Breaking Up with the True North Hockey League
It took almost seven years but finally my hockey team is breaking up with the Truth North Hockey League.
Late in the summer of 2018 my women’s hockey team was informed we would not be invited back to a women’s league at Chesswood arena. We had played there for almost ten years. The last two years we had won the championship in the top division. Not because we were particularly strong but because the teams we played against didn’t have their strongest players available.
It’s a beer league. You can have a great team on paper but what really matters is who makes the games. A good player’s attendance can be the game changer. That didn’t seem to matter to the convener who wanted to lower the competitive level of the league and we had one particular player she considered too strong and was definitely making too many games.
Again, it was late in the summer when this verdict was passed down. And so we had just a month to find a new Tuesday league. A women’s league. That shouldn’t be a problem in the city of Toronto. The biggest city in Canada.
Well it was. There are a handful of women’s leagues in the city and only a few that are at competitive caliber.
The best and longest standing is Golden Blades, a multi-tiered league, but the games were Friday Night and Sunday Morning so unfortunately did not meet the Tuesday requirement.
Most of us played co-ed hockey on the weekend so we played with men before. It could get physical but usually there was accountability. Usually there was an apology after the game. A beer and a nod in the stands to smooth things over. You played and subbed on multiple teams.
So as time ticked down and the summer night cooled the solution seemed like to move to the Truth North Hockey League. A men’s league in concept, but it couldn’t restrict women from playing because, at the end of the day, there just isn’t the equal available ice time for women’s hockey in this city. We lost some players in this move.
The convener was given the heads up that we had added a few male bodies, but we were close to 70-75 % female on the roster and moving from a women’s league. We were in a lower division, it was different and there were growing pains but we liked each other so we dealt with it. I don’t think we were dominant. We could pass and break out but the men, even if many of lower skill level were still fast, sometimes big and sometimes a little clueless. I don’t recall there being any major incidents until just before the league’s pandemic shutdown.
It was close to the playoffs. The opposing team scored and then shoved our defender and told her to go wash dishes. Things just started to unravel. There was more than chirping. There were hits after the play. At the end of the game a shouting match and a member of their team coming into our room and telling us that he just quit that team.
When the league resumed in the summer of 2021 that team still carried that energy whenever we played them. A trip with the comment “Stay down bitch.” A cross check sending a woman to ice in front of the net before she even had the pass because “She could score.”
When you play against men and with men there is an unsaid code that you take the hits and get up because if we make these bad hits seem as bad as they were there would be bedlam and we just wanted to play hockey.
Sometimes, most of the time, the contact was incidental. Heads are down. People are looking elsewhere. A lot of the time it’s an accident but it’s avoidable with some consideration to player safety. Consideration to the size of the body you’re playing against.
We decided to forfeit a game rather than play that team again. We added next season some stronger players, and some of the players we’d played with for years had decided this wasn’t fun and there were better things to do with their Tuesdays. Some stayed on but you could tell it was for the group not for the ice time.
We were not angels out there. We know how to play body. We really know how to chirp. We’ll give a slash or cross check after the player. We were also penalized one time for delay of game because we were slightly slow to line up for the opening face off. We were told our nylons were ripped one time by a ref who was talking about a hole in our hockey socks. We were asked to read out the team name, which is a little saucy but wittier than most of these team names, by one of the refs.
A player was hit and the ref told her she should have expected it. She should expect to get hit because she was a good player. This is a non-contact league you should not expect to get hit. It was a penalty but the commentary didn’t help. The refs were yelled at by the opposing teams for being too soft, for one sided call.
We started winning with our new players. One summer we went undefeated until the playoffs when we fell apart. That’s hockey. We started the next season back to our winning ways but then were moved up a division and won some and lost some. We were moved up again and then it stopped being competitive. We were in first place because of the wins in the lower divisions but once moved up we were getting blown out.
We told ourselves we were losing but at least we felt a little safer. We were playing teams that had players with better skills, their heads were up, and they were winning, handily, so that seemed to soothe any pent up aggression. Our better players didn’t insure wins anymore, but some goals at least, and also a distraction on the ice. The opposing team could focus their aggresion on the bigger guys and yell at them instead of us. They couldn’t catch him, so they couldn’t hit him, and the refs let the slashes go.
It’s not fun to lose every game. It’s a bit of a killer in the room, but usually if you are one of the last place teams at some point they reallocate your team to a lower division so we waited and the next season we were still in the higher division and then just watched teams above us get moved down. Despite being in second or last place teams higher in the standings would get reallocated to lower divisions. We often were only in the second last place because a losing team from an upper division would be moved down and take our last place spot.
Well summer is different. There are less teams but we should stay in the same division. We were moved up as well. We stayed up for the next year.
Winning isn’t everything but for a competitive team trying to navigate ever moving goal posts it is a barometer for team vibes. Many of us were competitive and played high levels when we were younger, many of us feeling a spotlight on us because of a pony tail.
This year we were in a high division again. We had an ongoing dialogue with the league trying to find a way to communicate the frustration and concerns without looking like sore sports. They said things were much more even in this division this year but they were going to keep an eye on it. Our best player had a half spot, another good player was injured, another good player had a baby so we were working on fluctuating rosters. Still some players were leaving, the late night games and the frustration in the room was not worth it.
We tied, we lost, we were pretty much in the middle of the pack. We played a team back to back and outscored them 11 to 6. So the complaints on our good players started to be considered by the league.
Early this season we had somehow created a rivalry with one of the teams. A big guy hit one of our players and then stood over her as she lay on the ice. She knew by this point she was going to get the hit, that she should expect it, but she didn’t have to accept it. He stood over her, and we all paused wondering if he was checking on her, he just leaned closer and yelled, “That’s not a penalty. Just play hockey. You fell.” As if he had contributed nothing to the situation.
He did it again, a shoulder into a player who didn’t even have the puck and he shook his head like we were the circus. Every time he barrelled someone over he yelled “Play hockey!” at them. He yelled at the refs. “Call it both ways as he stood in the penalty box.”
We didn’t even know where this narrative came from. We didn’t know why he didn’t even skate near the male hockey players on our team. We won that first game. Then the second game was scoreless on both sides. We were too concerned with setting off the big guy. The last game he pushed one of our players down in front of the net after the whistle, then when she got up another player pushed her down again. They were riling themselves up with some victimhood in this league when they played us. They yelled pussy at our male player. They got kicked out of the game and stood on the other side of the glass trying to intimidate us.
The game ended, we lost, and as players lined up for stomach churning handshakes, players on both sides found the aggression continued. Women who refused to shake some hands found the unwanted hand bump landing hard on their bodies, in a stomach, on a shoulder and then one of our players retaliated by returning the gesture to a caged face, which he either sold or was completely caught off guard by any return of violence.
It didn’t help that before this game we were told that if our best player, the one with the half spot and who wasn’t even there that night, was on our playoff roster we would be bumped up to the second highest division. If we kept him we’d lose, if we asked him to sit out playoffs to play in this division, we’d likely lose but also probably have to play this team that had two game ejections against us.
Another team complained he scored too many goals. That apparently was unfair. Even in the last game the ref had said well he doesn’t belong in this division. So goals, which if we knew this was going to be the result he could tone down, was the issue. Clearly from looking at the penalty minutes there was not the same consideration and ultimatums given to repeat offenders of unsafe play.
Is our player too good, yes, but are the penalty minutes greatly reduced when he’s playing, also yes.
So at this point, like a shitty partner you’ve been giving too many excuses for, we realized we can’t change something that doesn’t see the value in implementing any changes. The league will find men to take our spot. Their job will be easier. They don’t have to worry about losing money. They never had to worry about consequences because it’s a free enterprise, it was our bad to keep subscribing to this content.
I wish this was the only example of the fight by women to play this sport recreationally.
I follow a women and trans shinny hockey group on facebook that is constantly battling and calling for numbers to protect their city designated skates. The outdoor city rink ice time allotted to women seems to also create ire in men who see a space that they are self entitled to being occupied by not them. I don’t know how they have the courage in the cold to have to constantly face challenges by men following them, pacing outside the rink, filming them as they lurk. If you are a woman who wants to play you should go out and join them. If you are an ally you should make sure that space is safe.
It’s just really fucking disappointing that toxic hockey culture is the norm down to beer leagues and free skates. That it is a physical game but the names, the targeting, the lack of empathy didn’t need to be a part of it at any level and yet prevail at the lowest of stakes.
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