The Toronto Six paid homage to past leagues including the COWHL, CWHL, and NWHL, while celebrating the PWHL, and handing out Isobel Cup championship rings to last year's PHF champions.

At the Weston Golf and Country Club, a room filled with women's hockey legends past and present gathered together to not only honor the PHF's Toronto Six as Isobel Cup champions, but also to recognize all of the contributors who pioneered the game and kept the hope for a single, unified league alive. 

While the primary purpose of the night was to hand out championships rings to the Toronto Six, the message of the evening transcended that purpose.

Mixed in with PHF players including Saroya Tinker and Lindsay Eastwood who have moved on to new jobs in hockey, were former members of the Toronto Six who not only won the final Isobel Cup title in PHF history last spring in Arizona, but are also now key members of the new PWHL.

Players including Tereza Vanisova, Dominika Laskova, Michaela Cava, Emma Woods, Carly Jackson, Emma Greco, Leah Lum, Brittany Howard, Kati Tabin, Elaine Chuli, and Daryl Watts were all in attendance to receive their championship rings and celebrate one final time as a team. In the PWHL, those players are taking part in games seeing record breaking attendance on a weekly basis, which as Sami Jo Small, former Canadian Olympic gold medallist and past president of the Toronto Six said, is a product of the work and sacrifices of the trailblazers past and present in attendance for the ceremony.

"None of that happens without the people in this room," said Small as she introduced key members in women's hockey history. "You all had a part to play, and today we want you to know how much your role is valued, so many steps had to happen to get where we are today."

Throughout the evening, the Toronto Six honored members of the COWHL, NHWL, CWHL, PHF, Hockey Canada, and the new PWHL. Players including Danielle Goyette, Geraldine Heaney, Angela James, Sami Jo Small, Lisa-Marie Breton, Sommer West, Gina Kingsbury, and Stephanie Boyd, and builders like Fran Rider, Brenda Andress, Maian Jacko, and Bernice Carnegie were all on hand to celebrate the decades of work done to get to where the PWHL is today.

"What we are witnessing is a result of all the people in this room," Johanna Boynton, one of the PHF's former owners said in addressing the room. "Mission driven work is often the most fulfilling and rewarding. Each one of us in this room has contributed to something much larger than ourselves, something that transcends wins and losses on the ice."

"This is more than just a game, it's a movement and we all are privileged to be a part of it," she said. "And though our names may fade with time, our legacy will endure, forever etched in the history of women's professional ice hockey."

For the current generation of women in the room being recognized for their Isobel Cup title, the history was also important.

"I think it's super important that we don't forget everything that happened before this new league," former Six netminder, and current PWHL Montreal goalie Elaine Chuli told The Hockey News. "So it's a great memory for us to look back on the NWHL, the PHF, what that meant, and what it brought to the growth of our game."

Chuli has played in the CWHL, NWHL, PHF, and PWHL in her career. To be back with her PHF teammates for a final celebration was an emotional moment for the netminder.

"It honestly means so much, just the emotion you feel here with the staff and the players, we had a really special group," she said. "Things ended kind of quickly in the offseason last year, so it's nice to reconnect, get our rings, and spend one last night together."

The NWHL, later the PHF, was founded in 2015 becoming the first ever professional women's hockey league to pay its players a salary. That process continued until the 2022-2023 season when the league announced they would be increasing the salary cap yet again to $1.5 million. Following the Toronto Six's championship, however, the league was acquired by the Mark Walter Group for the purposes of forming one league with members of the PWHPA.

For many, the PHF, which ushered in health benefits for players and record breaking salaries, the league was more than just a place to play. It was also a league that kept hope for bigger things alive. For Daryl Watts, who signed a record breaking $150,000 per season contract with the Toronto Six, and now plays for PWHL Ottawa, the league also saved her career.

"I'm so grateful to the Toronto Six and the PHF, without their record breaking salary cap, I never would have come out of retirement," Watts told The Hockey News. "So I'm beyond grateful because I'm playing the sport I love more than anything in the world. I'll forever be grateful to the John and Johanna Boynton, the Toronto Six and this league."

John and Johanna Boynton joined the NWHL in 2019, initially as minority owners of a single team, and later as the primary owners and backers of the league itself. They rebranded the league to the Premier Hockey Federation, removing the gender marker in hopes of creating a more inclusive league, and took over ownership of multiple franchises, including launching expansion teams in Toronto and Montreal. They did it, as they explained, with one goal in mind - to unify women's hockey. Unfortunately, the couple recognized it was a task they did not achieve despite years of conversation with the PWHPA, NHL, and others to attempt to bring all of North America's top women's hockey players under one roof. As John Boynton, who was the PHF's chair of the board stated, quoting Abraham Lincoln, "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

"That is absolutely true," he said. "Our mission was to unify women's hockey. Bottom line is, we couldn't pull it off...we did not succeed in healing that division, so we made the very difficult decision last summer to sell the league to a group of owners who brought with them, not only the next tier of capital, but they brought with them the ability to unite women's hockey."

Boynton called the sale "the right thing for the game" and remarked to the room filled with COWHL, NWHL, CWHL, PHF, and PWHL players, that the current success of the PWHL was in part a result of their efforts as pioneers. 

"All of you are giants," he said. "The PWHL and women's hockey is standing on your collective shoulders."

As Sami Jo Small led the room through the history that brought women's hockey to the moment it's witnessing today, introducing builders, officials, coaches, staff, and athletes from each era, the night turned from reflective to celebratory as members of the Six got their rings. As the night concluded, the 2022-2023 Toronto Six gathered around the Isobel Cup, reading their names now etched into the trophy, and admiring their new championship rings, with past Olympians and women's hockey stars snapping photographs and congratulating the players.

It was the end to one era, while another is enjoying a successful beginning. It was also a moment to recognize the efforts of all women's hockey players, regardless of era or league, who came before and elevated the sport to where it reached with the PHF, and where it is in today's PWHL.