Jon Cooper’s Tampa Bay Lightning were eliminated from the playoffs on Monday night, being shown the door in five games only by their home-state rivals, the Florida Panthers. During the game, the Lightning had two goals waved off for goaltender interference and it’s fair to say it annoyed the bench boss to no end. Speaking to the media after the game he mentioned:
…but it’s not prison rules for the goalie, like the second something happens you know like, we might as well put skirts on them then. If that’s how it’s going to be, I mean they have to battle through stuff too and when the players are working so hard on both teams, and it’s like I said, it’s a war down there, I think we’re letting goalies off the hook, and they’ve got way more padding than anyone else does…
Cooper really let everyone know how he felt about his team going out in such a fashion. To be fair, a waved-off goal is a momentum killer, so two of them must feel like a gut punch. There’s no denying those two decisions impacted the result of the game, but no sport which involves referees will ever be perfect. People make mistakes and that’s nothing new…sometimes you get the call, sometimes you don’t.
The World Has Evolved, Language Must Evolve Too
While these comments might not be interpreted by everyone in the same way, I think Cooper missed a fantastic opportunity to keep silent. Once upon a time, there was no problem with inferring or all out saying women were the “weaker sex” and branding men who are not very good at sports “girls”. How often have we heard “You’re throwing like a girl!” or other rich comments like that?
Nowadays though, we’re not hearing that so much and there’s a very good reason for that. Women are now allowed to play sports just like men, and they can both train and play professionally. Back in 2006 at the Torino Olympics in Italy, when Team Canada struggled in Men’s hockey, Cartoonist Gary Clement drew the coach telling his men to “Play like girls”.
The caricature was published after the men’s team had lost two games in as many days against Switzerland and Finland in the preliminary round. The Canadian men then went on to be eliminated in the quarterfinals, losing 2-0 to Russia. At the same Olympics, the Team Canada Women’s team went undefeated and claimed the gold medal.
Women Hockey Players Have Fought Numerous Battles
I wonder if Cooper is aware that the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) players had to battle through a lot of adversity to finally get a professional hockey league to call their own. For years, these women were only thought of during the Olympics, once every four years. For the rest of the year, they trained in the shadows biding their time until the next Olympics.
Related: Marie-Philip Poulin is Keeping the Spotlight on Women’s Hockey
Sure, there were some leagues out there like the defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League and the National Women’s Hockey League in the USA which eventually became the Premier Hockey Federation. However, none of those gave their players a living wage and offered the benefits everyone likes to have such as pension plans, parental leave, and insurance.
Eventually, the players of the national teams of Canada and the USA such as Marie-Philip Poulin and Hilary Knight decided they wouldn’t play in those leagues, they would form the Professional Women’s Hockey Player Association and compete in showcases in various cities. They had to make do with that until the PWHL was created and started its first season last January.
The way I see it, women hockey players had to fight quite the battle just to get a league. Furthermore, with this new league came new rules, some of which were deliberately made to allow for more physicality, and the women were finally able to play the way they wanted to play for so long.
I’ve watched most of the PWHL games in this inaugural season and I can tell you that embellishment penalties have been few and far between. I’ve yet to see anyone in that league dive or act like a soccer player after some body contact. If you’re going to accuse an NHL goalie of faking being interfered with and flailing about, you need to find a better comparison. Perhaps saying they acted as if they were coached by Emilio Estevez from the Mighty Ducks film? Or maybe using a WWE reference since everyone knows the matches are scripted? Whatever floats your boat Mister Cooper, but the days of telling someone they are poorly performing by calling them “girl” or “gay” are long gone and you should have updated your vocabulary by now.
