Ian Kennedy recently sat down with the PHF chairman of the board to talk about the past, present and future of the professional women's hockey league.

The PHF is currently North America’s only professional women’s hockey league, and it’s a league that has seen growth - through expansion, attraction of players, and a significant salary cap increase. 

Recently, The Hockey News’ Ian Kennedy sat down with the PHF’s chairman of the board, John Boynton, who also owns multiple franchises within the league, to discuss the past, present, and future of the league and the growth of women’s professional hockey in North America. Here is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Ian Kennedy: Let’s talk about where the PHF is at this season and the salary cap, first and foremost. How did that come to be, and from your standpoint, what do you think of this news?

John Boynton: Obviously, it’s very exciting, we’ve known from the beginning that player experience is paramount, and compensation is paramount to that. When we got involved, the salary cap was $150,000 per team. We knew that we wanted to prioritize that player experience and accelerate compensation as fast as we could. We didn’t really know how quickly we’d be able to. The first year, we took it from $150,000 to $300,000, then we doubled it this season to $750,000. Honestly, I didn’t expect to go to $1.5 million as early as this coming season, but we feel like we’re making rapid progress on all fronts that matter to a league, and given that confidence, we said, ‘Let’s do it now,’ so we made the jump.

Kennedy: I’ve heard some people say, is it too much too fast, or they don’t see the revenue coming in versus what people are going to be paid. How would you respond to those people? What would you say to people that are looking at this with a critical eye instead of celebrating it?

Boynton: I don’t know how you criticize paying women more in any context, especially here in hockey. On one hand, this league is pretty well established. We’re in our eighth season, and not a lot of start-up leagues make it through their first two or three seasons, so already we’ve been successful in that regard, but we’re still in an investment mode, and we’re not where we need to be.

We think it’s essential not just to attract the most talent but also to enable the team’s to be truly professional and to pay people more. I’ll give you an illustration of this. Let’s go back two years when they were making $300,000 at the team level, an average of $15,000 per player. Everyone had to have a job outside of hockey. This year, we have players who are making enough money, so they don’t need a second job. When we get to the point where all of the players are making enough that they don’t need a second job, then we can have daytime practices, we can have mid-week games, and we can play in places like Seattle or Las Vegas because there will be time for travel. Right now, we’ve had to fit everything into weekends; this is the first year we’ve had Friday games. That was made possible by the fact we took the cap to $750,000 this year. Taking the cap up to $1.5 million next year will give the league more flexibility to do what we want.

The Metropolitan Riveters, because so many players are here on visas from Europe, they can only play hockey, and they can’t have second jobs. So they’re making enough money and can’t work elsewhere, so that team practices at 9 a.m. every day, then they go to training until 1 p.m. during weekdays. Gone are the days of teams having to practice at 9 p.m. because no one could get there, so we’re in the middle of the transition. We feel that by accelerating the increase, it will get us through that transition faster to the point where 100 percent of the players are truly able to be full-time professional athletes.

Kennedy: Part of that growth, in my opinion, has been seeing the expansion to Canadian markets, Montreal this year, and Toronto a few seasons ago. You’d originally scheduled an eighth team this year and pulled back from that. I interviewed a player who said they thought that was wise because the league wanted quality over quantity, and it allowed the PHF to pick a more appropriate market. The league is still growing, so what do you foresee in the future for expansion?

Boynton: Obviously, there is more growth for us in the future. In three to five years, I could very easily see 12 to 15 teams in the league, but we’re not there yet. One of the things that is going to facilitate accelerated expansion is being able to unify the world of women’s hockey. We know we want to have one league. Today, we are the only league, and we hope it will remain that way. We know there’s this bifurcation, and until that bifurcation is resolved, I think expansion will be delayed. I’m not saying we won’t add another team or two next year or the year after, but we really would like to resolve that issue of the bifurcation so that the whole enterprise can move faster.

Kennedy: I think you’ve seen some of that with players coming in like Daryl Watts, a Patty Kazmaier winner, Jade Downie Landry, the Brodrick Trophy winner as Canadian university player of the year, and Corrine Schroeder, an NCAA star, as well as some players with national team experience joining the league. Do you think seeing these younger players making the choice of the PHF gives hope to younger, talented players coming out of university that this is the league of the future?

Boynton: I think so. Another reason we bumped the cap and are doubling it next year is to ensure those top players coming out of university, the top players, see an opportunity to make a living playing hockey. Daryl Watts is a perfect example of that. We have managed to attract a lot of younger talent, and that will continue to be a focus. Those younger players will be the future of the game, so we want to make sure they’re playing in the PHF.

Kennedy: What about events like your all-star weekend? These are typically events that are selling features for players. I know you also shifted away from the draft since players can’t just drop their lives and move to any city they’re picked by if they aren’t making a livable wage. Is there anything else in the future we should keep our eyes on? 

Boynton: We’ve had All-Star Games in the past, but this year was by far the biggest and best all-star event we’ve put on. I think the format of USA versus Canada versus World is a really fun format, so as the league continues to grow, we’re able to put on bigger events like this. 

Another important area for us will be broadcast. We’ve got our two-year deal with ESPN+, which has been great. We’ve also carved out some other partnerships. We have TVA in Quebec, broadcasting all of our games in the French language, which is awesome. TSN has been a great partner in Ontario. NESN down in Boston did five Boston Pride games this year, and they want to do the whole schedule next year. More linear visibility is going to help grow the game, grow the fan base, and help with our continued success.

Kennedy: Last question. Looking at women’s sports in general, the WNBA has a great following and potential expansion coming soon, the NWSL has announced expansion and a salary-cap increase. A lot of people though say people don’t want to watch women’s sports. I disagree with that. If people don’t watch, it’s because games are not broadcasted. We see all this growth, and I think the time to invest in women’s sports is now, there’s never going to be a better time. What would you say to that, not just hockey, but the spectrum of opportunity in women’s sports right now?

Boynton: I think we see a ton of wind in the sales of women’s sport, what’s going on in the WNBA and what’s going on in the NWSL is remarkable. Two years ago, those NWSL franchises were selling at $2 million. Now, they’re going to go north of $50 million. That’s a 25-times growth, and that’s pretty incredible. 

Everyone knows there’s not nearly enough data about fans and the market for women’s sports, but the fact that savvy investors are putting up the kind of money they are to buy these properties and invest in these teams is reassuring. It says there really is an opportunity there. I think that the issue is that there is an unmet demand to consume women’s sports, it’s just hard to find. 

Sports Innovation Lab has done a lot of research in this area to say fans of women’s sports need to work really hard to find the streams and figure out where games are being broadcasted. There are companies starting now trying to consolidate women’s sports onto one platform. I think there’s a ton of unmet demand. I think as we push beyond streaming onto the linear networks, we’re going to see that demand met. We’re actually seeing it with the TVA relationship in Quebec, where we’re getting 50,000 to 75,000 viewers for some of those games. The Montreal Force is a brand new team, they didn’t exist eight months ago, and already there’s a fan base that’s coming out of the woodwork to support that team in a very visible way. I think there are data points all over the place, and there is a lot of reason to be optimistic about the future.