Blake Bolden is back in the National Women’s Hockey League.
After two seasons with the Boston Pride, defenseman Blake Bolden is playing this season with HC Lugano (Photo/NWHL).
The 27-year-old two-time NWHL All-Star defenseman from Ohio signed with the Buffalo Beauts Wednesday after playing last season for HC Lugano in Switzerland.
“My decision was made pretty quickly,” Bolden told The Buffalo News at the city’s HarborCenter Wednesday. “I had been going back and forth on where I wanted to play next season. I had no idea, and it just felt right about Buffalo. I think it’s going to be a great decision, a great move for me.”
Bolden made the move to Switzerland to get a taste of international hockey and cure a case of wanderlust after she didn’t receive an invite from USA Hockey to attend training camp for the U.S. women’s team that competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics in February.
Defenseman Blake Bolden is bringing her talents back to the NWHL after playing one season in Switzerland (Photo/Courtesy HC Lugano).
“I just wanted a fresh start, something I’ve never done before, a new experience,” Bolden told me last November before heading to Lugano. “I’ve played in every league I could possibly play in North America. I didn’t think it was time for me to quit and I really wanted to put myself out of my comfort zone and experience new things and be able to travel in a basically different environment.”
From her native Ohio to Boston to Lugano and now to Buffalo. Oh, the places hockey has taken defenseman Blake Bolden (Photo/Courtesy HC Lugano).
The former Boston College team captain responded by tallying 16 goals and 11 assists in 20 regular season games for Lugano in 2017-18. She added a goal and 3 assists in six playoff contests.
Bolden is a trailblazer in women’s hockey. She was the first African-American to play in the NWHL and the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. She was an All-Star and won the Clarkson Cup in 2014-15 with the CWHL’s Boston Blades.
“Great player. Big shot, Really good reports on being a great teammate and a hard worker…,” Fattey told The Buffalo News. “It just seemed like a good fit.”
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Editor’s Note: The Color of Hockey is pleased to feature this post written by Erica L. Ayala, a multi-talented New York-based sportswriter, blogger, podcaster, and general media force of nature. She has her own site, ericalayala.com, co-hosts “The Founding Four,” a podcast that focuses on the National Women’s Hockey League, and has written for Excelle Sports, SBNation’s “The Ice Garden,” FanRag Sports, and The Victory Press.
Kim Davis, the NHL’s VP for Social Impact, Growth Initiatives& Legislative Affairs.
Davis brings an extensive amount of experience from the corporate sector to her new role. Previously, she worked on corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts at firms such as the JP Morgan Chase Foundation and, most recently, Teneo, a CEO advisory firm.
She joins Michele Roberts (Executive Director, NBA Players Association), Lisa Borders (President, WNBA), Katrina Adams (President, United States Tennis Association) – to name a few – as women of color in executive roles in professional sports.
In 2012, Davis was profiled with First LadyMichelle Obama in Essence magazine’s 28 Most Influential Black Women in America. She has been named to The Business Journal’s 100 Most Influential Women and Fast Company’s100 Most Creative People in Business.
As an executive, Davis is no doubt a first star. How will that translate to professional hockey? The Color of Hockey caught up with the Spelman College alumna on her second day on the job to discuss the league’s diversity and inclusion efforts such as Hockey is forEveryoneand the Declaration of Principles, as well as the state of professional women’s hockey.
Washington Capitals All Star forward Alex Ovechkin, kneeling, with players from the Fort Dupont Ice Hockey Club, a member of the NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone program (Photo/Patrick McDermott).
“I have a lot to learn about about the sport and the game,” Davis said. “I hope that we’ll have a chance to follow up in the coming months and hopefully you’ll see us making some progress in many of the areas that you outlined.”
As with many insider terms, CSR is often perceived solely in the light of companies donating money and other resources to a cause or community. However, Davis is eager to blend her corporate experience with the goals of the NHL to expand CSR to something more involved.
“When people typically think about corporate social responsibility they often digress to the notion that CSR is philanthropy,” Davis said in a phone interview last Tuesday.
“While a part of CSR is clearly philanthropy the concept of CSR really refers to business and societal practices that operate together to benefit a company or an organization like the NHL stakeholders,” she added.
Addressing the societal practices and culture surrounding hockey includes stakeholders such as coaches, owners, players, fans and the greater community.
Even one of those groups is likely to have varied opinions, let alone all of them. However, Davis feels that hockey and the culture it has cultivated is uniquely designed with certain fundamentals already embedded.
“I think that hockey is uniquely in a position because of the attributes of the games – the humility of the players, the leadership that comes from the way the sport is organized and played. I’m hoping to continue to contribute in bridging that societal piece and that business piece in a way that allows the game to grow and expand its fan base.”
However, there are times when the hockey community has fallen short of inclusion for some. From homophobic language to microaggressions in the broadcast booth, the NHL has endured a fair share of criticism in the last calendar year alone. Add to that limited exposure and professional opportunities for the women’s game and the job of corporate social responsibility and community engagement seems daunting.
Yet, embracing the diversity of hockey is something the league seems eager to do more effectively. In addition to its Hockey is For Everyone initiative, the league has hosted activities that focus awareness on such areas as LGBTQ, ethnicity and gender equality, socio-economic status and people with disabilities.
One such event was the 2017 Willie O’Ree Skills Weekend. It was there that Davis got her first real exposure to the game. She was working with the league as a consultant for diversity and inclusion at the time.
The skills weekend event is named for O’Ree, the NHL’sfirst black player. He now serves as the NHL’s director for youth development.
“I was bowled over with excitement and fascination by the commitment that so many of these coaches and others sponsors and mentors had for the game,” Davis said. “I also have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of kids of color who were exposed to the sport and knowledgeable and fantastic at the sport.”
In addition to the Hockey is For Everyone, the NHL participated in the development of the Declaration of Principles. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and other leaders in hockey unveiled the eight principles in September that state:
Hockey should be an enjoyable family experience; all stakeholders— organizations, players, parents, siblings, coaches, referees, volunteers and rink operators — play a role in this effort.
All hockey organizations – regardless of size or level of competition – bring value to players and families in their ability to deliver a positive family experience.
Hockey programs should be age-appropriate for all players, accounting for each individual’s physical, emotional and cognitive development.
All hockey programs should provide a safe, positive and inclusive environment for players and families regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation and socio-economic status. Simply put, hockey is for everyone.
Davis is now part of a team that seeks to bring these principles to life.
Part of the conversation over the past several years has been where women in hockey fits into such initiatives.
Both the professional Canadian Women’s HockeyLeague and the National Women’s Hockey League have enjoyed partnerships of some kind with individual NHL markets, including the opportunity for the women to play on NHL ice.
These partnerships are important, but have not trickled down to the salaries of female players quite yet. In October,The Ice Garden released salary detailsfor both women’s hockey leagues. Salaries are said to range from $2,000-$10,000 in the CWHL and $5,000-$7,000 in the NWHL.
When asked about the women’s game, Davis said she was unaware of any specific plans. But she noted that “There is a great deal of support and enthusiasm (within the league) about finding new ways to engage women and women in the sport of hockey…”
In her first 30 days, Davis is focused on listening and learning from her team in hopes of starting off 2018 on the right foot.
With Davis’ appointment, the NHL has placed a diversity and inclusion expert at the helm. Now, we eagerly await the impact of her expertise on making manifest the words, hockey is for everyone.
Follow Erica L. Ayala on Twitter at @elindsay08 and at ericalayala.com.
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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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The sophomore from Whitby, Ontario, Canada, McGilldidn’t register a point in Sunday’s championship game, but she was a key contributor to Clarkson reaching the Frozen Four final, scoring the game-winning goal in the Golden Knights’ 4-3 semifinal victory over the University of Minnesota on Friday.
McGill was the Golden Knights sixth-leading scorer in the 2016-17 season with 9 goals and 22 assists in 41 games. In her 2015-16 freshman campaign, she was Clarkson’s seventh-leading scorer with 14 goals and 11 assists in 40 games and was tied for third among ECACrookies with 25 points.
Clarkson’s Rhyen McGill in action against the University of Wisconsin Badgers in NCAA Women’s Frozen Four championship game (Photo/Clarkson University).
Clarkson, a school in Potsdam, New York, finished the 2016-17 regular season with a 32-4-5 overall record and a 19-1-2 record within the ECAC.
University of Wisconsin forward Sarah Nurse.
Sunday’s championship game was the last collegiate contest for Wisconsin forward Sarah Nurse, cousin of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurseand University of Connecticut basketball point guard Kia Nurse.
She was the second-leading Badgers scorer during the regular season with 25 goals and 28 assists in 39 games. She’ll leave Wisconsin as the school’s eighth all-time goal scorer among women with 74.
Professional hockey and a spot on Canada’s 2018 Winter Olympics women’s team could be in Nurse’s future. She was chosen by the Boston Pride with the eighth overall pick in the 2016 National Women’s Hockey LeagueDraft. And she has been a mainstay for Hockey Canada in international tournaments.
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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 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.”
