Had a great time at the NHL Awards in Las Vegas Wednesday and ran into some fun folks, who took time to pose for this class photo.
Front row seated, Kim Davis, NHL Executive VP, Social Impact, Growth Initiatives & Legislative Affairs; Blake Bolden, former National Women’s Hockey League and Canadian Women’s Hockey League star; Anson Carter, NBC and MSG hockey analyst. Second row left to right, hockey agent Eustace King; Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s first black player; Damon Kwame Mason, director of the black hockey history documentary “Soul on Ice: Past, Present and Future”; Dr. Joel Boyd, Minnesota Wild team physician; William Douglas, The Color of Hockey; Kevin Weekes, NHL Network analyst (Photo/Corinne McIntosh-Douglas)
Front row seated, Kim Davis, NHL Executive VP, Social Impact, Growth Initiatives & Legislative Affairs; Blake Bolden, former National Women’s Hockey League and Canadian Women’s Hockey League star; Anson Carter, NBC and MSG hockey analyst. Second row left to right, hockey agent Eustace King; Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s first black player; Damon Kwame Mason, director of the black hockey history documentary “Soul on Ice: Past, Present and Future”; William Douglas, The Color of Hockey; Dr. Joel Boyd, Minnesota Wild team physician; Kevin Weekes, NHL Network analyst (Photo/Corinne McIntosh-Douglas).
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Subtract the final two letters from Blake Bolden’s last name and you’ve summed up the type of move she’s made this hockey season.
After two seasons with the Boston Pride, defenseman Blake Bolden is playing this season with HC Lugano (Photo/NWHL).
Bolden has left what she’s known for more than eight years – history-making stardom in the National Women’s Hockey League, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and Boston College – to start over in a different league and different country.
The first African-American player in the NWHL and CWHL is patrolling the blue line this season as a defenseman for HC Lugano, a professional women’s team in southern Switzerland.
“I just wanted a fresh start, something I’ve never done before, a new experience,” Bolden told me weeks before she boarded a Swissair flight from Boston to her new hockey season home. “I’ve played in every league I could possible play in North America. I didn’t think it was time for me to quit and I really just wanted to put myself out of my comfort zone and experience new things and be able to travel in a basically different environment.”
Bolden discusses her move, the decision behind it, and her hockey future in the latest Color of Hockey podcast.
She stresses that her desire to have an international hockey experience was the main factor in her packing her stick bag and heading off to Switzerland.
But Bolden added that the feeling that she wasn’t given due consideration by USA Hockey for a spot on the 2018 U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team that will compete in South Korea in February made her decision easier.
HC Lugano defenseman Blake Bolden, right, in Swiss women’s league action.
Bolden figured she had the hockey pedigree to at least earn look. She won a CWHL championship with the Boston Bladesin 2014-15 and was a league all-star. She hoisted the NWHL championship trophy in 2015-16 and earned all-star honors with Boston Pride.
She captained Boston College’s women’s team 2012-13, and skated on gold medal-winning U.S. national teams at the International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s Under-18 World championships in 2007-08 and 2008-09.
An April 2017 Boston Globe piece questioned why Bolden wasn’t in the mix for the Winter Olympics, quoting former teammates and coaches who said she deserved a shot at a roster spot.
From her native Ohio to Boston to Lugano. oh, the places hockey has taken defenseman Blake Bolden.
The story added that Bolden’s “supporters say Team USA not only has wronged Bolden but has squandered an opportunity to broaden its appeal to girls of color, who are chronically underrepresented in the game.”
Bolden’s says she was cut from the U.S. national team program about three years ago and doesn’t know why.
“I’ve spent a lot of time, I guess, coping with that,” she told me. “Not being kicked off, but cut from the team, it’s been hard. I can’t imagine all of the girls who have been cut from the national team and have gotten their dreams kind of ripped out from underneath them.
HC Lugano defenseman Blake Bolden, right, shares a moment with one of her new teammates.
“It takes a really long time to believe in yourself again, to find that confidence after someone said, basically, you’re not good enough when you really know that you are,” Bolden added.
A USA Hockey official told me last week that Bolden was looked at for the 2018 Olympic team but declined to comment further on player personnel matters.
In April, Rob Koch, a USA Hockey spokesman, told the Boston Globe in April that “As part of the National Women’s Hockey League, Blake has been heavily scouted along with other potential U.S. players and therefore will continue to receive the appropriate consideration.”
With no Olympics invite in sight, Bolden said that embarking on a new hockey adventure in Switzerland is helping her look forward, not back.
“I don’t really think about the past, ‘Well, I didn’t make the Olympic team, poor me.’ That’s not really my personality,” she told me. “I’m going to make my own path. That’s what I’ve been doing since I was seven years old and I picked up a hockey stick. I’m going to make my own path, blaze my own trail. That’s what Blake Bolden does best.”
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For Blake Bolden, it’s a matter of curing a case of wanderlust and fulfilling the desire to keep on keeping on in hockey.
After two seasons with the Boston Pride, Blake Bolden will play in Switzerland in 2017-18 (Photo/NWHL).
The all-star defenseman began thinking last September that she wouldn’t return to the Boston Pride of the National Women’s National Hockey League after two seasons and she started to look for a new team – and a new country – to showcase her skills.
“I was on the women’s hockey profile website that lets you know all the professional teams and where they are,” Bolden told me recently. “I see Lugano, and I Googled it, and I just told myself ‘I’m going there.'”
Bolden, 26, recently signed on to play for the HC Luganowomen’s team in Switzerland. Located in southern Switzerland’s Italian-speaking Ticino region, Lugano is the country’s ninth-largest city and is about a 50-mile drive from Milan, Italy.
“I am extremely excited just for a new change, just to be in a different environment,” said Bolden, who’s already started to learn Italian. “I think it will be fun. It will be scary, it will put me out of my comfort zone. So that’s why I wanted to do it: just to get another box checked before I get too old, which isn’t coming anytime soon.”
Former Boston Pride defenseman Blake Bolden says the time is right for her to experience playing hockey overseas (Photo/Meg Linehan courtesy Blake Bolden).
Time and timing were the biggest factors in packing up and heading to Lugano. After four years as a hockey standout at Boston College, two seasons with the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women’s Hockey Leagueafter being the first African-American selected in the first round of that league’s draft, and two season’s with the Pride, she feels it’s time to leave Boston.
She admits that the decision to go was made easier when she didn’t receive an invite from USA Hockey to try out for the women’s team that will compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
“I had been in the CWHL for two years, I’ve been in the NWHL for two years, and I’ve been in Boston for seven so I wanted to do something else and I didn’t get an invite to the Olympic tryouts, so I figured ‘Why not?'” she told me.
Very excited to announce I'll be playing for @hclugano in Switzerland 🇨🇭next year! Thank you everyone for your support, let's get that cup 🏆 pic.twitter.com/L2bszjRZxV
Bolden said she didn’t expect to get an invite because she wasn’t invited to prior pre-Olympics camps, even though “people were saying that I was getting looked at” by USA Hockey.
A Boston Globe article in April questioned why Bolden didn’t appear to be under serious Olympics consideration by USA Hockey.
A Stow, Ohio, native, Boldentallied 2 goals and 13 assists in 35 NWHL games over two seasons. She had 8 goals and 24 assists in 45 games over her CWHL career and 26 goals and 56 assists in 139 NCAA Division I women’s hockey games.
“It’s hard to say why they haven’t given her an opportunity,” Boston College hockey Coach Katie King Crowley told the newspaper. “Blake is awesome in every way. I would always want her on my team if I’m the coach.”
“Yeah, it is frustrating and it’s a big pill to swallow and it seems to come up in almost every conversation I that have with a reporter,” Bolden said to me about the lack of an Olympics look-see. “It’s fine. It’s just something I have to deal with. I can choose to be upset about it or I can choose to take the lemonade that I’m making from the lemons that I have right now, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m happy and I think everything happens for a reason, and I’m on a different path. I really have no regrets or wish that things turned out differently. At first, as a younger adult, it was troublesome for my family, and closest friends, and myself. But it’s okay now. It’s all good.”
Bolden said moving to Lugano will help fulfill her deep desire to compete internationally. She’s only done that twice, playing for the United States at the International IceHockey Federation World Women’s Under-18 Championships in 2008 in Canada and 2009 in Germany.
Bolden said the state of the NWHL’s finances didn’t play a factor in her decision to go overseas. The NWHL, which completed its second season, is the first North American women’s league to offer players a salary, ranging from $10,000 to $26,000.
But league officials informed players in November that their pay would be cut because of money troubles. An anticipated 50 percent pay cut was avertedby a $50,000 contribution by Dunkin’ Donuts.
— swisshockeynews.ch (@SwissHockeyNews) May 13, 2017
Bolden said she’ll receive about $3,500 a month playing for Lugano during the 2017-18 season. In addition, the team supplies lodging, health insurance, and access to a vehicle.
“It’s not like I’m making a crazy amount of money in Lugano,” she told me. “My pedigree, I have some great accomplishments as far as firsts, especially being an African–American in these leagues. I just want to keep experiencing new opportunities. So that’s another box that I’m excited to check off. Maybe I’ll go out there for one season and return to the NWHL, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m taking it one season at a time at this moment.”
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Congratulations to Boston College Eagles defenseman Kaliya Johnson for recently signing a free agent contract with the Connecticut Whale of the second-year National Women’s HockeyLeague.
“It’s a little surreal for me right now,” said Johnson, who inked a one-year, $13,000 deal. “Obviously, it’s always been a dream of mine since I was younger to play professional hockey. It feels like such a huge honor to be part of history and just to continue to play hockey, which I’m absolutely thrilled about.”
BC defenseman Kalyia Johnson inks one-year deal with NWHL’s Connecticut Whale.
So’s the Whale. Team General Manager Lisa Giovanelli said Johnson “is a great player and a strong , solid defenseman that adds depth to our blue line.”
“Coming off a tremendous senior season at Boston College, in which they finished with a record of 40-1, Kaliya knows what it takes to win games and consistently compete at a high level.”
She played 142 career games for the Eagles, scoring 43 points on 7 goals and 36 assists. The Eagles rolled through the 2015-16 regular season and lost in the NCAA Women’s Frozen Four championship game in March to the University of Minnesota Gophers 3-1.
The California-born, Arizona-raised Johnson was one of the more compelling hockey stories of the 2014-15 hockey season. Prior to the season she learned that she suffered from aChiari malformation, a rare structural condition of the brain and spinal cord that contributes to a smaller than normal space for the brain, pressing it downward.
“Basically, my brain was sitting below the base of my skull. It was something I was born with,” Johnson told me in February 2015. “I had symptoms all my life – little things like pressure headaches, getting migraines. I thought it was normal for me.”
Johnson had surgery in September 2015 that she said “opened up some space and removed the first vertebrae in my neck, so there was more room to breathe back there.”
“It could have been a lot more damaging if I would have continued to keep playing and I got hit in the head wrong, or my back,” she said. “It would have been permanently damaging.”
She missed about two months of the 2014-15 season after the surgery and has been healthy ever since.
“I’m perfectly good,” she said.
As excited as Johnson is about joining the NWHL, Blake Bolden, an African-American defenseman for the league champion Boston Pride a former teammate of Johnson’s at BC, was excited about the possibility of the two being reunited in Boston.
“Her senior year was my freshman year,” Johnson said. “It was great having her by my side and her teaching me everything that she knows. That would have been an added bonus for me playing in the NWHL, to be able to play with her again. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. But she’s a great competitor, and I’m real excited about playing against her because she’s a real sharp player.”
The NWHL consists of four teams – the Whale, the Pride, the New York Riviters, and the Buffalo Beauts. Players are paid and the teams adhere to a salary cap that was $270,000 in its inaugural season.
The salaries aren’t a living wage and players have to hold down jobs to supplement their incomes. Still, Johnson is proud to be called a professional.
The Game That Almost Didn’t Happen became a happening Thursday afternoon for Boston Pride defenseman Blake Bolden.
Bolden scored the tying goal of the first Outdoor Women’s Classicpresented by Scotiabank, an abbreviated running-time match between the professional National Women’s HockeyLeague Pride and the rival Canadian Women’s Hockey League LesCanadiennes that ended in a 1-1 draw.
Despite the game being a last-minute addition to the the 2016 BridgestoneNHL Winter Classic festivities at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and despite USA Hockey not making several Pride skaters available for the game because they were engaged in the last day of training camp ahead of a world championship competition, those who played and watched the outdoor game enjoyed themselves.
Perhaps none more than Bolden, a former Boston College women’s hockey team captain and the first African-American to play in the NWHL and the CWHL.
Thursday’s game almost didn’t happen because of tension between the NWHL, a first-year league that pays its players, and the more established CWHL, which doesn’t offer its skaters salaries.Think pre-merger National Football League-American Football League or National Hockey League-World Hockey Association hate.
Throw in USA Hockey’s stance on not releasing national team players for the classic, and the odds of the women’s outdoor game coming off looked dim.
Talks between NWHL Commissioner Dani Rylan and CWHL Commissioner Brenda Andress and intervention by the NHL helped make the game a reality.
“I think this was a great first step. I would say that the NHL was standing in the middle, holding our hands, as we walked to Gillette, so to speak,” Rylan told Yahoo Sports’ Puck Daddy blog. “But it was a good first step.”
Still, things weren’t ideal. The ice conditions for the afternoon game were problematic. Pride forward Denna Laing suffered an injury when she stepped on a stick and crashed into the boards.
The historic game wasn’t televised or streamed online. And instead of three 20-minute periods, the game was two 15-minute periods played in running time.
Three women of color played in Thursday’s game: Bolden, Pride forward Rachel Llanes and Les Canadiennes forward Julie Chu, who carried the U.S. flag during the closing ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
“I think that this was an incredible first stepping stone for all of us,” Chu told reporters after the game. “Hopefully, next year we’re introduced into the game a bit earlier so there’s more promotion of the event. We always have to start with one step and hopefully take the next step and continue to move forward and grow.”
The Outdoor Women’s Classicpresented by Scotiabank is part of the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic festivities that will culminate on New Year’s day with an Original Six outdoor match between the BostonBruins and Montreal Canadiens at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, home of the National Football League New EnglandPatriots.
“A new year signifies a new chapter and we look forward to sharing the ice for the first time with two professional women’s team’s on the (NHL’s) biggest stage,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said.
The women’s game features teams from the first-year, four-team NWHL, which pays its players, and the more-established, five-team, CWHL, which doesn’t offer salaries to its players.
“We are humbled and honored to be part of the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic festivities at Gillette Stadium,” NWHL Commissioner DaniRylan said. “This wonderful stage for women’s hockey wouldn’t be possible without the tireless dedication of (NHL Commissioner) GaryBettman, Bill Daly and many others behind the scenes at the National Hockey League.”
Rylan also thanked CWHL Commissioner Brenda Andress and her lieutenants who’ve “been part of this collaborative process since the beginning.”
The women’s game in the Patriots’ stadium has been somewhat of a football involving the NWHL, CWHL and USA Hockey, the governing body for the sport in the United States.
USA Hockey said U.S. women’s national team program members, like Pride players Hilary Knight and Brianna Decker, won’t be available for the Women’s Classic because they will be attending the last day of training for the World Championships.
Still, Pride defenseman Blake Bolden, the first African-American to play in the WNHL and CWHL, said the outdoor showcase is another milestone for women’s professional hockey.
Boston Pride defenseman Blake Bolden, left, calls the Women’s Classic outdoor game between NWHL and CWHL teams a boost for women’s hockey (Photo/NWHL).
“I think it’s really cool that the Boston Bruins and the Canadiens are playing and we’re playing Les Canadiennes,” she told me. “People are starting to respect the women’s game more and more. I just hope that it’s televised on Thursday and the nation can see how much effort we put into this sport that we love to play.”
Shannon Szabados isn’t a member of an NWHL or CWHL team, but she’s a pro hockey player who is ending 2015 in style.
Szabodos, an Edmonton native, is in her second season with SPHL. She was a member of Canada’s gold medal-winning Winter Olympics women’s hockey teams in 2010 and 2014.
It’s in a picture frame hanging on a wall in Blake Bolden’s Boston apartment, the historic and happy reminder that she is indeed a professional hockey player.
Boston Pride’s Blake Bolden (Photo/Meg Linehan courtesy Blake Bolden)
Elite female hockey players with professional aspirations finally have a North American league of their own in which they play and get paid. The league consists of four teams – the Pride, Connecticut Whale, Buffalo Beauts, and the New York Riveters.
“It’s still kind of like a pinch me-type feeling,” Bolden said of her paycheck and the league’s inaugural season. “It’s an awesome little reminder of how far we’ve come and the dreams you have when you’re a little girl. It’s surreal.”
At 24, Bolden is a perpetual hockey history-maker. The defenseman was the first African-American player in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League– which doesn’t pay salaries to its players – as a member of the Boston Bladesin the 2013-14 season.
After two seasons with the Blades, Bolden became the NWHL’s first black player when she signed on with the the Pride as a free agent.
“My family likes to kid around, they say ‘Blake, you like to do a lot of firsts.’ I say ‘I’m trying over here,'” she said. “I love when younger black girls come up to me and talk to me. I always give them my contact information because it is a responsibility. I strongly encourage black girls to pick up a stick because hockey consumes me. It’s my favorite thing to do, it’s my home, essentially.”
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Bolden starred for Boston College from 2009-10 to 2012-13 and wore the captain’s “C” for the Eagles women’s hockey team in her senior year. She tallied 27 goals and 56 assists in 138 NCAA hockey contests, ranking her third all-time in scoring among Boston College’s women defensemen.
Bolden said one of the joys of being at BC was playing with Kaliya Johnson, an African-American defenseman who grew up in Los Angeles and Arizona. Johnson is a senior at BC this season and will be eligible for the 2016 NWHL Draft.
Boston Pride defenseman Blake Bolden in action (Photo/Kaitlin S. Cimini).
“People used to say ‘Oh, the twins,’ not in a disrespectful, racist way,” Bolden said. “It was just funny that we both decided to go to the same school. I love that she went to BC and I was able to play with her for a couple of years.”
Bolden said she never would have become a hockey player had it not been for her mother’s boyfriend, a man she considers a father. He was a hockey enthusiast who worked part-time for the Cleveland Lumberjacks of the old International Hockey League.
“I used to go to all the IHL games in Cleveland,” she recalled. “Because he worked for the team, I used to get to go into the locker room, they (Lumberjacks players) would come to my birthday parties, the mascot would show up everywhere, and I was just totally enthralled. Hockey became my life ever since.”
Forward Jessica Koizumi is another hockey-lifer and NWHL player who framed her first pro paycheck as a keepsake. Probably the best professional hockey player born in Honolulu, she captains the currently undefeated Connecticut Whale.
“I never thought a paid professional hockey league for women would happen in my lifetime and I feel blessed every day I get to put on our jersey,” said Koizumi, who picked up the sport when her family moved to Minnesota and later to California. “Being a part of history in the making is special and I am having a blast.”
Koizumi, aka “Tsunami,” has a prominent place in the NWHL record book as the player who scored the league’s first goal, a power play tally against the Riveters in October.
“Knowing what it stood for was very emotional for me,” she told me. “The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto just asked me to send my stick that I used to score the first goal a few weeks ago. It makes for a very fun trivia question and a neat memory to have.”
Not that Koizumi, 30, is short on hockey memories. She was a member of the United States team that won the Gold Medal at the 2008 InternationalIce Hockey Federation World Women’s Championship in China.
She helped power the UMD Bulldogs to the NCAA Women’s Frozen Four championship game in 2006-07, a 4-1 loss to the rival Wisconsin Badgers.
Like Bolden, Koizumi gravitated to the CWHL after college, playing part-time for the then-called Montreal Stars and the Boston Blades. She helped lead the Blades to Clarkson Cupchampionships in 2012-13 and 2014-15.
When not leading the Connecticut Whale, forward Jessica Koizumi is an assistant women’s hockey coach at Yale University.
Still, Koizumi views the NWHL as the perfect vehicle to take professional women’s hockey to the next level, especially if the league raises its $270,000 team salary capto better enable players to devote all their time and energy to the game.
With practice twice a week and one game a weekend, NWHL players juggle hockey with full-time jobs to make ends meet. Koizumi works as an assistant coach for Yale University’s women’s hockey team.
Bolden is employed by Inner City Weightlifting, a non-profit program that provides education and job training in the physical fitness field for Boston’s at-risk residents.
“I would like to see more investors and sponsors supporting our league and keep growing the fan base to make sure it’s sustainable,” Koizumi told me. “I don’t need to get too greedy, but it would be nice to have our salary cap grow so that in due time we can be paid full time and not have to supplement our income with another job.”
Koizumi represented the U.S. at the 2008 IIHF World Women’s Championship in China.
And with success on the ice and at the gate, Koizumi envisions the NWHL expanding to other cities in the not-too-distant future.
“I see franchises growing in Minnesota, Chicago, and possibly Vermont,” she said. “I hope one day we can merge with the CWHL because that would make the most sense having a few Canadian cities in our league.”
The league already embarked on an international adventure when the Riveters traveled to Japan earlier this month to play games against Smile Japan, the country’s national women’s team that competed in the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2015 IIHF Women’s WorldChampionship in Malmo, Sweden.
Smile Japan goaltender Nana Fujimoto, who was named top goaltender at the IIHF tournament, is on the Riveters’ roster.
“This league has built a platform for young girls to aspire to,” Koizumi told me. “It certainly is fun for us players to have fans and young girls aspiring to be like us.”
