Jayna Hefford Rebuts Claims Regarding Natalie Darwitz's Dismissal

Jayna Hefford spoke to The Hockey News to provide the league’s perspective and reasoning for the dismissal of PWHL Minnesota general manager Natalie Darwitz.

Jayna Hefford spoke to The Hockey News Saturday afternoon to address the dismissal of now former PWHL Minnesota general manager and USA hockey legend Natalie Darwitz.

Darwitz was let go this week, with an official statement coming from the league Saturday morning.

Hefford said the league brought in Darwitz because of their respect for her as a member of the women's hockey community, and acknowledged the job she did in building a Walter Cup championship winning team.

"Ton of respect for Natalie," said PWHL senior vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford of Darwitz. "I've known her for quite some time, played against her and obviously we hired her into this role because of the respect we have for her, and she did an incredible job in building this inaugural season, we understand how much she means to the state of Minnesota and we're obviously disappointed that it's come to this point which has led us to part ways."

Despite that on-ice success, Hefford says the decision to part ways with Darwitz was one the league had been looking at and reviewing for quite some time.

"This is the result of a really thorough, thoughtful analysis of multiple reviews over the past number of months. This hasn't come down to two days or three days or anything like that, it's been a process to ensure that we could get the market and the organization right. Minnesota is not the only market that we've done work in, you know we had to take a look at every market and that's part of being a single entity that we work with them, we find gaps, areas that need to be better, really important was building a foundation in each of these markets and focusing on culture and leadership and we've done that at the league level as well, myself and my team have done work on that."

That review included a third party review by Bloom Sports, although the league was not ready to comment on specific information or items from that review that lead to this decision. Hefford stated this process was a difficult one for all involved.

"That sort of I think just sets the stage, that this is something that's happened in multiple markets, however the feedback in this market after very thorough and extensive both internal and external reviews was that there wasn't a path forward with the current personnel as a whole in place," she said. 

One item Hefford rebutted related to prior reports, was the relation of the decision to internal pressure from specific individuals. Rather, according to the league, it was a decision based on extensive reviews.

"It's not something that we took lightly, this has been obviously a really difficult process on us but of course that we acknowledge it's been really difficult on Natalie as well, but any suggestion that it was because one or two people disagreed, that's simply not the case,” Hefford stated. 

“This has been months of work that's been put into this market and time and resources to get it right and it hasn't ended the way we wanted it to end but our job is to look at the league first, and take care of the league and then take care of the team and unfortunately for Natalie as a leader, sometimes the leader takes on greater responsibility than everyone else in the organization when things aren't flowing and operating as they should and I think that's the point we got at, that it was very clear we couldn't move forward the way we were."

When asked about the Bloom report specifically, Hefford said Minnesota's was not positive.

"If they were glowingly positive, in addition to the other internal review we did, if they were glowingly positive we wouldn't be here right now," said Hefford.

While the PWHL had their internal reasons for removing Darwitz, fans who saw the incredible on ice success of the PWHL Minnesota's inaugural season including record crowds and winning the first ever Walter Cup with a team Natalie Darwitz built. Hefford acknowledged it’s a difficult situation for those from the outside to understand.

“In terms of the fans, I get it, I get it. If I wasn't in the middle of this, I would feel the same way, I would be sitting here saying 'wait a second, they won, great attendance, great fans, lots of positive momentum,' but as we all know, until you're in the middle of an operation, meaning an organization, personnel, everything that goes into a successful organization, you really don't know what's going on,” said Hefford.

“Knowing that from the outside everything looked great and we still feel like this is the only decision that could be made, would be a strong suggestion that something needed to be done.”

According to Hefford the fact Minnesota won the inaugural PWHL championship did not factor into the league's decision to remove Darwitz from her role.

"Had Minnesota lost game three in Toronto going out on an 8 game losing streak...would that have made this feel any better, I don't think so, but that was a real possibility, they won that one game and then they went on that run so I don't t think that necessarily changes internally how things were working or weren't working."

PWHL Minnesota won the first ever Walter Cup title in May, beating PWHL Boston 3-0 in game five of the PWHL championship finals, a series Minnesota captured 3-2.

Continued to follow The Hockey News for more developments on this story.