CALGARY—The Canadian Women’s Hockey League officially shut its doors this week, leaving behind disappointment and frustration about the future of women’s hockey.

In Calgary, a hockey hot bed, the Inferno won their second CWHL championship in 2019, taking home that honour a week before the league announced it would shut down after 12 years because it was “economically unsustainable.”

When the team was honoured at city hall on Monday, former general manager Kristen Hagg had harsh words for the disinterest her sport faced from the media and public, in what she describes as a society that doesn’t value women’s sports.

Despite the Inferno’s ascendance to become one of the top teams in the league, it led to only modest improvements in attendance.

“It does feel really crazy to us, being in such a big hockey market, that we couldn’t gather the audience that we thought we should be,” said Inferno forward Dakota Woodworth.

Inferno players were frustrated with the media coverage they received compared to the men, Woodworth said, being asked cliched questions about being a female role model instead of talking about the sport itself.

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But now players are taking it upon themselves to push for major changes to the sport’s landscape. On Thursday, 200 women’s hockey players announced they’ll refuse to play in any North American league next season, unless it can provide more resources for its teams and players. This refusal was led by some of the sport’s elite talent like Marie-Philip Poulin, Hilary Knight and Shannon Szabados.

The players are partly fighting for a living wage and health insurance, said Liz Knox, who was a goaltender for the CWHL’s Markham Thunder and co-chair of the league’s players’ association. She also said players want more time and money invested into marketing their sport. She’s been frustrated with the narrative that if women’s hockey fails, it’s the fault of the players for not working hard enough to both sell the sport and bring the on-ice product.

“We’re very grateful. It would be much easier for us to continue to be grateful and play in these leagues that are really startup companies,” Knox said.

“We’re not trying to put anybody out of business here. We’re just saying this isn’t enough, and until someone steps up and really says what’s happening, we’ll just continue to perpetuate the same problems that we’ve seen for the last 12-plus years.”

The players’ demand for a more viable league has already been met with some pushback. Tara Slone, a co-host on Sportsnet’s Hometown Hockey was hit with a wave of negative replies on Twitter after she supported the players’ decision. Male hockey fans replied to argue women’s hockey isn’t a real sport or to insist a women’s pro league would never work.

“I was disappointed but not surprised to see those kinds of comments. But to me, it’s so much more of a commentary on these people,” Slone said on Friday. “They’ve obviously not watched it. There’s just a weird sense of them feeling threatened and it’s a much deeper issue.”

After years of top players receiving next to no money for their skill, Slone was frustrated to see the misconception that women’s hockey players are asking to make similar money to men’s teams, when they’re simply trying to make their sport a viable career option.

“It’s trying to level the playing field, and that seems to be what gets people’s back up for some reason. They’re not as offended when the women are just playing in poverty and obscurity,” Slone said. “Now that the women are actually asking for something, that’s what seems to have drawn their ire.”

Attendance has been an issue for women’s hockey teams in many cities outside Calgary, but there have been signs of success.

The NWHL reported its 2018-19 average attendance was 954, with its teams in Minnesota and Buffalo averaging more than 1,000 fans per game. At the college level, the University of Wisconsin and University of Minnesota women’s teams both averaged more than 2,000 fans per game this season.

Howie Draper, a longtime supporter of women’s hockey as head coach of the University of Alberta Pandas hockey team, said he’s slowly seen more fans attend their games over the years, but biases about women’s hockey being worse than the men’s game has hurt the sport’s growth.

Draper likes the emphasis on skill and the lack of violence and intimidation in women’s hockey. He says he meets fans sometimes who come to Pandas games and are surprised at the quality of the game, but is disappointed more people don’t appreciate women’s hockey as something separate from the mens’ game.

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“I’m sure a great portion, particularly with males, (say) ‘how can female hockey be as good as male hockey because they’re not guys?’ ” Draper said.

“In Canada, we feel it’s got to be inferior, because it’s just not out there. It’s not in the headlines, it’s not on TV, we don’t see the highlights.”

The goal for many players now is to change that, and broaden the sport’s fanbase in a single league where fans can watch the best talent in the sport compete against each other.

“It’s on us to demand (that) now, because if we don’t do it now, it might be another 10 or 20 years before you get a group of women in our position,” Knox said.