Media responded to the PWHL's "hand-picked" selection committee for the 2024 PWHL Awards, including the omission of women's hockey's longest standing outlets The Ice Garden and The Victory Press.
Media responded to the PWHL's "hand-picked" selection committee for the 2024 PWHL Awards, including the omission of women's hockey's longest standing outlets The Ice Garden and The Victory Press.
There was a certain reverberation across women's hockey social media when the PWHL announced their voting group for their inaugural 2024 awards, a group primarily comprised of PWHL staff.
The primary issue resulted from the exclusion of many long standing members of women's hockey media, specifically independent outlets The Ice Garden and The Victory Press, as well as the perception that media involved were "hand-picked" by the PWHL.
It's a stark departure from how most North American professional leagues operate their award voting, and brings into question the validity of the results as the awards will ultimately be decided by league staff, rather than an independent panel.
In the NHL, the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) has been independently voting on seven major NHL Awards including the Hart, Norris, Selke, Calder, Lady Byng, Masterton, and Conn Smythe awards, along with the NHL's All-Star and All-Rookie teams since 1967. One of the major aspects of the PHWA's involvement, is that the association releases the results of all ballots to maintain transparency in the voting process, and to allow public scrutiny of individual voters.
If you jump to other women's professional leagues, the WNBA has roughly 60 media from across the country vote on annual awards.
The PWHL has chosen to follow a model more closely resembling the National Women's Soccer League that utilizes players (50%), owners/GMs/coaches (25%) and media (25%) in the voting process, along with fan voting. The PWHL however, did not include players.
The PWHL will select the league’s Ilana Kloss Playoff MVP Award via "an awards selection committee" and the PWHL Community Leadership Award "will be selected by PWHL executives based on nominations submitted by all six teams."
Following the announcement of the PWHL's committee, the response was swift from media across the board denouncing the process. The selection committee notably omitted many of the media outlets who have traditionally been the leading voices in women's hockey.
As Jared Book, a media member covering PWHL Montreal wrote online, "It’s very disappointing for the league to hand choose Award voters..."
Melissa Burgess, who writes for The Victory Press, a long standing independent women's hockey media outlet echoed Book's frustration.
As Mike Murphy, the longstanding editor of The Ice Garden, which for years was women's hockey's only consistent media outlet also voiced his concern for the league's selection process.
"I am tremendously disappointed that no one from (The Victory Press) or (The Ice Garden) was invited to participate in media voting. At TIG, we did everything we could to provide consistent coverage of all six teams," he wrote on X.
Zoe Hayden of The Victory Press also spoke in support of her publication and the disappointment the PWHL had excluded the majority of women's hockey media in the process.
"we were also extremely disappointed (The Ice Garden) and (The Victory Press) are media who have been reporting holistically on the women's game continuously, across nearly a decade. there are also many who really showed up for the PWHL whose insights are valuable."
As Kyle Cushman from The Score stated on X, "I think the PWHL wanted an even vote for the awards but made the pool too small."
The PWHL will begin announcing the finalists for each award May 14 running to May 23 will winners announced in June.
Editors Note: The Hockey News did receive one regional vote for the PWHL Awards via Connecticut based writer Rick Menning who covers PWHL New York. Multiple writers from The Hockey News Women's are also members of the PHWA.