PWHL/YouTube
The inaugural Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) season wrapped up on May 29th when Minnesota topped Boston to become the first team to lift the Walter Cup. Unfortunately, the players who secured the trophy are being deprived of a great tradition their male counterparts get to take advantage of.
The PWHL still has plenty of room to grow, but it was able to generate a fair amount of buzz among hockey fans over the course of an initial season where its six teams collectively sold close to 400,000 tickets while racking up more than 40 million views on YouTube (the platform that was used to stream every game as it continues to search for a traditional television deal).
When everything was said and done, Minnesota topped Boston in a championship series that needed all five games to be decided thanks in part to a double-overtime thriller in Game 4, which meant the squad from the North Star State earned the right to celebrate with the Walter Cup (the 36-pound sterling silver trophy made by the folks at Tiffany & Co.).
As you probably know, NHL players who win the Stanley Cup (as well as AHL players who win the Calder Cup) are traditionally given the opportunity to spend a day with the trophy in the summer after the initial celebration dies down, but according to hockey reporter Jess Myers, the PWHL has apparently decided not to offer its champs the same experience.
Talking to a few @PWHL_Minnesota players, they apparently do not each get a day with the Walter Cup this summer, with is a disappointment. Apparently it's being sent back to Tiffany's to clean up a few beer stains.
— Jess Myers (@JessRMyers) June 10, 2024
Unlike the NHL, the PWHL doesn’t employ any “Keepers of the Cup” tasked with keeping tabs on the trophy when players take it out on the town, so you have to wonder if the lack of dedicated guardians played a role in this decision.
This isn’t the first time the PWHL has made headlines for all of the wrong reasons in recent days, as the league (which owns and operates every team and subsequently has the power to dictate who it employs) made the fairly baffling decision to fire former Minnesota GM Natalie Darwitz less than two weeks after the team secured the Walter Cup.