Why Now?

In these times of an economic slow-down thanks to a still-prevalent virulent pandemic, you'd have to expect that any business expanding would be a ludicrous, if not insane, decision. With the border closed across the length of the Canadian and US property lines, expanding internationally would be doubling down on that insanity. And yet the NWHL, in its infinite wisdom, decided to announce the expansion of the league into Toronto as they make their first foray into Canada.

Johanna Boynton, a Harvard-educated woman, successful businesswoman, and part-owner of the NWHL's Boston Pride, has decided to plunk down the ownership stake in the Toronto franchise. Along with Boynton, the reappearing act of one Digit Murphy will make its debut in Toronto as the President of the club while minor-league baseball owner and long-time baseball guru Tyler Tumminia will serve as the team's Chairman.

But why now? Why is there a rush to get into Toronto when there's no competition?

They enter the market with no arena deal made, so it's hard for me to get excited when I don't even know where they're playing. If you've visited Toronto, you know it can be a headache just getting from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, so they may find that their pull for fans will be tougher if they aren't in a central location. Having been to where the Toronto Furies played their games, it was a long way from the downtown area of Toronto, but they managed to pull in decent crowds for games with names like Natalie Spooner and Sarah Nurse on the roster.

The NWHL doesn't have that star power. The first five players signed by the unnamed Toronto NWHL franchise are Shiann Darkangelo, Taylor Woods, Kristen Barbara, Emma Greco, and goalie Elaine Chuli. Chuli and Greco played most recently for the Furies in the CWHL while Barbara and Woods played for the Markham Thunder and Darkangelo played under Digit Murphy with the Kunlun Red Star, but finished her CWHL career with the Furies.

Of all of the players, Darkangelo likely is the biggest name as she was part of the American team that won the 2016 IIHF Women's World Championship, but her name won't draw casual fans from the market like a Poulin, Spooner, or Knight did. While there's hope within the NWHL circles that they can maybe woo a star or two back to the league, Marie-Philip Poulin made it pretty clear that she won't be playing in that circuit any time soon.

"I don’t know if it's professional," she told Andi Petrillo in a CBC interview. "There's a reason why many of us are not playing in that league."

Again, it leads me back to the question: why now?

I've listened to the interviews and read the answers these three women - Boynton, Murphy, and Tumminia - have given about the league, and they keep going back to how the NWHL has a plan to be sustainable in three to five years. While I get that startup costs and building the league's infrastructure will set them back in the early stages of the league, spending another three years of working towards sustainability seems like an awfully long time for a league who has yet to return a penny to its shareholders.

If there is money to expand to Toronto, why isn't the league sustainable? If the league is just allowing Boynton, Murphy, and Tumminia to set up the franchise however they like, perhaps there is minimal league cost that has to be incurred. But because the league is a private entity, there is no way to check on procedures for expansion, the costs that the league incurs, the franchise fees charged by the league, and more.

I get the league has no obligation to answer any questions I have - I'm still blocked on most social media channels by them for asking questions previously - but there has to be some semblance of a procedure and a transaction for this to happen. Seattle isn't just joining the NHL; rather, they went through a long vetting process, paid an exorbitant amount of money to join the league, and have met the requirements for expansion set out by the league. With the NWHL still operating behind a curtain like a Wizard of Oz, how do they expand if they're not sustainable?

Again, why now?

What bothers me more is that if there is money to expand to Toronto, why isn't Boynton asking Dani Rylan to up the salary cap for the teams currently in the NWHL? Top players will still make a maximum of $15,000 in base salary, and the NWHL is now rolling out another franchise that will incur $150,000 USD of salary cap usage. Are we ever going to see any player in the NWHL earn a liveable wage in the next five years? The next decade?

This is the push that the PWHPA are on - make hockey the primary job for these women where they're paid a liveable wage - and everything the NWHL does seems to push against this idea. If the league is yet to be sustainable, the goal of paying the players a liveable wage seems like nothing more than a fantasy.

Why is anyone in favour of this?

Look, I've had my problems with how this league is run and some of the stuff that they've done over the years, but expanding into Canada where everything is 30% more expensive when earning Canadian dollars makes no sense from a sustainability idea. If every dollar spent in Canada is worth 70-cents on the bottom line, this endeavour is going to cost the Toronto franchise a lot more money and require a helluva bigger effort to make the same dollars as the Whitecaps do or the Beauts do who earn 30% more revenue simply by being on the US side of the border.

While the sentiment and the intentions are, I believe, good here, this seems like the worst time to be peddling an expansion team when there's no guarantee there will be hockey at all. Drumming up support for a brand-new women's hockey team that has zero star power in a city where they still miss the team from the league that competed against the NWHL at a time when hockey is legitimately the least of people's concerns makes it an even worse idea.

So why now? What was the rush?

I'm not certainly that anyone will ever get that answer.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!