While it’s been a long and winding road before Women's professional hockey players were allowed to live off their craft, the inception of the PWHL has only made it possible for some of them to do so. Whichever way you look at it, even though the players are paid to play hockey, they are not paid as much as their masculine counterparts are, and that’s normal. As sick as the players must be to hear it: “everything comes to she who waits”. The league’s reality right now is that a single owner has all eight teams and bankrolls the operations, so cost control is a preoccupation.
While the highest-paid players in the NHL are earning eight-figure contracts (Edmonton Oilers center Leon Draisaitl will make $14 million this upcoming season, Toronto Maple Leafs pivot Auston Matthews will make $13.25 million, and Colorado Avalanche ace Nathan MacKinnon wraps up the top three with $12,5 million), there are only a select flew PWHL players who are earning above $100,000.
As a result, many league members continue to struggle financially, often forced to work two jobs to meet their obligations, a situation that’s particularly challenging for those fortunate enough to have two jobs. In the league’s first season, PWHL Montreal player Jillian Dempsey revealed that American players who had joined Canadian teams had a work visa that only allowed them to work for their team.
Meanwhile, last season, after her team’s elimination, one highly skilled player had to rush back to her hometown to pick up a teaching job to make ends meet. That’s not something NHL players have to worry about. On top of earning a substantial income, NHLers also have endorsement deals with various brands and opportunities to sign autographs for memorabilia sellers.
Whenever a player attends a signing, someone has to pay them to be there. In less than a month, at the Montreal Sports Card Expo, Montreal Canadiens’ players Noah Dobson, Brendan Gallagher, and Samuel Montembeault will all be signing autographs. For every regular item (such as a puck or a photo) Dobson signs, fans will have to shell out $75 plus tax, and for every premium item (jersey, equipment, picture larger than 16x20) he signs, it will cost $150 plus tax if someone wants a special inscription such as “1st round pick” or “First NHL goal” for instance, that will cost another $25. If it’s Gallagher you’re after, it will be $65 for a regular item, $80 for a premium one, and $20 more for an inscription. For Montembeault, the cost will be $45, $55, or $15. That money doesn’t go to the players, they’ve already been paid by the organizers who are gambling their own money by paying fees that are often in the five figures that fans will turn up.
That’s easy money for the players, and it makes sense, really. Why shouldn’t they get a cut of the profits made by using their image or talent? The same logic applies to women’s hockey. When Marie-Philip Poulin signed an autograph back in her Les Canadiennes days, it was more often than not for an adoring fan who would forever cherish the piece of memorabilia. Nowadays, though, autograph hunters have caught up to the fact that there is a market for PWHL players' autographs, and when they get something signed in person after a game or a practice to sell it on, the players aren’t getting a cut.
The PWHL’s popularity has been great news for fans who are eager to see their favourites play in a bigger league against all the best players in the world, but it has also resulted in a change in the market. The same can be said about trading cards. While Upper Deck’s first PWHL series of cards was reasonably priced, the manufacturer realized the cards were selling for a significant markup on the secondary market, prompting them to increase the price to around $300 CAD plus tax per box. In contrast, the first series sold at $115, taxes included initially. Unfortunately, that jump in price doesn’t land in the players’ pockets but in the manufacturers.
When people buy PWHL players' autographs without being authenticated on the secondary market, the players are getting nothing out of it. If, however, fans opt for certified memorabilia, they know that the money they are paying goes towards the fees the players were paid to sign at a public or private signing session.
At the Laura Stacey Sticks In For Charity event held in Montreal, we met Montreal Victoire netminder Ann-Renee Desbiens. We asked her how it felt to finally be in a position to have autograph signing deals like NHLers have, and she explained:
It’s rewarding, and it allows fans to have more unique pieces and special ones. Those I get to sign all have a story, it will enable us to be more accessible. I’m thrilled that Premium Autographs trusts us and that there is now a market for it. The league also helped, so I’m glad to see how this is all going.- Ann-Renee Desbiens on having an autograph signing contract
Since Desbiens signed an exclusivity deal with Premium Autographs, she’s been doing private signing sessions rather than public ones, and when asked if a public session could be in the cards, she explained:
I don’t get to decide that, so you really need to go through Premium Autograph, Andre [Lessard} and his team are working very well to make our schedules work, but as long as the requests go through Premium, we’ll always be available.-
Premium Autographs currently has an exclusivity deal when it comes to numerous top PWHL players’ autographs, such as Poulin, Sarah Nurse, Desbiens, and Laura Stacey, to name a few. While the demand for PWHL players' autographs has exploded of late, that wasn’t always the case, but Andre Lessard and his company were there back then, already paying the players for signing sessions.
While Lessard explains Team Canada players won’t be able to attend the Montreal Expo Cartes Sports as they’ll be away at a national team training camp, he plans to have other PWHL players take part in a public signing session. Of course, those autographs won’t be free, and why should they be? PWHL players are allowed to profit from their own image, talent, and marketability, just like their NHL counterparts. Furthermore, suppose you intend to make a collection out of it. In that case, an autograph from a paying signing session will ensure you get a much better-quality piece, as players will take the time to apply themselves, much more than in a scrum where fans are pushing each other shoulder to shoulder to get their jersey signed.