Complete Disrespect

This smiling woman to the left is Joy Tottman. Her name likely doesn't ring any bells for hockey fans, but she did something that no one else had done in her home country of England. Joy, you see, was the first woman to referee a men's professional hockey game in the EIHL there! Joy's list of accomplishments also includes working in a few Olympiads as she was in the stripes in both Torino in 2006 and in Vancouver in 2010, and at a number of IIHF Women's World Championship tournaments. She's been refereeing since she was 12, so her work as an ice zebra is well-documented and should be celebrated. But Joy Tottman isn't specifically why we're here today because there was a bigger crime committed by the very league that's supposed to be ushering in a new era of diversity in hockey.

Today on Twitter, the NHL decided it was going to do a little celebrating of Gender Equality Month. I have no real quarrel with the NHL celebrating gender equality except when they decide to post completely false information for the world to digest. Case in point?

It's true that Katie Guay did make history when she dropped the puck in an AHL game on October 16, 2021 as she became the first woman to referee an AHL contest. It's the remaining portion of the statement that completely disrespects all of Katie's accomplishments - plus a handful of other accomplishments by women in the hockey officiating realm - because Katie, unfortunately, wasn't "the first woman to referee in a professional men's hockey league" on that day. As shown above, Joy Tottman would like a word, NHL.

If the NHL doesn't consider the EIHL a professional league (hint: it very much is) where Tottman worked, perhaps it would like to explain how both the Central Hockey League and the West Coast Hockey League aren't professional hockey leagues. I ask that because Heather McDaniel worked in both leagues in 1995 and 1996 as she became the actual first woman to officiate a men's professional hockey league game. Her refereeing days carried into 1999 when she got pregnant and decided to hang up the stripes, but the historical records are very much still in existence.

Maybe the NHL forgot about McDaniel. It has been nearly 20 years since she worked her first professional men's game, so it may have slipped the NHL's collective mind. However, Erin Blair is a name that should be pretty recognizable to the league considering how many hockey games she's worked as a referee in the NCAA, for the IIHF, and at various clinics across the USA. She was also Katie Guay's referee partner in 2014 when Guay and Blair suited up to become the first women to officiate an SPHL game between the Fayetteville FireAntz and the Columbus Cottonmouths! Does that mean the SPHL isn't a professional league (hint: it very much is) either? It's shocking how little respect the NHL is showing here.

As I just mentioned, Katie Guay also worked that game between the FireAntz and Cottonmouths, so she definitely worked a professional men's hockey game long before 2021 as the NHL would lead you to believe. It should also be pointed out that Guay worked as a referee at the NHL Prospect Tournament at Great Park Ice in Irvine, California from September 7-10, 2019 which just happened to be hosted by the Anaheim Ducks and featured all sorts of men competing for NHL roster spots in games. Do those prospects games not count as a "professional men's hockey game" because they're exhibition games (hint: they very much do) and not regular season games? Heck, the linked article from NHL.com even states, "something never done before in the history of the league"!

Look, I respect the fact that NHL is trying to emphasize Gender Equality Month, but doing so by pushing false narratives and completely erroneous history isn't helping the cause whatsoever. Further to this, the disrespect they're showing other professional leagues is rather baffling, and I don't understand why the NHL would make a statement such as this without doing a rudimentary Google search first. As of 12:00pm CT, the tweet was still up on their Twitter account, so it seems the NHL is quite content with their Gender Equality Month effort despite singlehandedly ignoring all of the ceilings smashed prior to Katie Guay reaching the AHL as a referee.

I know the NHL likes to celebrate its own accomplishments in most cases, but this one is covered in disresepct to the women who have been forging the path to the AHL and NHL levels along with the leagues who have helped those women break through those barriers. As curators of the game, the NHL is pretty awful at recognizing that they rarely ever lead, and, in most cases, they're always a step or two behind minor-pro hockey leagues where cutting-edge innovation and off-the-wall ideas are the only way to survive. It's time for the NHL to stop taking credit for things that are patently false and far behind where others have dared to venture.

Katie Guay's accomplishment in being the first woman to referee in the AHL should be celebrated, but to erase decades of women knocking down barriers and leagues opening doors long before Katie set foot on AHL ice is yet another reason the NHL shouldn't be entrusted with looking after the long-term success of hockey.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!