MAJOR: A first female player in an NHL game this season?
A major piece of information has just been shared in an article by the excellent journalist Ian Kennedy, on The Hockey News.
He claims that we might witness a first in the NHL this year, as a female player could participate in a real regular season game.
The reason for this is quite simple, and it makes a lot of sense. Essentially, this would be largely due to what is called the EBUG, or the emergency goalie in case of injury to the two main goaltenders of a team.
This is a situation that has occurred quite often in recent seasons, where we have witnessed several fantastic stories, including those of David Ayres, Scott Foster, Jorge Alves, Thomas Hodges, Matt Berlin, and more recently, Jett Alexander.
In short, where it currently falls short with the "EBUGs", is that they are generally an arena employee, a goalie coach, or a Zamboni driver, for example. As you can see, they are not necessarily high-level athletes, to put it mildly.
In connection with these emergency goaltender, Kennedy claims that with the recent creation of the PWHL, the professional women's hockey league, many elite goaltenders will now be available.
In this case, they are trained and they are among the best in the world. It has nothing to do with a beer league replacement as we have seen in recent years.
Obviously, in addition to being seriously a much more professional emergency option for NHL teams, very interesting stories could emerge from this, in the event that a woman had to act as a substitute for a regular season game.
We love the idea and we greatly wish to see such a situation occur in the coming seasons.
Credit : Habs et LNH
| POLL | ||
Do you like the idea of seeing a real professional female goaltender act as an emergency goalie, rather than an arena employee? | ||
| Yes | 40 | 61.5 % |
| No | 25 | 38.5 % |
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