Women and the Hockey Hall of Fame

Recently, new members were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF) in Toronto. There has been some outrage over the fact that there weren’t – and haven’t been – any women inducted into the HHOF. There have also been a lot of explanations as to why they aren’t.

So, instead, let’s talk about why they should be.

Women’s sports aren’t like men’s sports. But most people wouldn’t be able to tell you that since most people don’t watch women’s sports. There’s this misplaced idea that women’s sports are inferior to men’s, when the reality is that they’re just different. Not better, not worse – just different. Women play just as hard as the men do, are just as talented as men are in their own way, and are just as tough as the men.

And they get zero recognition for it. Women play sports for the shear joy of competing without any expectation of getting anything outside of that – not even acknowledgement. Many men, in the back of their minds and regardless of their own personal level of talent, secretly hope and wish they could get recognized for their athletic achievements. Women don’t do that because there’s no opportunity for it and rarely has been.

Women have male role models when it comes to sports. There aren’t many, if any, female role models. If you ask a female hockey player who her favorite hockey player is, she’ll probably name off a guy in the NHL instead of someone like Manon Rhéaume, Cassie Campbell, Hayley Wickenheiser, Angela Ruggiero, or Cammi Granato. They just don’t get the level of exposure that the men do, no matter how good they are or were.

In women’s basketball, the complaint is that women can’t dunk. In softball, it’s because the long balls aren’t that long, or that they don’t pitch the same or as fast. In women’s hockey, it’s because women don’t body check. Frankly, if you’re going to see any game specifically for one thing, then you’re missing out on a lot of other entertaining things that are going on.

The biggest complaint of all is that the women’s sport is slower than the men’s version. Slightly secondary to that is the skill level isn’t as high as the men’s. And that’s true enough, I suppose, tho I would argue about the skill level part of it. However, if you take the women’s sport on its own merits and not constantly compare it to the men’s, then it’s a far more entertaining game than what the men play.

Not that many people would know that, however, because people can’t get over the fact that while it’s the same sport with pretty much the same rules, it really is a different game. That differentness is what people think is inferiority because they can’t separate the two versions, men’s and women’s, into two different categories. Maybe thinking of it as the same sport with two different styles might be helpful.

Men and women are built differently, so they can’t do the same kinds of things. It’s a fact of life and of biology, and it’s unrealistic to expect otherwise. Elbow, hip, and knee joint angles are vastly different between men and women. In fact, because of that, women are much more susceptible to knee injuries than men are. Once you incorporate that reality into your thinking, then enjoying women’s sports becomes much easier.

USA Hockey inducted four new members into their US Hockey Hall of Fame this year. Brett Hull (who has dual citizenship with Canada), Brian Leetch, Mike Richter, and Cammi Granato – all as equals, and all as players. Hull, Leetch, and Richter all have Stanley Cup rings, while Granato owns the first ever Olympic gold medal for women’s ice hockey that she won Nagano, Japan, in 1998 as captain of Team USA.

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