match had gotten so much attention and had broad societal resonance, it felt huge.
King would have known going into the match that if she lost, that's what she was going to be remembered for - just as that is what Bobby Riggs is remembered for today, 50 years later.
Bettmann / Getty Images
Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run in 1974. He got death threats and racist hate mail while pursuing Babe Ruth, then was celebrated for breaking the record. What did Aaron's chase signify about that time in American life?
It was important for Aaron to step up and share with the public the nature of the hate mail he received. I think it showed people a side of the country that a lot of middle-class, white sports fans hoped did not exist. It was a reminder that it did exist.
It put a mirror in front of the American sporting public, which tended to congratulate itself for its open-mindedness, for its embrace of Black athletes. It showed how many people were virulently racist, threatening, and dangerous.
The stress of that was clearly immense. I'm not sure another athlete who didn't have Aaron's character would have weathered that so well. But he did it. I quote from a biography of Aaron. (Braves teammate) Dusty Baker said, "Hank was a little bit like your dad." He didn't bring his problems home to you. You knew he had adult problems, but he didn't dwell on them.
It was the single most-known record in American sports. Even someone who didn't follow sports knew Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs. That was what made it so historic.
O-Pee-Chee 1974Bettmann / Getty Images
Does anything in sports today compare to the spectacle of Muhammad Ali's violent, epic championship fights?
I don't know if there's ever been an event that was as anticipated as that first Ali-Joe Frazier fight. (Contesting the "Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden in 1971, Smokin' Joe beat Ali by unanimous decision after 15 rounds.)
You have to consider the time, Ali's place in the culture, the fatigue with the Vietnam War by then, and the sense among some middle-class Americans that Ali was unpatriotic (for refusing the Vietnam draft). You have more people watching the Super Bowl today than would have watched the first Ali-Frazier fight, but it doesn't have the political ramifications.
Who you were rooting for in that fight said something about what kind of person you were, what your politics were, who your friends were, what your attitude about the country was. It was more true then than, I think, any sports event today.
Bettmann / Getty ImagesLMPC / Getty Images
The American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association courted superstars like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving, Bobby Hull, and even Gordie Howe in his mid-40s. How did players benefit from the competition these short-lived leagues created?
You're right: The leagues were almost inevitably short-lived. There was no real research done on whether it would be a good idea to have a pro football franchise in Shreveport, Louisiana, or a hockey team in Houston. But there was new money there. Before the advent of free agency, players had essentially been indentured servants. It gave players a choice.
When Howe was with the Red Wings and winning MVP awards and Stanley Cups, he still had to work a job in the offseason to make ends meet. He had a neighbor who was a businessman who would take his boat to the lake every weekend. Howe couldn't afford that. When the WHA came offering hundreds of thousands of dollars, Gordie Howe happily took it, and understandably so.
Gordie Howe getting suited up at age 50. You can literally feel the old man strength. pic.twitter.com/9ZirSqG1Qx
What did players like Oscar Robertson in basketball, Curt Flood in baseball, and John Mackey in football risk or sacrifice when they fought for free agency to be established?
They risked their careers. They risked their time after retirement within the industry of their respective leagues.
Oscar Robertson was one of the smartest basketball players ever. A lot of people feel he would have been a great coach or general manager. He never got a chance because he was essentially blackballed by the NBA owners for challenging the reserve clause. (Across sports, this stipulation bound a player to his current team even after his contract expired.)
Curt Flood, after a short stint with the Washington Senators, never really got another chance to work in baseball, even though he was a veteran who was very accomplished and knew the game well. John Mackey never got a coaching opportunity after his career ended with the Baltimore Colts. It was stark. It was obvious.
In each of those major sports, the athletes who were risking their careers were African-American. I asked the Steelers' Hall of Fame defensive lineman Joe Greene about that. He said it probably wasn't a coincidence. He thinks the Black players, partly because of the civil rights movement, were more keenly tuned in to issues of freedom and choice and options.
Because of that, the Floods, the Mackeys, the Robertsons were more willing to take that step. Athletes of today have followed in their footsteps and should appreciate the sacrifices they made.
You mentioned Joe Greene. He won four Super Bowls with the Steelers dynasty and starred in a legendary Coca-Cola commercial. What place did the athletes of the '70s occupy in pop culture?
People started to see athletes as performance artists, if you will. Entertainers.
When you look at the last truly mythic figure in American sports, Julius Erving, during his days in the American Basketball Association, that was not just about being a wonderful basketball player. The thing that drew fans to Erving was the way he played basketball. He was a performer in the same way that (the great ballet dancer Rudolf) Nureyev was a performer.
I can remember talking to Hubie Brown, who coached the Kentucky Colonels, one of the Nets' great rivals during the ABA years. He said he had to tell his team, "If Erving comes anywhere near the lane, just foul him. I cannot risk him doing some whirling dervish, 360-degree dunk, and turning the home crowd against me."
Hubie Brown talks about his center Artis Gilmore, one of the best shot-blockers in the ABA, facing off against Erving, and Erving at 6-foot-6, who gave eight inches away to Gilmore, elevating above Gilmore. His armpit is above Gilmore's head as he's dunking over him. That sense of theater, moment, drama, performance - that sense of, "You have to come here, you have to see this" - was what made Erving special.
The ABA didn't have a national television contract. Erving was the last superstar to attain that status without most people in the country seeing him. Like I said, I grew up in Kansas City. Most of the kids I knew in the mid-'70s, their favorite player was Julius Erving. They'd never seen him play. They just saw pictures, heard stories, loved the big afro and the stars-and-stripes Nets jersey. It was clear that he was a departure (from the norm).
Dick Raphael / NBA / Getty Images
The ABA played with a red, white, and blue ball. It popularized dunk contests and the three-point line. In any sport, what was your favorite innovation or rule change to result from the '70s?
This isn't a specific rule but an entire sport. Billie Jean King and her husband at the time, Larry King, launched World Team Tennis. It was a really interesting take on tennis, which had historically been a country-club sport and very polite, proper, clapping after the point. King recognized that Americans responded to team sports more than individual sports. If you could make tennis a team sport, you could reach a broader cross-section of people.
Those early years of World Team Tennis, they had an innovative scoring system. You played five sets: men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles. You didn't score by the sets won. You scored by the number of games won. If you lost two sets 6-4 but won the third set 6-1, you are now up 14-13.
You had to win the last game to clinch the match. There are these great fifth-set stories of teams coming back and running off four, five, or six games in a row to send it to sudden death. Crowds really got into it.
World Team Tennis had two challenges. It was trying to fit into a very crowded tennis schedule, and it also was launched before the age of cable television. If it would have launched a decade later, we might still be following World Team Tennis in the spring in the United States.
On X, formerly Twitter, @Super70sSports celebrates the decade's eccentricities. How often do you check out that account?
When asked if he preferred grass or Astroturf, Tug McGraw said "I don’t know. I never smoked any Astroturf." pic.twitter.com/76L6SMzYRg
I love it. I even mention it in my bibliographic essay. Ricky Cobb does a great job there. It speaks to how wild and off the grid some of the aspects and athletes from that decade were.
There's a tendency to attribute innocence to any past era. After spending two and a half years on this book, I think it would be incorrect to describe the '70s as an innocent era. It was certainly a less self-conscious era. Hair was long. Inhibitions were low. There was shag carpeting on the walls.
One thing I tried to do with the book was put all of the changes into a broader context. Sports moving to prime time on network television. Free agency giving athletes a measure of liberation. Integration becoming more the rule than the exception. Women getting involved in unprecedented numbers as athletes, coaches, administrators, journalists. But there were still things that happened in the '70s that didn't make any kind of sense.
There was a picture in one of Billie Jean King's autobiographies. It was a little bit after the "Battle of the Sexes" that she'd won. She's on this Hollywood soundstage. She's dressed in frontier, "Little House on the Prairie" garb. She's sharing a dance with the Penthouse magazine editor Bob Guccione on "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour."
I don't know what led to it, but it was something that happened in the '70s. I think the takeaway is there was more living than thinking done during that decade.
Finally, the reigning Norris Trophy winner is on the move.
The Pittsburgh Penguins reeled in star defenseman Erik Karlsson in a three-team megadeal Sunday to enliven a dull part of the hockey calendar. The trade also advances the San Jose Sharks' rebuild and has the potential to shake up next season's Eastern Conference playoff race.
The transaction loops in the Montreal Canadiens and breaks down as follows:
San Jose retains $1.5 million of Karlsson's $11.5-million cap hit over the next four seasons. Pittsburgh will foot 25% - or close to $1.6 million - of Petry's $6.25-million AAV for two more years. Montreal retains no salary.
Let's evaluate this blockbuster from all sides.
Penguins
Kavin Mistry / NHL / Getty Images
Karlsson, 33, hasn't reached the postseason since the Sharks surged as far as the third round in 2019. Two years earlier, he dragged the Ottawa Senators within an overtime goal of the Stanley Cup Final while nursing two heel fractures, exhibiting his toughness and greatness.
He's this move's biggest winner. Karlsson departs a cellar-dweller to join the team that eliminated those 2017 Senators en route to clinching Sidney Crosby's third Cup. Pittsburgh remains committed to Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang despite failing to win a playoff round for the last five years.
With the franchise legends staying put, new boss Kyle Dubas had to swing big to try to prolong the contention window. Dubas' first seismic move as president of hockey operations and general manager delivered an incandescent talent who made NHL history last season.
Karlsson's 101 points shattered his previous career best and were the most a blue-liner has produced since 1992. He was the first NHL defenseman to clear the century mark in his 30s, signaling he'll age gracefully if blessed with good health. Karlsson tallied one fewer point at even strength (74) in 2022-23 than runaway scoring champion Connor McDavid.
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Acquiring Karlsson relieves the pressure on Letang, who turned 36 in April, to carry the Penguins' defense corps. Head coach Mike Sullivan can ice a puck-mover on the right side of the first and second pairings and at the helm of both power-play units. Karlsson will raise Pittsburgh's offensive floor even if Letang misses games or Jake Guentzel is hampered by the aftereffects of ankle surgery.
Dumping Granlund's bloated contract ($5 million through 2025) is a triumph for Dubas. Moving Rutta and Smith made Karlsson affordable while also saving the Penguins about $3.1 million in cap space, per CapFriendly. If Pittsburgh bounces back into the playoff picture - maybe by vaulting the New York Rangers and Islanders to rise to third place in the stacked Metropolitan Division - that'll soften the blow of parting with multiple picks.
Crosby, set to celebrate his 36th birthday Monday, is signed for two more seasons. The Penguins have about that much time to compete in the Metro before he, Malkin, and Letang finally fade. If things proceed to go south, Karlsson could net Pittsburgh a passable trade return or, at worst, would disappear from the cap sheet before long.
Resisting for as long as possible what's eventually bound to happen - the post-Crosby teardown - makes sense for Dubas. He landed the Norris winner and conserved money in the process. Karlsson might never advance in the playoffs again, but his and Pittsburgh's odds just improved substantially.
Grade: A
Sharks
Joe Sargent / NHL / Getty Images
Karlsson appeared in all 82 games and skated for 25:37 nightly last season. That means he was on the ice for close to 45% of San Jose's campaign. The Sharks plummeted in the standings anyway, recording 60 points to drop to fourth-last in the league while posting the franchise's worst points percentage (.366) since 1996.
Next season promises to be miserable. That's for the best. Drafting future stars is what makes a rebuild tolerable. Jettisoning Karlsson positions the Sharks to tank and add a cornerstone who'll play with Will Smith and William Eklund, headliners of GM Mike Grier's ascendant yet unspectacular prospect pool.
The problem with the Karlsson deal is the pool didn't improve Sunday. Grier obtained one decent asset - Pittsburgh's 2024 first-rounder - while committing to pay Granlund and Rutta for two seasons. The Sharks assumed that burden, as well as the final year of Hoffman's contract, to avoid retaining more than 13% of Karlsson's AAV.
Karlsson's age and steep price tag conspired to lighten the return. To land him in 2018, San Jose sent Ottawa two budding star centers: Josh Norris and the draft pick that became Tim Stutzle. Between the Karlsson, Timo Meier, and Brent Burns trade packages, Grier procured two Round 1 selections, using the first in June to draft winger Quentin Musty at 26th overall.
The Sharks' cap sheet remains messy. Defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who's 36 years old, is signed for $7 million annually through 2026. Captain Logan Couture, 34, owns an $8-million cap hit through 2027. Tomas Hertl is only 29 but commands more than $8.1 million per year through 2030 on a pact that predates Grier's hiring.
More trades await. The returns for those players, if and when they're moved, will probably underwhelm. Grier didn't get a ton back for the one guy who made his squad watchable.
Grade: D+
Canadiens
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
Montreal swapped a depth NHLer in Pitlick and a one-dimensional scorer on the decline in Hoffman to bring in Petry at a reduced cap hit and DeSmith to back up Jake Allen in net. GM Kent Hughes also added a second-round pick without sacrificing draft capital or retaining part of Karlsson's salary.
Petry was a pillar of Montreal's North Division championship team in 2021. Dealt to Pittsburgh a year ago for Mike Matheson, he's 35 but spry enough to play with Matheson on a temporary top pair. Hughes could trade Petry again this summer or at next year's deadline. If he sticks around, his presence will buy time for young defensemen Kaiden Guhle, Justin Barron, and Arber Xhekaj - plus top prospects David Reinbacher and Lane Hutson - to make strides.
The cost to butt into the Karlsson trade was minimal. Even if Samuel Montembeault outplays Allen and DeSmith in training camp, making one netminder redundant, Hughes strengthened the Habs by getting involved. That warrants a solid grade.
Torching the Ottawa Senators, Auston Matthews pumped four shots past Craig Anderson in his magical NHL debut in 2016. Matthews' 40-goal rookie year sparked the sluggish Toronto Maple Leafs into a new competitive era.
Connor McDavid was slammed into the boards and fractured his clavicle as a rookie but otherwise produced at a point-per-game rate, scoring 48 points in 45 contests. Ahead of his second season, months before McDavid turned 20, the Edmonton Oilers named him the youngest captain in NHL history.
Connor Bedard was born two weeks before Sidney Crosby was drafted No. 1 overall. The Pittsburgh Penguins signed prominent veterans to surround Crosby with help, but he barely needed it, erupting for 102 points even as his team placed last in the Eastern Conference.
Sidney Crosby in 2005. Dave Sandford / Getty ImagesConnor McDavid in 2015. Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
He set a high bar for the NHL's new phenom to target. Bedard is the prospective savior of the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks, who gleefully drafted him first overall in June. His hotly anticipated rookie campaign begins Oct. 10 on the road against Crosby's Penguins.
Hockey news has slowed to a trickle, so let's think ahead to Bedard's NHL arrival. What immediate impact will he have in Chicago? What are fair expectations for fans to establish? Will he produce the greatest rookie season since Crosby's breakout?
A 5-foot-10 center, Bedard annihilated junior competition for the Regina Pats. He joined John Tavares as the only draft prospects this century to pot 70 goals in a Canadian Hockey League season.
Bedard's longest Western Hockey League point streak lasted 35 games. His 31 points across 14 appearances at the world juniors paced Canada to back-to-back gold medals. Those exploits guaranteed Bedard would be chosen first when the Blackhawks, the NHL's third-worst squad in 2022-23, lucked into winning the draft lottery.
Bedard enters the NHL as one of its nastiest shooters. Few snipers rip the puck like he can. Bedard picks corners off the rush, from a standstill, and through heavy traffic, barraging goalies even when he's denied time and a favorable angle.
He's no perimeter floater; Bedard rarely shoots from above the faceoff circles. Smart and rugged, he patiently waits or works to generate space to fire from the slot, The Athletic's Scott Wheeler found when he watched every goal Bedard netted - 100 across all competitions - in his draft year.
A stellar dangler and playmaker, Bedard's speed, dexterity, vision, and gravitational pull create countless openings for his line. Three impalpable attributes make him special. Skills coach Nick Quinn, who trains Bedard and dozens of other NHLers through the Power Edge Pro consultancy, raved about those traits to theScore last season.
Quinn on Bedard's brainpower: "(We) create an environment that puts extreme stress on the player's mind to think and have his feet and his hands respond at the same time. When you watch Bedard, that's what you see. You see an elite multi-tasker - a player who can create deception at top speed. He's reacting to defenders quicker than they can respond."
Bedard's guile: "He hasn't played a day in the show, and I think he shoots the puck better than 95% of NHLers," Quinn said. "It's the way he can give deception to get that defender to bite to get his stick in a different lane or his body in a different lane so he can shoot."
His attitude: "He has a lot more fun than most kids playing hockey. I think he loves the game so much that it doesn't feel like a job to him. It doesn't feel like pressure," Quinn said. "I don't think I've ever trained a guy who loves scoring goals the way he does, whether it's 9-0 or it's 2-1. He just wants to bury shots."
Bedard celebrates Canada's gold-medal victory at the 2023 world juniors. Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images
Bedard signed his entry-level contract in July on his 18th birthday. He'll be that age for the duration of next season. By contrast, Matthews was 19 and had already dominated the Swiss pro league when he reached the NHL. Alex Ovechkin waited out a lockout in Russia, debuted at 20, and racked up 52 goals and 106 points to edge Crosby for the 2006 Calder Trophy.
These kids excelled in the league right away.
Crosby's rookie year was chaotic yet electric. Health issues forced two Penguins forwards, Zigmund Palffy and Mario Lemieux, to retire suddenly that January in the span of a week. Pittsburgh's .354 points percentage was second-worst in the league. Crosby shone anyway, tallying 44 more points than his next-closest teammate, veteran defenseman Sergei Gonchar, to become the NHL's youngest triple-digit scorer.
The totals Patrik Laine, Nathan MacKinnon, and Jeff Skinner achieved are more attainable, though only MacKinnon subsequently matured into an elite scorer. Other No. 1 draft picks - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (52 points in 62 games in 2012), Ilya Kovalchuk (51 in 65 games in 2002), and Steven Stamkos (46 in 79 games in 2009) - were decently productive at 18.
Recent top selections underwhelmed as rookies. Juraj Slafkovsky managed 10 points in 39 games last season before injuring his knee. Alexis Lafreniere's 21 points in 2021 foreshadowed that he'd struggle to seize a top-six role.
Jack Hughes was held to 21 points the previous year, but concerns about his upside were premature. Some budding superstars require time to blossom.
When the 2005 lockout ended, Pittsburgh signed John LeClair, Palffy, and Gonchar to strengthen Crosby's supporting cast. The Blackhawks made similar moves to insulate Bedard. General manager Kyle Davidson traded for Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno, and Corey Perry in June. He signed Ryan Donato and extended Andreas Athanasiou, Chicago's highest remaining scorer at the end of last season with 40 points.
Corey Perry has played in four Stanley Cup Finals. Andrew Bershaw / Icon Sportswire / Getty ImagesTaylor Hall was drafted first overall in 2010. China Wong / NHL / Getty Images
The new-look forward corps is surprisingly recognizable. Eight vets aged 27 or older - Colin Blackwell, Jason Dickinson, and Tyler Johnson are the others - are there to ease Bedard's transition. None are signed beyond 2025.
Bedard and Hall should form a fun duo. Hall once suited up in Edmonton next to fellow No. 1 picks McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, and Nail Yakupov. The Hart Trophy winner in 2018, Hall averaged 0.75 points per game with four teams over the past five seasons. He drives possession on the left wing, meaning Bedard won't have to carry Chicago's top line himself.
Bedard is the runaway Calder Trophy favorite, a rarity for a teenager. The last five recipients - Matty Beniers, Moritz Seider, Kirill Kaprizov, Cale Makar, and Elias Pettersson - had previous pro or college experience and ranged in age from 20 to 24. Mathew Barzal left the WHL and promptly claimed the Calder in 2018, but by then, he was three years removed from the draft.
Maybe Bedard can recreate Patrick Kane's promising first year. Kane turned 19 in the fall of his rookie season. He tallied 72 points to lead Chicago in scoring and take home the Calder in 2008. Two years after that, Kane's overtime winner in the Stanley Cup Final vanished in the netting and launched a Blackhawks dynasty.
Chicago dreams of getting Bedard to that stage. It won't happen soon, but the journey starts Oct. 10 in Pittsburgh.
Canadians held their breath when a blocked shot sailed straight to Diana Matheson in the waning moments of an Olympic thriller. Stifled for 91 minutes, Canada edged France for the bronze medal in London in 2012 because Matheson one-timed the ball into a gaping net.
Matheson earned 206 caps in Canada's midfield without ever playing professionally at home. No domestic league sprung up to house her Canadian soccer generation, the first one to ascend podiums and exhilarate fans nationwide.
Filling that gap drives her in retirement. Matheson is spearheading the creation of an eight-team loop to uplift Canadian talent and capitalize on women's sports' newfound popularity.
"I think I've made a career out of recognizing opportunities and going after them," Matheson said in a recent interview. "When people give me half a shot, I'm willing to take it."
Women's sports are booming globally. Salaries have risen and viewership is skyrocketing across a range of leagues on and beyond the pitch. Close to a million people tuned into the National Women's Soccer League's 2022 final. The WNBA's latest season opener was the most viewed game on cable in 24 years. ESPN's broadcast of the LSU-Iowa college hoops championship clash in April attracted 9.9 million viewers, obliterating the tournament record.
Visibility fuels buzz. More games are being televised nationally or streamed online. Citing this as a driver, 25% of United States sports fans surveyed by the National Research Group in 2022 said their consumption of women's sports rose over the past year. Viewership was up for 39% of Gen Z fans, the youngest and most enthused demographic in the survey.
Diana Matheson celebrates Canada's bronze-medal victory at the London Olympics. Steve Russell / Toronto Star / Getty Images
The ground is shifting in Canada. Matheson, an NWSL alumna, is aiming to launch the country's first top-flight soccer league. Canadian franchises will compete in women's hockey's newest pro circuit when that league debuts early in 2024. Toronto is on the shortlist for WNBA expansion and filled the Raptors' arena to capacity for a women's preseason contest this spring.
Constrained by sexist attitudes and underfunded for decades, the Canadian women's sports market now brims with potential. Proponents say the time has come to actualize it. Investors who pony up to keep teams afloat in the coming years could help shape the industry's direction, enhance its profile, and profit as it matures.
"There are audience attendance records and viewership records and rights-fees records. All of these things are being broken every week across so many sports and leagues and teams," said Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, CEO of the advocacy association Canadian Women and Sport.
"All of those speak to the business value of women's professional sport," she said. "We believe (Canada has) the talent. The fan base is there and it's growing. Let's give them a place to play and something to cheer for."
The glow-up
South of the border, Matheson's former league is shining in its 11th season.
Compared to last year, attendance across the NWSL's dozen markets was up 48% at the current campaign's halfway mark. The salary cap rose 25% this year to $1.375 million per team. That rivals the WNBA's $1.42-million ceiling, though soccer rosters are considerably larger.
Christine Sinclair's Portland Thorns won the NWSL title last season. Ira L. Black / Getty Images
Matheson has helmed Project 8 - the business organizing the Canadian league - on a full-time basis since last summer. Named after her jersey number, Project 8 announced that Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto will field franchises when play kicks off in 2025.
The league plans to add two more clubs out west - Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg are candidates - and three in the east, possibly split between Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. Under the proposed schedule format, a club would face all seven of its opponents four times between April and November. The entire league would fly to one site twice per regular season to stage several interconference matchups at a time, reducing cross-country travel.
Matheson wants every game to stream live and for some to air on linear channels, broadening the league's potential audience.
"This has to look like a professional product when it shows up on people's screens," Matheson said. "That's been one of the problems in women's sport. Underinvested in. If it doesn't have the production quality, it undermines the on-field quality. We want to get that right."
On the court, the WNBA is making strides at 27 years old.
Ratings for the regular season hit a 14-year high in 2022. The 2023 WNBA Draft drew more eyeballs - an average of 572,000 viewers watched it on ESPN - than any edition since 2004, when Diana Taurasi was selected first overall. The WNBA expanded its national TV reach this season by airing Friday night games on Ion Television. The league is set to sign a rich media rights deal once its ESPN contract, which pays $33 million in 2025, expires that year.
Players rake in more money than ever: The minimum salary this season, as guaranteed by the WNBA's 2020 collective bargaining agreement, is $62,285. Including Taurasi, six stars are signed at or just below the supermax rate of $234,936, per Spotrac. They also increasingly travel in comfort. The league now foots the bill for teams to fly charter on trips that involve back-to-backs and to all playoff games.
Bridget Carleton speaks to the crowd at the WNBA's Toronto preseason game in May. Vaughn Ridley / NBA / Getty Images
Expanding beyond 12 teams is the inevitable next step. Stable but static, the WNBA hasn't added or folded a franchise since the late 2000s. Creating two squads in the next few years - which commissioner Cathy Engelbert has signaled is the plan - would alleviate the league's jobs crisis. Since WNBA rosters are capped at 12 players, teams have waived dozens of recent draft picks before their rookie seasons tipped off.
About 20 cities have expressed interest in landing a franchise, Engelbert recently told Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp. Toronto was one of six aspirants Engelbert named.
Around 2008, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment rejected the WNBA's pitch to form and operate a Toronto team, former MLSE president and CEO Richard Peddie told Sportsnet's Michael Grange. But a separate group, New Media Sports and Entertainment, began laying the groundwork for a Toronto bid in 2019, the year the Raptors' stirring postseason run delivered an NBA championship.
By population and NBA attendance, Toronto is one of basketball's biggest and most energetic markets. Fans snapped up every ticket available to the Chicago Sky-Minnesota Lynx exhibition matchup at Scotiabank Arena in May.
Canadian WNBA players - there are four in the league, including Lynx forwards Natalie Achonwa and Bridget Carleton - heralded the sellout and the game's joyous atmosphere as proof that a Toronto team would galvanize the city.
"The next generation of athletes, boys and girls, could (see that) women can do this in the professional ranks and be successful playing basketball," Carleton told reporters. "That should be the norm. It's not as accessible in Canada because it's not around us. To have that in our backyard would be special."
In hockey, Canada has a part to play to solidify the women's game's pro future.
Linchpins of the national program - think Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse - will suit up in a new pro league that's launching next January. Financed by Mark Walter, owner of MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers and the WNBA's L.A. Sparks, the yet-to-be-named league bought out the Premier Hockey Federation two weeks ago to transform the sport and unite its North American star talent.
Stability beckons after years of division. The sport splintered in 2019 following the financial demise of the Canadian Women's Hockey League. Doubting the PHF - the CWHL's surviving rival - was viable long term, Canadian and U.S. Olympians formed the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association to train in regional hubs while holding showcase tournaments in NHL cities. Designing a league that lasts was their ultimate goal.
"We set out to change the way women's professional hockey exists and set a new standard for professionalism in our sport," Jayna Hefford, the Hall of Fame forward who chairs the PWHPA, told theScore this week.
"The journey was tough. It was challenging. We got questioned a lot along the way in terms of: Why didn't we just be happy with what existed? We always believed that we could do so much more."
Marie-Philip Poulin (wearing C) and Sarah Nurse won gold with Canada at the Beijing Olympics. Richard Heathcote / Getty Images
The PWHPA union ratified in July the CBA it bargained with Walter and Billie Jean King, the tennis pioneer who's a league board member. The CBA establishes a minimum seasonal salary of $35,000; specifies that six players per team must make at least $80,000 annually on three-year contracts; and covers player bonuses, health insurance, hotel and travel accommodations, and assorted workplace policies, according to The Athletic's Hailey Salvian.
"The overarching theme is that we have an ownership group that wants to ensure players are taken care of and protected," Hefford said.
"It's clear that it was negotiated for a long period of time. Player interests were put to the forefront," agent Spencer Gillis, who represents several former PHFers and has reviewed the CBA, told theScore. "It's promising in that sense. But we still have to know more about what the league looks like - where the teams will be, how many there will be exactly, and what that structure will be."
Pre-buyout, the Toronto Six and Montreal Force were the Canadian franchises in the seven-team PHF, whose salary cap was about to double to $1.5 million. Every PHF contract has been voided, wiping out several six-figure deals and upending the life of any player who quit a part-time job or rented housing in preparation for next season. They'll receive severance pay and health coverage through Sept. 30, per The Hockey News' Ian Kennedy.
The new league is expected to ice three Canadian and three U.S. squads in undetermined markets. The return of Olympians to league competition will limit the roster spots available to PHFers. Some players will take pay cuts while others will have to retire prematurely, Mikyla Grant-Mentis, the PHF MVP in 2021, pointed out to Sportsnet's Sonny Sachdeva.
"It will change a lot of people's lives who were anticipating and promised different things," Gillis said. "I just hope that everybody is accounted for and everybody who wants to continue playing hockey will be able to play next year."
Daryl Watts, U.S. college hockey's MVP in 2018, won the national title at Wisconsin in 2021. Justin Berl / NCAA Photos / Getty Images
Former Six forward Daryl Watts, whose record $150,000 contract was nixed, said her initial unease about the end of the PHF gave way to excitement. The new circuit's caliber of play will be maximally high. Watts told theScore that she's grateful PHF owners invested in the sport and laid the foundation for a league that should endure.
"For little girls playing hockey today, I think it's so exciting," Watts said. "Women's hockey in 10 years will look so, so much better than how it looked when I was a little kid."
Across the board, women's sports in Canada will flourish as teams and leagues develop local fan bases, said Sandmeyer-Graves, the Canadian Women and Sport chief executive. The organization expressed this belief in a recent report that suggests ways to make the industry vibrant.
Most of the broadcast, sponsorship, and ticket revenue that Canadian women's sports generate stems from periodic events like the CP Women's Open and National Bank Open, the CWS report notes. The Olympics are the biggest driver but, like the golf and tennis tournaments, don't take place frequently enough to stoke regular interest.
"Fans (need to) have an opportunity to be fans consistently - to engage and connect month over month, year over year with the players," Sandmeyer-Graves said. "Having teams and leagues, we feel, is really the key to that. Events can play a really important role. But only events isn't going to get that flywheel going."
The road ahead
Beyond dazzling for Canada, Matheson played for NWSL clubs in Washington and Utah before retiring in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. Unable to travel far, she spoke virtually to women's soccer builders in myriad countries, from Mexico to England to Japan to Australia, about the potential to copy their example at home.
"Anywhere women's soccer is kicking around, we probably touched base at some point," Matheson said.
As a player, Matheson and her teammates invigorated the national program. Canada is the reigning Olympic champion, medaled at three straight Summer Games, and sits seventh in the FIFA rankings entering the upcoming Women's World Cup. Canadians sign with European powerhouses and feature prominently in the NWSL, but Matheson's global contacts were perplexed to learn there's no domestic pipeline in place.
"Around the world, women's professional leagues in soccer are the norm," Matheson said. "People cannot believe, given the success of women's soccer in Canada and given our fan base, that we don't have a league here. They're incredulous."
Their surprise is understandable. Globally, women's soccer is a hit. A billion viewers tuned into World Cup matches in 2019. The competition subsequently expanded from 24 to 32 teams. Establishing a record, more than a million tickets were sold to the 2023 event in Australia and New Zealand, which kicks off July 20. Every player involved will earn at least $30,000 - the champions get $270,000 apiece - for appearing in the tournament.
European fans flock to the sport. Top women's clubs, Arsenal and Barcelona among them, have begun to sell out cavernous men's stadiums.
In various sports, monetary milestones are being set worldwide. The CWS report points out that franchise valuations have spiked in the WNBA (Seattle Storm, $151 million), the NWSL (Angel City FC, $100 million), and India's nascent women's cricket league ($570 million split between the five founding teams).
"There's been such growth in professional women's sport in so many of our peer countries around the world, like Australia, the U.K., the U.S., and others," Sandmeyer-Graves said.
"It's booming in those spaces. But where is Canada? Canada feels like it's getting left behind."
Several things have to happen in sequence for the Canadian market to thrive, Sandmeyer-Graves said.
No matter the sport, teams need sponsors and TV rights-holders need advertisers to help fund their operations. That places the onus on brands to bet on and bankroll fledgling products. Slick broadcasts and robust media coverage make it visible to the masses.
"And then the audiences are coming," Sandmeyer-Graves said, "and that virtuous cycle starts to hum."
The investors that catalyze growth must be patient. Corporations that put in capital for years, forgoing a fast return in service of a long-term vision, stand to benefit financially as a women's league becomes prominent, CWS' research suggests. Matheson, whose outfit has partnered with Air Canada, Canadian Tire, CIBC, and DoorDash Canada, said their backing is "an essential revenue stream" for Project 8 and the league's future teams.
"We don't have a product yet. These are companies led by Canadians who believe in what we're doing," Matheson said. "They've written us a check, and they've also said: Let us know how we can help you build this thing. That is absolutely the reason that we're able to do this now."
Diana Matheson (8) plays for Canada in 2018. Cooper Neill / Getty Images
Presenting the business case for women's pro sports has forced Sandmeyer-Graves to challenge preconceptions about their value. People expect startup leagues to be profitable earlier than established men's leagues were. Critics rampantly question if women's games are compelling enough to drive ticket and jersey sales.
They can and will, she said, when "the doubt that gets projected into this space" is quieted.
"What's exciting about it is that, already, we're starting to see those mindsets shift," Sandmeyer-Graves said. "But for investors and for others who are going to be crucial to the success of this, it starts with checking our biases and challenging the narratives that many folks have held over so many decades."
Matheson thinks the rise of the women's national program "made soccer in Canada possible - period." John Herdman's men's team surged to the World Cup after the women he once coached, led by captain Christine Sinclair, put the sport on the map. Sinclair, the international game's all-time leading scorer, sat beside Matheson to lend her credibility and support when the plan for the new domestic league was announced.
Project 8's plan is ambitious, Matheson said. Canada's players and fans deserve a top-caliber competition. Managing to launch one would make it easier for girls to emulate her. International fixtures weren't televised when Matheson was growing up near Toronto, and she didn't envision playing pro or achieving Olympic stardom.
"Having a team in my city and seeing it on TV and being able to go to games would have shifted that," Matheson said. "Visible role models make a difference. There would have been a pathway to a professional career right here in Canada, which I absolutely would have followed."
