Tag: Danielle Goyette

Meghan Duggan the latest ray of sunlight in the dawning of a new day for the NHL

The New Jersey Devils’ freshly minted manager of player development is gay.

Openly gay.

And married.

And the openly gay married couple have a son.

Gillian Apps, Meghan Dugann and baby George.

This appears to be the new National Hockey League, even if certain of the on-ice activity we’ve witnessed in the current Stanley Cup tournament remains rather primitive, whereby a set of hairy knuckles formed into a fist continues to be thought of, also used, as a tool with merit.

The aforementioned Devils failed to qualify as participants in the post-season runoff, a spring ritual that will drag us into summer this time around, but although looking in with their noses pressed against the window they have provided us with another clear signal that the NHL has advanced beyond the Stone Age and embraces its place in the 21st century, the sometimes barbaric activity on its frozen ponds notwithstanding.

The Devils did this with the appointment of Meghan Duggan as manager of player development on Wednesday.

Meghan Duggan and Gillian Apps.

Meghan certainly brings a glittering array of bona fides to her portfolio: Seven-time world champion, Olympic champion, captain of the U.S. women’s national team, winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the nation’s foremost female collegiate player, Canadian Women’s Hockey League champion, college coach, etc.

But it’s in the area of social progress that the New Jersey franchise struck the most-sonorous note.

Duggan, you see, is married to Gillian Apps, a one-time fierce foe with the Canadian national women’s hockey team, and baby made three in February 2020 when the two women welcomed their son, George Apps-Duggan, into the world.

If we know anything at all about the NHL, it’s that openly gay people are more rare than a full set of teeth.

Manon Rheaume

You can count the number of gay players on the fingers of…oh, wait…no gay NHL skater has ever come out, past or present. There have been more confirmed sightings of Sasquatch. Hell, a woman has participated in a game, and never mind that it was the carnival barker in Phil Esposito that arranged for Manon Rheaume to occupy the blue paint for Tampa Bay Lightning in a 1992 exhibition exercise.

She might have been Espo’s idea of Sideshow Bobbi, but the reality is more women have appeared in an NHL game than openly gay men.

Yet as much as the pungency of homophobia continues to linger at the upper crust of men’s hockey like the inside of bowling shoes, a fresh breeze of diversity is drifting through the front offices of numerous franchises.

Duggan joins an organization that already includes Kate Madigan as executive director of hockey management/operations, and the expansion Seattle Kraken recruited American legend Cammi Granato as a pro scout in September 2019. The Chicago Blackhawks brought Kendall Coyne Schofield on board as a player development coach last November, and the Toronto Maple Leafs bumped Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser up the food chain this week, promoting her to the position of senior director of player development. Her first order of business as boss lady was to bring former teammate Danielle Goyette into the fold. Like Granato, both Doc Wick and Goyette are ring-bearing members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Christine Simpson, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Leah Hextall.

Meanwhile, in the blurt box, female voices are being heard at an increasing volume. ESPN plans to put Leah Hextall behind a play-by-play mic on its NHL coverage next season, and she joins a widening chorus that includes Kate Scott, AJ Mleczko, Jennifer Botterill, Christine Simpson, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Cheryl Pounder.

But it’s perhaps the Duggan hiring that carries the greatest resonance, because her sexual orientation makes it barrier-breaking and serves as a point of progress for those of us in the LGBT(etc.) collective.

“It’s a huge part of my life and who I am, and it’s incredibly important to me to represent a variety of different communities,” Meghan told Matt Larkin of The Hockey News. “It’s certainly a responsibility, but it’s a privilege at the same time. In regards to being a woman, being a working mom, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, representation matters. For a lot of my life, I have been doing inclusion work, trying to make hockey more inclusive and diverse and to bring a variety of different personalities and backgrounds into the fold. For the Devils to welcome me into the fold, it shows that’s important to them as well. That speaks volumes to the culture aspect of the Devils and what they value.”

Yes, a new day has dawned in the NHL, even if some on the ice continue to bare their hairy knuckles and balk at joining the rest of us in the 21st century.

Holy estrogen, Batman! Look what the Maple Leafs and ESPN have done to hockey’s old boys’ club

There aren’t many things that make a member of the male species pucker up quite like the sound of a medic snapping on a rubber glove for a prostate exam, but I can think of at least three:

  1. Being asked to hold his wife’s/girlfriend’s purse in the middle of a crowded mall.
  2. Being asked to make a pit stop at the local 7-Eleven on the way home to pick up a box of Tampons.
  3. Women in men’s hockey.

The first two make dudes fidget and squirm like mom just found the porn collection, and the third…well, let’s just say there’s a constituency that still travels to and fro in horse and buggy and grapples with the notion of women earning the right to vote.

Doc Wick

We were reminded of this on Monday when the Toronto Maple Leafs forgot that the National Hockey League is an old boys’ club and had the (apparent) bad manners to nudge Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser up the food chain, anointing her senior director of player development.

And, wouldn’t you know it, Hayley’s first order of business was to boost the Leafs’ estrogen level even higher by bringing her former Canadian national women’s team linemate and fellow Hockey Hall of Famer, Danielle Goyette, on board as director of player development, proving Doc Wick already has a good handle on how hockey’s buddy system works.

“If it’s good with Hayley, it’s good with me,” Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe told news snoops.

What in the name of Gloria Steinem can possibly be next? Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Jennifer Botterill joining Keefe behind the bench?

Naturally, once word of the Leafs’ appointments worked its way along the grapevine, the oinkers rushed to their keyboards like there’d been a “Sooey!” call, and they unleashed a tsunami of sexist tripe. Some examples:

“Next hockey night in Canada will be Hayley, Danielle, Cassie and Jennifer. It will be like watching The View.

“Laugh’s org. pulling another Nancy.”

“Diversity must be the flavour of the week.”

“She’ll be the next leafs GM after Dubas.”

“So that would make it two female GMs in succession for the Leafs. Such a progressive, woke organization they are.”

“Token appointments.”

Alas, the oinkers’ day worsened.

The New York Post reported that ESPN had recruited Leah Hextall to work the play-by-play mic for X number of games during the 2021-22 NHL crusade and, like Doc Wick and Goyette, Leah is not a penis person, so the Worldwide Leader In Sports has some nerve adding a high-pitched, shrill voice to its stable of hockey squawkers.

Leah Hextall

“Horrible and utterly repulsive,” wrote one reader in The Athletic. “Cannot stand how women have to constantly inject themselves in men’s sports because of a deep gender inferiority complex. Don’t care her background, she has never played NHL hockey (obviously) so she possesses absolutely no direct first-hand knowledge of hockey on that level much less playoff hockey. Whoever approved her to work on hockey games is a piece of garbage.”

Someone else expressed a fear that a female play-by-play hockey voice would steer ESPN into the deepest and darkest of rabbit holes, whereby they’d hire a transgender broadcaster.

Oh, the humanity.

I’m quite uncertain where it’s written that a pair of testicles is a requirement for talking hockey. Or football and basketball, for that matter.

Cheryl with Vic and Russ.

I mean, where’s the hue and cry when Dottie Pepper gives us her thoughts during a PGA tournament? And what about Cheryl Bernard and, before her, Linda Moore in natter with Vic Rauter and Russ Howard/Moosie Turnbull during an elite men’s curling match. Oh, wait. It’s only curling, and if you don’t drive by a wheat field and grain silo on your way to work you probably don’t give a damn.

It’s only a female voice in the blurt box of the he-man sports that seems to put men’s boxers in a bunch, even as Jennifer Botterill serves as living, breathing proof that a female is capable of stringing together three or more intelligent sentences on shinny, something that puts her a notch or two above Anthony Stewart and other penis people on Hockey Night in Canada.

The thing is, as far as I know Jennifer has yet to mention feminine hygiene products during her intermission gig, and I doubt that’ll be a talking point for Leah Hextall, either.

So at ease, boys. It might feel like the Leafs and ESPN have given you a good, swift kick to the gonads, but this shall pass.

In the meantime, just remember that real men aren’t afraid to hold a purse in public and, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t forget to pick up the Tampons on the way home.