When we laid out our promotional schedule back in the summer, we never imagined a scenario where our annual ‘Women In Sport Night’ would become a lightning rod for criticism.
We selected the night of February 26, hoping that we could potentially have some post-Olympic buzz to add some excitement to the evening.
We received the post-Olympic buzz alright – just not the kind we ever could have anticipated.
Leading into the game last week, I received dozens of passionate and articulate notes about the topic of women in sports. This came on the heels of the well-publicized incident in which some members of Team USA men’s Olympic hockey team were laughing at a joke – at the expense of their counterparts on the women’s team.
And because we had two Senators players on that roster – in Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson – our fans were demanding we took a strong stance on that subject in particular. We also had some emails expressing disappointment in the White House and State of the Union visit from Team USA, but if I had to narrow in on one area, I would say I received more backlash and feedback on the issue related to the women’s team.
So that’s what I’m going to address here in this space this week, because there is a lot to unpack.
For starters, let’s go back to the media availabilities for both Sanderson and Tkachuk from Thursday at Canadian Tire Centre. If you haven’t had a chance to watch them in their entirety, they are posted here for you to view.
Our players received direct and hard-hitting questions on these topics – especially related to the women’s team. For some of you, however, the answers were underwhelming and stopped well short of what you wanted.
In fact, I want to share part of an email I received after the media sessions with our players on Thursday afternoon. It was from a woman who expressed her deep disappointment with me in particular. This woman had enjoyed my coverage as a journalist with The Athletic for many years and wrote about her disappointment in seeing our organization’s response – or lack thereof – when it came to the issue of misogyny in sports last week.
She ended her email by writing, “In order for hockey to be better, the men in hockey have to be better and I had really hoped you would be one of those men.”
It was a dose of truth serum that I probably wasn’t ready to handle.
Part of the reason I took this job 18 months ago was to try and effect change from the inside.
I realize now this is going to be infinitely harder than I imagined because women like this will be suspicious of all men in hockey moving forward. And rightfully so. We can talk a good game about being allies and trying to make the game safe and inclusive. But how are we acting and talking when it’s just a few men in the room – with no women in sight?
I’ve thought about this a lot over the past week. Our communications department has absorbed the digital and social wings of our organization, making our department a total of 16 people. Of that group, we’ve got six young women on our team. We owe it to them to be the best versions of ourselves and promote equality at every turn – not just when it’s convenient.
As the woman wrote to me stated so perfectly, ‘In order for hockey to be better, the men in hockey have to be better.’
Message received.
All I can do is promise to be better – with zero expectations that women will have any patience or tolerance for my words.
Now, onto our decision to push ahead with our ‘Women In Sport Night’ – especially with our social media strategy. To say we were carved on Instagram would be putting it mildly, after we released a video in which we asked our players, “Who is your favourite female athlete?”
We recorded these answers earlier in February, well before there was even a hint of an impending controversy in this space. My favourite answer was from Kurtis MacDermid, who told us he had three favourite female athletes: Christine Sinclair, Marie-Philip Poulin and Rebecca Leslie.
We had an internal debate on Wednesday about the timing of releasing this video. We didn’t want to be seen as performative – because we were genuinely planning this night for several months. We worked with the Ottawa Charge, the Toronto Tempo – the newest WNBA franchise – and other teams to make this a special night. If we deviated from our strategy to show support for women’s sports, we thought we would be missing the mark. We could also see people asking, “Why aren’t you promoting your ‘Women in Sport Night’ on social media?”
So we decided to move forward with our social strategy. In hindsight, perhaps we should have written a disclaimer on the post such as, “We’ve been planning this night for months” or something along those lines because a lot of people accused us of being reactionary to the news cycle.
But we spent several weeks planning out the idea for our players to walk in with PWHL jerseys on Thursday night. Ridly Greig and Drake Batherson were thrilled to wear their sister’s jerseys into the Canadian Tire Centre. Linus Ullmark – who is a passionate Ottawa Charge supporter – didn’t hesitate for a moment when I asked him if he would wear Ronja Savolainen’s jersey. Same with Michael Amadio – who is good friends with Rebecca Leslie – and Stephen Halliday, who is dating Olivia Wallin with the Charge.
That stuff took weeks to coordinate and yet it was met with countless accusations of us being performative on Instagram.
I even fielded a media request from a major news outlet, asking if our ‘Women In Sport Night’ was a direct result of the fallout from the controversy surrounding the women’s team at the Olympics.
I’m not expecting this negativity about our view towards women’s sports to evaporate in the days or weeks ahead. This is an issue that will take years to address.
All you can do is try and hold us accountable.
All we can do is to try and be better.
Please reach out with any feedback or thoughts here at our email address – [email protected]
Our inbox was certainly flooded last week and while I didn’t have a chance to respond to every note, please know that I read every single email that came in.
Trivia time: Jake Sanderson currently leads the Senators with 37 assists so far this season. If he can stay atop that category, he would become just the fifth defenceman to lead Ottawa in assists at the end of a season.
Can you name the other four defencemen to lead the Senators in assists in a season?
Answer at the bottom of this column.
Trying to grow the game with our ‘Drop The Puck’ initiative
Later this month, we’re launching a cool initiative called our ‘Drop the Puck’ program.
We’re targeting new hockey fans – people who have never experienced hockey – to come to Canadian Tire Centre on Wednesday, March 18 and learn the basics of hockey. We’ll run you through the rules and history of the sport and give demonstrations on how to use equipment and more. Then we’ll watch our road game against the Washington Capitals on television and answer any questions our new potential fans might have for us.
I’m excited to help lead this project and speak to the guests about my own journey with hockey. My parents moved to Canada from Tanzania when my mom was pregnant with me and they had zero clue about hockey – or the role it played in our culture. So I’ll share a little bit about my own journey in game and how difficult it can be for new Canadians to integrate themselves into hockey.
Over the past few months, we’ve been in touch with organizations connected to new Canadians, trying to find the right candidates to attend our event. If you know anybody who would be a good fit to attend something of this nature, please have them fill out this form in the next couple of days – as we’re trying to cap our registration.
And as always, if you’ve got some good ideas for how we can grow the game with projects and initiatives similar to this, please send us an email to [email protected]
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
Last week we plugged Graeme Nichols’ excellent piece looking back on the 2005-06 Senators. This week, he’s got part two of this series – a fantastic (and painful) trip down memory lane into the playoffs in 2006. Grab a coffee and read this.
Michael Andlauer was the first person to be inducted into the Brantford Bulldogs Hall of Fame on Friday. Brian Smiley from The Brantford Expositor has all the details here.
Andrew Wilimek spoke to Drake Batherson and Ridly Greig about having sisters who play in the PWHL and how they can use their siblings as sounding boards for advice.
Jordan Spence popped by with the guys from Coming In Hot for a fun chat last week – with Wally somehow able to convince Jordan to join the show on his birthday.
It was nice having multiple beat reporters on the road in Toronto for our game on Saturday night. Read Alex Adams breakdown of our 5-2 win over the Maple Leafs and what it might mean for our trade deadline plans. Julian McKenzie of The Athletic has a similar recap of the night and our path ahead of the deadline.
Trivia answer: The four defenceman to lead the Senators in assists in a season: Erik Karlsson (six times), Thomas Chabot (three times), Sergei Gonchar (2012-13) and Norm MacIver (1992-93).
