How Can New Jersey Devils And Metropolitan Riveters Help CWHL?

The biggest story in the hockey world right now isn’t the upcoming NHL playoffs or drama north of the border, it’s the sudden folding of the CWHL. How can the New Jersey Devils and Metropolitan Riveters help?

Information continues to drip in about how and why the CWHL failed. We likely won’t have a full picture for weeks, if not months or years. More information can be found elsewhere on other general hockey news sites. But we’re a team site covering the New Jersey Devils, so it behooves us to think about how the New Jersey Devils – part owner of the Metropolitan Riveters NWHL team – can help displaced CWHL employees.

Fine Print

Let us get some disclaimers out of the way. It’s too early to know the exact terms of the CWHL’s folding, especially with the CWHL Player’s Association figuring out their next steps. It’s also too early to know how the NWHL will be involved. They’ve officially okayed absorbing or reviving two teams, but it’s obviously early stages and they have a history of overpromising.

NWHL bylaws are notoriously hard to find, and once you do they’re even harder to figure out. So it’s hard to say what regulations are in place or how quickly they’ll change. It’s also too early to know how big a role the NHL will play. So far the NHL claims to have doubled funding for the NWHL, but they’re clearly just giving the NWHL funds the CHWL used to get instead.

Long story short, we’re going to be conservative with our estimations.

What the Devils/Riveters can do

First step: put more money into it.

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Forbes put Devils co-owner Josh Harris’s net worth at over $3 billion dollars. With a B. Three commas. They can afford to lose a little money here and there, especially if it’s for a good cause. We don’t have the books in front of us, but if we’re being honest with ourselves in all likelihood the Devils themselves were likely less-than-profitable this year. There’s no excuse for any kind of stinginess when you have a net worth larger than the GPD of France. But even this has its limits.

Even if roster sizes and payroll expanded overnight, that wouldn’t change the reality that most women hockey players choose teams based on proximity first and foremost. Even if spots opened up, it would be logistically improbably for someone to move from Calgary – home of the CWHL team most likely to dissolve completely – to Newark for what amounts to a part time job. Women’s hockey as a whole needs more funding, but this is about what the Devils and Riveters can do, not what the NHL and investors can do.

A more practical consideration would be offering consulting gigs and front office work. Working remotely is more common every day and it’s been common in hockey for years. It’s rare that every name listed on a team’s staff page works in the office proper. Vincent Viola owns the Florida Panthers despite living in New York. Without even leaving the Devils organization, Martin Brodeur only lives in New Jersey part time while working in the Devils front office.

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Even if it’s not full time employment nor a full roster spot, there’s still lots of people who have experience with the highest levels of women’s hockey – one of the fastest growing sports in North America. Players, coaches, GMs, trainers, other front office positions – any one of them could be valuable either to the Devils or the Riveters.

Harris and Blitzer can afford it. A lot of people need jobs. Even from the most cynical perspective, it would be good PR in a year where neither the Devils nor Riveters have had much. The Devils did a far better job promoting the Rivs this year than last year, and this is a good opportunity to keep up that momentum. Some smart folks work in the Devils front office, and they’ll probably have better ideas than any sportswriter could about how they can best help.

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