With Women’s Hockey on the rise in North America, Rangers forward Mats Zuccarello wants to make sure female Norwegian players have the same opportunity.

A team from the city of Tromso, located in the northern part of Norway, qualified for the Norwegian Championships for the first time. However, with over half of the team being students, many players did not have the funds to attend tournament that begins March 31st. The team created a Kickstarter campaign and were stunned to see a popular name help them reach their goal.

“This is insane,” the team manager, Ananke van Oostrum said. “We were refreshing the web page to see if there’d been more donations, and all of a sudden Mats Zuccarello’ name was at the top of the list.

Zucarrello learned of the team’s financial issue, and alerted his public relations manager to donate the amount needed for the entire team to travel and participate in the upcoming competition.

“Are you kidding me? This is surreal! I’m speechless,” defenseman Marte Idrupsen said upon hearing the news of Zuccarello’s generosity. “This is amazing. It means so much to us. It’s quite expensive for us to travel to games. We have to do a lot of voluntary work to raise money.”

Recently, Women’s Hockey has been a hot topic of discussion in the United States. Currently, a large majority of American female skaters are threatening to boycott the World Championships that will begin on March 31st, in Plymouth, Michigan. In return, they are asking for compensation in non-Olympic years, and an investment to female youth programs across the country.

Just like in the North America, female players in Norway are unable to play hockey as their full time occupation, and often have other additional jobs or are students, studying at University. The team from Tromso, represents a diverse group of individuals.

“Some of our players are 40-year-old mothers, others are born in 2003,” Idrupsen added. “Some of the younger players have ambitions to play for the national team. We all just want to do our best. We didn’t get an arena until 2010.”

However, the team would not let finances potentially ruin a trip to the event. They created on online campaign, to appeal to hockey fans around the country, and even the world.

The advertisement read:

We are a hockey team consisting of 17 women and girls, an amazing coach and a lot of great contributors. We are all representing the northernmost ice hockey team in Norway.

The campaign: We wish to participate in the Norwegian championship the weekend march/april, both for the adventure and for the experience, and also to show the sport of hockey in Norway that Tromso belongs in the top tier, and to advance female recruitment to this amazing game. Unfortunately, this is an expensive trip, and half our team are students. We hope to raise enough to make this trip in the best possible manner, so that our whole team can experience the Norwegian championship together.

Thanks to Zuccarello, the team will travel to Stavanger together, and all of their skaters will get the opportunity to compete in this prestigious Norwegian tournament.