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On April 1st, hockey fans on Twitter tweeted, “Name 7 players. Not 1. Not 2… 5-7. First and last name… Good luck.” ” Ryan's comments may seem innocuous, but Megan Chayka, a data scientist and co-founder of hockey company Staretes, live-tweeted her excitement for the NCAA women's basketball Elite Eight game between Iowa and LSU. It was in response to what I did. Chayka's original tweet read, “Why does it look like everyone is watching women's basketball??” Oh, because everyone is watching. ” She wasn’t wrong. Women's basketball is reaching new heights in popularity for a variety of reasons, including excellent marketing, national broadcasts and brand recognition, and the emergence of visible stars such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and JuJu Watkins. Hockey and basketball don't often overlap, but Ryan's comments forced them to do so and sparked a lot of discussion surrounding misogyny in sports, especially hockey.
Ryan's comments were controversial, with female hockey fans, myself included, reacting with varying degrees of disdain due to the misogyny inherent in the commentary. Misogyny is ingrained in all aspects of society. For many female sports fans, our sport is an escape from the prejudices and worst situations we experience every day. I empathize with Ryan's girlfriend's past struggles. I empathize with the anxiety and deep pain of attacking someone like my girlfriend Ryan. But I condemn Ryan's comment as much as possible. Women in hockey are no longer hitting punching bags to satisfy their egos. The condescending nature of these tweets is familiar to all women in sports. Prove that you deserve to be in this space.Prove yourself qualified in a way that others don't have to do. I ask: If a hockey player tweeted what Chayka did, would Ryan and others ask them to name the seven players?
Ryan's comments were not only misogynistic, they were poorly timed. Similar to the boom in women's basketball, the PWHL experienced a new influx of popularity in its first year. I'm sure good marketing and wide accessibility are contributing factors to that reason, but it's not hard to conclude that maybe, just maybe, women's sports are great. Women's sports are great not because they're mean, but because they grow the game in ways unimaginable in recent history, whether it's basketball or hockey. Women's sports leagues should exist and be well marketed because women's sports give female athletes the same opportunities as male athletes.
Hockey culture is a controversial term. But make no mistake, Ryan's comments represent to some extent what hockey culture means: an old man's club unwilling to accept change. Now he's not 1994, he's 2024. Why is misogyny so common in hockey? (It's culture. It's always culture.) The sport is a reflection of the society that promotes it. It’s up to all of us, whether we have a platform or not, to reshape hockey culture as we know it. Because misogyny in hockey culture is bigger than a Bobby Ryan tweet. It has influenced many aspects of hockey culture as we know it. And it's up to us as representatives of the sport, whether we're fans, reporters, players, coaches, or anyone in between, to change that.
