Moore 'pioneer' for women as AHL vice president

As part of the NHL's celebration of Gender Equality Month, NHL.com will be featuring women in hockey throughout March. Today, Hayley Moore, who is vice president of hockey operations for the American Hockey League.

When Hayley Moore saw the job posting for vice president of hockey operations at the American Hockey League, her first thought was that it was a great opportunity -- for someone else.
"It caught my eye," she said. "I read through it all, and I was like, this sounds like a really awesome position. I wonder who I know who should apply for it."
Moore, who at the time was president of the Boston Pride of the National Women's Hockey League, forwarded the posting to a few friends, asking if they might be interested or if they knew anyone who might be good for the job.
Their answer? Her.
"I started to look in the mirror a little bit and said, 'You know, you're right,'" Moore said. "'While I am really emotionally invested in what I'm doing with the Pride and the NWHL, this is a really great career fit for me. So why don't I learn more?'"
In August, Moore became the only woman to apply for the job. The 34-year-old was hired in January.
With the move, Moore becomes the second high-ranking female executive in the AHL, joining Melissa Caruso (VP of hockey operations/governance). She is responsible for the AHL's on-ice operations, including managing the league's officiating program and disciplinary process.

And, like all AHL league office employees, Moore will "chip in" in other areas of management, something AHL president and CEO Scott Howson said is necessary with a small staff amid a large operation.
It felt like both a job she had never known she could strive for and like exactly the job she had been preparing for her entire career.
"When you look at her resume and what she's done, you can tell she's really passionate about hockey," said Howson, who was a longtime executive with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Edmonton Oilers. "She's had great experience doing all sorts of things with hockey, whether it's youth hockey, college hockey, professional women's hockey, she's just done everything.
"That struck me as, wow, this person really, really loves the game."
He saw her worth ethic. Her knowledge. Her ability to multitask. He also knew how important it is for the sport of hockey to diversify, something that he had made clear in his own pitch to the AHL. Hiring Moore just made sense.
It was the same calculus Dani Rylan Kearney had gone through when she hired Moore as the first general manager of the Pride in 2015. Moore would move up the ranks, to deputy commissioner of the league in 2017 and to president of the Pride in 2019.
"She's just an unbelievable human being, first and foremost, and is incredible honest, was very diligent and thoughtful with her questions and what she was asking before coming on board," said Rylan Kearney, who founded the NWHL in 2015 and was its commissioner and an adviser before leaving the league last week. "She's incredibly smart. If you're going to build a team, you want Hayley Moore. She's a first-round draft pick."

It started early. Her older brother played hockey and she wanted in. She asked for hockey equipment for her fourth birthday. She fell in love.
As Moore grew up, she got to see the other side of the sport, courtesy of her father, Don, who volunteered "at every organization that I played for." He worked for Massachusetts Hockey as a registrar and was a volunteer at USA Hockey, wanting to help after seeing her passion. She noticed the work he did behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly.
She was taking notes, if not consciously.
Moore had intended to be a hockey player at first. She called herself "a little bit naive in terms of what my opportunities were going to be." Even in college, at Brown University, she believed that the next step was playing hockey, that there would be a professional opportunity for her.
It didn't exist.
So she tried to validate herself outside of the sport, using her human biology degree in medical device consulting. But something was missing. And so, because the opportunities she had hoped for weren't there, she decided to be part of building those opportunities.
"It says a lot about someone who has roles created for them," Rylan Kearney said. "She was the first deputy commissioner [of the NWHL]. She was the first team president in our history. She was a first GM -- there were three others at the same time -- but still first GM of a team in the NWHL. So I think it just says a lot about her as a leader, also just being able to take on any challenges and dive all in."
And that's what she sees in the AHL. A challenge, but one that she's ready for.
The choice wasn't a simple one, as often is the case for women leaving women's professional sports to work on the men's side.
"I definitely had to do a lot of soul-searching," Moore said. "Is this something that I'm prepared to do? Am I prepared to leave the NWHL and what I'm building here? Because so much of my position with the NWHL was rooted in providing opportunity. … And what fueled me was creating opportunity that never existed before.
"I just started to recognize that opportunity didn't just fall in the hands of everyone else in the league. It was also for me too."
By taking the job with the AHL, she was creating opportunity for herself, and for the person -- potentially another woman -- who would fill her old role.
"A rising tide raises all boats," said Digit Murphy, who coached Moore at Brown and is the coach and president of the Toronto Six of the NWHL. "Now we need more Hayleys in there. … She's a pioneer, and that makes me proud. She's awesome to take those leaps because a lot of women are afraid, and she's not afraid."

Moore would be opening eyes, making a career where she never knew she could as kid, where she had never seen anyone succeed who looked like her. She would be tacitly giving other teams in other men's leagues the confidence to make their own diverse hires.
But even more than that, she would be tackling a role that she had worked toward her entire career.
"People need to see that," Rylan Kearney said. "She's a great leader and it shouldn't be restricted to gender. She's a great leader in hockey, period. She's the best for the job, period."