The Professional Women’s Hockey League has offered to pay for 50 top players — 24 former PWHPA members and 26 combined NCAA, international and former PHF players — to attend its first draft in Toronto on Sept. 18, according to a PWHL staff member familiar with the plans.
A nine-person committee selected the pool after evaluating the 289 athletes who declared for the draft and included one representative apiece from the former PWHPA, now defunct PHF, USports, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada; and two people each from the NCAA and international game.
The invitations come amid online concerns around the amount of PHF player representation on PWHL rosters. The PHF shut down operations in July after the PWHL purchased its assets. Since, though, the league and players’ association have been unequivocal that players’ past affiliations will not affect their treatment.
“This league is for the best players in the world. It doesn’t matter where you played in the past,” Jayna Hefford, the league’s senior vice president of hockey operations, said last week. “There is no more PHF or PWHPA or international. We are one player group of the PWHL.”
The player evaluation process was created to identify the “top prospects” most likely to be selected in the early rounds, though the…
