Misogyny in ice hockey

Lore & Background

The first recorded organized women's team, the Love-Me-Littles at Queen's University, was shunned by the community after the school's archbishop declared young women should not play hockey. During World War I, women's hockey grew, with star player Albertine Lapensée routinely accused of being a man; she left after asking for a share of profits. After the war, investment and media coverage disappeared, and in 1923 the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association voted not to give women official recognition. In the United States, the sport declined by the mid-1920s amid post-war backlash against women's rights, with arguments that professional sports were dangerous to women's morals and arena owners shifting promotion toward masculine 'blood and mayhem.' During the Great Depression, the Ladies Ontario Hockey Association declined due to competition for ice time, and the Preston Rivulettes folded as World War II hit, as men's leagues were deemed morale boosters. Abby Hoffman, born 1947, played in an Ontario boys' league with her sex concealed; when discovered, people were incredulous that a girl would want to play.

Reader's Guide

The article describes misogyny as a persistent force shaping women's hockey from its origins. Early teams faced community shunning and accusations of impropriety, such as the Montreal Star campaign claiming women on a proposed tour would lose their virtue. Institutional neglect continued through the 20th century: national associations ignored the women's game, imposed differing local rules, and provided no support systems. Fran Rider noted that progress was 'in spite of discouragement by male hockey.' The 1990 IIHF Women's World Championship suffered from lack of financial support, last-minute venue selection, and priority given to junior men's ice time. In the 21st century, the US women's team struck in 2017 after USA Hockey spent $3.5 million on boys' development but nothing on girls'. In 2026, a men's team celebration with President Donald Trump included a joke about inviting the women's team, prompting online discussions about sexism; women's captain Hilary Knight called it a 'distasteful joke' that overshadowed women's success. Sweden's IF Sundsvall Hockey cut its top-level women's team to save money for its third-tier men's side, and the Swedish women's national team struck in 2019 over poor conditions. After the Canadian Women's Hockey League collapsed in 2019, over 200 players sat out to seek greater investment, forming the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association.

Did You Know?

• The first organized women's team, the Love-Me-Littles, was formed at Queen's University after the school's archbishop declared young women should not play hockey.
• Star player Albertine Lapensée was routinely accused of being a man and left the sport after asking for a share of profits.
• The 1990 IIHF Women's World Championship was organized without financial support from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and Team Canada wore pink jerseys as a marketing decision.

Ancient and Medieval Roots

Stick-and-ball games stretch back far beyond the modern sport we recognize today. In pre-Christian Persia, polo was already being played, a game so central to its culture that it earned the nickname "hockey on horseback." Across Europe, parallel traditions flourished: the Irish played hurling, the Scots developed shinty, and English communities enjoyed bandy ball. In the Low Countries, a game called IJscolf captivated players from the Middle Ages through the Dutch Golden Age, where competitors wielded a curved wooden bat to strike a wooden or leather ball toward a target using the fewest strokes possible. Meanwhile, Scandinavian peoples had been playing knattleikr for well over a millennium, a tradition preserved in the Icelandic sagas. These diverse games, separated by geography and culture, shared a common thread: a stick, a ball, and the drive to outmaneuver an opponent. None of them existed in isolation; rather, they formed a vast web of athletic traditions that would eventually converge into something entirely new.

The Words Behind the Sport

The vocabulary of ice hockey carries echoes of centuries-old languages and legal documents. The word "hockey" first appeared in English print in a 1772 volume by Richard Johnson, writing under the pseudonym Master Michel Angelo, whose eleventh chapter discussed improvements to the game. However, a much earlier reference exists in the 1527 Statute of Galway, which prohibited a sport called "hokie," described as the hurling of a small ball with sticks or staves. A popular claim links the word to a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III, but that document was originally written in Latin and specifically named games like Pilam Manualem and Bacularem rather than using the word "hockey" itself. The term "puck" traces back to Scottish Gaelic "puc" or Irish "poc," both meaning to poke, punch, or deliver a blow. In hurling tradition, the strike a player gives to the ball with his camán is always referred to as a "puck," preserving that ancient linguistic root in the vocabulary of the modern game.

A Game Forged by Many Hands

The emergence of organized ice hockey in North America was not the product of a single inventor or a single culture. British soldiers and settlers carried their regional stick-and-ball traditions across the Atlantic, and on the frozen rivers and lakes of winter, these games merged. The English brought bandy, the Scots contributed shinty and golf, the Irish added hurling, and Dutch soldiers likely introduced ken jaegen. Some players also experimented with lacrosse. As each group watched and learned from the others, the most adventurous among them took to the ice on skates. The result was a synthesis, a game that no single tradition could claim as its own. Evidence of this early fusion appears in a mid-1830s watercolour showing British soldiers on skates in New Brunswick, in an 1839 letter from a British officer describing hockey on Chippewa Creek, and in an 1843 diary entry from Kingston. By 1859, a Boston newspaper was reporting on a hockey-on-ice game in Halifax, confirming that the sport had taken firm root across the continent.

Indigenous Contributions to the Sport

Long before European settlers arrived in the Canadian Maritimes, the Mi'kmaq people were playing their own stick-and-ball games, both on land and on ice. Oral traditions and the 1894 work Legends of the Micmacs by Silas Tertius Rand document a game called tooadijik, as well as wolchamaadijik, a variant played with hurleys that likely emerged after contact with Europeans. The Mi'kmaq distinguished their own ice game, oochamkunutk, from the "hurley on ice" played by others, which they called alchamadyk. Among the most notable Mi'kmaq figures in the sport's early history is Joe Cope, known as "Old Joe," a celebrated elder whose carved sticks became some of the earliest ice hockey sticks in use. Cope himself recalled that the Mi'kmaq had been playing both a field game and an ice game long before European arrival. British players in the region used sticks crafted by the Mi'kmaq for their own games, meaning the very equipment of early ice hockey carried Indigenous craftsmanship. An 1835 painting by John O'Toole further captures this era, depicting skaters with sticks and a bung on a frozen stream in what is now West Virginia.