Russian Women Expand

If you're like me and aren't fluent in Russian, this might be the easiest way to get some info on this new logo and the latest news from Mother Russia. I had made mention about a month or so ago on The Hockey Show that the Russian Professional Women's Hockey League had announced that a team from Yaroslavl had indicated that they wanted to join the league, and that the league was considering the application very seriously as of May 19, 2021. There was still a lot of work to be done at that time, but it appears that this new team from Yaroslavl will begin play in the 2021-22 season!

At this point, there isn't much known about the status of that application for the Yaroslavl Ice Wings (Ледяные Крылья) to join the Russian Women's League as that application along with an expansion application for the Chelyabinsk White Bears (Белые Медведицы) will be voted on at the KHL Board of Directors meeting in July. What we do know is that the Ice Wings created the logo shown in the lede photo for play in 2021-22. It should be noted that the Ice Wings will fall under the KHL's Yaroslavl Lokomotiv structure while the Chelyabinsk team will fall under the same umbrella as the KHL's Traktor Chelyabinsk squad.

The logo above, known as "Ptitsa" was voted on by fans of the team on social media. Personally, it's not a revolutionary logo by any means, but it's certainly accomplishes what a logo should do: provides a clear image of the brand while being unique within the league's membership. If the colours shown on that logo's image are to be believed, it seems the Ice Wings will go full arctic-coloured imagery with the blues and whites. Needless to say, it all works fairly well together.

The voting was posted on the Ice Wings' Vkontakte page, and the results are below. It was actually a lot closer between the five finalist logos than I would have guessed, but the team made this decision based on just 340 votes!

Don't ask me how the helmeted logo ended up in third-place, but it seems we may have had the "Ice Knights" in place of the Ice Wings had that logo won. In any case, I feel like the best logo of the five did win, and now the real work begins as the Ice Wings need to assemble a team for the start of the season.

According to this article, the Ice Wings held an open tryout on June 17 as they looked to build a roster for next season. Of those who came to Yaroslavl for this open tryout were four goalkeepers, eight defenders, and fourteen forwards of varying skillsets and talents, but this list of players will be important as the Ice Wings are also building a youth team - aka farm team - at the same time they're organizing the professional team.

21 year-old goaltender Daria Lavrukhina was one of the four netminders in the camp, and she probably will be on Yaroslavl's short list of candidates from this camp who will be invited to the main camp. Lavrukhina played two games with SK Gorny in 2019-20, posting a 1-1-0 record with a 3.60 GAA, but she played her youth hockey in the Yaroslavl region. She could be a good way to draw fans in to see the new team as the local kid protects the net for the Ice Wings.

It would appear they do have a head coach in place who is overseeing these proceedings as Artur Nadrgulov was running the open tryout. From his comments, seven players were chosen to sign contracts with the Ice Wings while six players received initations to training camp that begins on July 10. None of the players who signed were named at the time, but it seems the Ice Wings' roster is starting to take shape!

The addition of the two new teams will push the total number of teams in the Zhenskaya Hockey League to ten. With the creation of the ZhHL, women's hockey in Russia has improved greatly to the point where Russia is emerging as one of the potential medalists in Beijing at the 2022 Winter Olympics - a clear sign that an organized, well-funded women's professional league that allows women to play hockey as their profession not only improves the game domestically, but on the international stage as well.

I don't credit Russia for much, but they are doing women's hockey right. North American and European countries should be taking notes on why the Russian women's national team has gone from also-rans to potentially dangerous in a short amount of time, and look to replicate that process within their own borders through the development and promotion of domestic women's professional hockey to improve their own national teams.

With the Ice Wings and White Bears preparing to join the ZhHL, there will only be more good women's hockey players developed by Russia in the coming years. That should worry the current the superpowers in women's hockey.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!