On March 24, Calgary Inferno general manager Kristen Hagg was happily celebrating her team’s 5-2 victory over Les Canadiennes de Montréal in the 2019 Clarkson Cup Final. Just one week later Hagg, the Inferno’s coaching staff and players suddenly learned that CWHL was discontinuing operations effective May 1.

The news came as a shock to her, just as it did for so many other pillars of the league. In an interview with Sporting News, the GM revealed that she had already discussed plans to step down from her role with the organization; however, Sunday’s news changed that. Now, more than ever before, Hagg is dedicated to keeping pro women’s hockey alive in Alberta and Western Canada.

Note: Portions of the interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Sporting News: How and when did you hear the news that the CWHL was planning to discontinue operations?

Kristen Hagg: The managers and Players’ Association representatives had a call with the Board and [commissioner] Jayna [Hefford] about half an hour before all of the players were told, and that was 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time . . . I found out just as I was getting out of bed. I was on a fun road trip with some of my old [University of Alberta] Pandas' teammates.

SN: Have you had the opportunity to speak with any of your players or the team’s coaches yet?

KH: Even in the duration of the call I had players texting me. I’ve spoken to a couple of them and exchanged some texts. For the most part, I’ve been passing messages through Dakota [Woodworth] and Blayre [Turnbull], our CWHLPA reps, to make sure our players know that we’re trying to sort things out.

We’ve all had the same reaction. I was a player, so I can relate to certain things they are feeling in terms of the long-term investment and how the uncertainty hits close to home. I know the things they’re worried about and I want to make sure that they know we’re doing everything within our power to make sure things work out for them.

This is not the end of women’s pro hockey in Calgary, or in Canada. With the utmost confidence, I know this to be true. Too many good players and good people will continue to fight for this incredible sport we all love. Bigger and brighter things are coming. #CWHL #NoLeague — Dakota Woodworth (@DakotaWoodworth) March 31, 2019

SN: The Inferno was the CWHL’s western-most franchise, geographically your team was almost on an island compared to the other North American clubs. How important is the Calgary Inferno to the landscape of women’s hockey?

KH: I grew up in Alberta. It’s a hockey-crazy place, both in Edmonton and Calgary. People are crazy for sports all over the province. I remember growing up as a kid, I looked up to the Edmonton Oilers in the NHL, but anytime I was around a grown female hockey player [it was] different. It was the [Edmonton] Chimos playing against the police officer alumni and I still idolized them and looked up to them.

I don’t think people fully realize the importance of having those female role models in place.

I almost just want to show people a photo of our players surrounded by little girls and little boys and how they look up to the players. With them, they have something to aspire to and look forward to. I certainly don’t want them to lose that hope. I want them to still believe that they’ll be able to do this one day, and to do this at home [in Alberta].

Hockey’s huge in the west, it was hard to believe that we just had one team out here. Now that there’s no team in the west, it’s a very sad thing.

(Chris Tanouye/CWHL) https://images.daznservices.com/di/library/Sporting_News_CA_CMS_image_storage/78/2a/inferno-fluries-cwhl-040119-chris-tanouye-ftrjpeg_7iy8rncxpd7b1g88585wfzwdd.jpg?t=-646655431&w=500&quality=80

SN: You were a player for the Inferno as recently as the 2015-16 season and played your collegiate hockey at the University of Alberta. From your perspective, how much has hockey grown in Alberta and the West?

KH: I always say how much the level of play has gone up since I was playing in university. The leagues are so much more formalized. There’s so many girls playing and more teams and opportunities for girls to play with and against each other instead of just playing against boys. Its come such a long way.

When I was at the University of Alberta the majority of our players were from the Edmonton area and Saskatchewan. There wasn’t even a Dinos team [at the University of Calgary] at that time . . . Now we have so many players coming out of Calgary going to universities and to other hockey programs. It’s growing. The interest is growing for female players and kids.

It’s hard to say exactly what those numbers look like because the number of fans we had coming out to [Inferno] games hasn’t changed a great deal. We know there’s a lot of people who say they want to support women’s hockey, but we haven’t really fully seen that out in Calgary yet. We wanted to keep working on ways to do that.

We aren’t throwing up our arms and saying, ‘Well, attendance numbers are up this year, they just didn’t go up as much as we wanted them to.’ We were working on ways to make it better, we weren’t giving up. I think the reality is that the amount of time that it would take for us to get to that number of people that we would need to sustain a team was too far out.

SN: Can you talk about your tweet from Sunday where you stated that you 'will do everything in your power' to keep pro women’s hockey in Calgary?

Mixed emotions seeing the end of a league that was a big part of my life over the past 5 years. I will do everything in my power to keep professional women’s hockey in Calgary, in Alberta and in the West. #IgnitedUnited #NoLeague — Kristen Hagg (@KristenHagg) March 31, 2019

KH: I also say Alberta, because if I can keep just one team out here that would be an accomplishment.

I was actually going to step down this year — this was going to be it for me. I was just going to fade into the darkness and pass it into the next person’s hands. But now I feel a greater responsibility to stay involved and to make sure that hockey doesn’t die here. If it does go away for a year or whatever, I am going to stay involved to try and make sure that if there ever is a WNHL looking at Calgary, Edmonton or Winnipeg, that they’ll understand that these are real hockey markets.

These are the types of places where if they’re given proper backing and support they can get a fan base behind the team. I don’t want it to be overlooked because it would be a further flight, because it’s not in Toronto or Montréal. We might be smaller, but anybody who has watched Oilers fans over the last 12 years has to know that people here are hockey crazy.

I’m going to talk to whoever I have to talk to and plead our case. That’s what I mean. I know I don’t have a lot of power, but I know a lot of people and I’ve been talking to them today. I’ve been making sure that they know that I’m here. I’m not just folding up my chair and packing it in.

(Dave Holland/CWHL) https://images.daznservices.com/di/library/Sporting_News_CA_CMS_image_storage/1c/fe/mandi-duhamel-calgary-inferno-032119-dave-holland-cwhl-ftrjpeg_ut0n2njdogbn1v63v7hpe0r8x.jpg?t=-1587379935&w=500&quality=80

SN: Do you have plans to speak to other CWHL general managers and leadership outside of the Board about what comes next? Does Calgary’s geographic location make this tougher in terms of putting your team first?

KH: We operate as a team throughout the season and we’re going to keep doing that. We were circling emails and texts as soon as this happened and figuring out when we would be touching base and talking. Everything has always been very supportive amongst [the managers]. Certainly, you’re going to want to look out for your interests, but I would hope that nobody gets cutthroat about it.

I think we know that if there was a new league or NWHL expansion, the first places they’re going to look is Toronto or Montreal. But would they really be looking at two Toronto teams? If the Furies are the obvious one, I can’t envision Chelsea [Purcell, the general manager of the Markham Thunder] standing in the way.

We are all focused on what’s best for women’s hockey. I don’t think that any of those people would disagree that keeping a team in Western Canada is an important thing. The way we managed that before was cost sharing. There’s going to have to be a way to make it work. For the time being, we’re working together.​

SN: Your team won the Clarkson Cup just over a week ago and you were ready to step down from your role as general manager with a championship. Is it frustrating to have things end this way in the CWHL, or is there no time for frustration right now because keeping pro women’s hockey in Calgary has to come first?

KH: It’s incredibly frustrating. During the time that I was there in management we had some ups and downs but we had established a really clear vision. Some people have always looked at Calgary and thought, ‘Oh, they get Olympic players because they’re near Hockey Canada.’ But we’ve worked really hard to be a place where players want to be.

At the end of the day if you’re not providing a good place to play, players aren’t going to want to be there. I know that from my days as a player. You want to give them the best of everything: the best coaching, the best resources, the best training. I think we really, really were starting to get there. It’s frustrating that it’s all going to just end.

I don’t know if that was ever going to help us from a business standpoint and more fans in the stands, but we were definitely starting to run our team like a professional team with the limitations that we have. It’s tough to see it all disappear.