Be The "Two-For-Two" Guy

Always Be The "Two-For-Two" Guy

(If you get my other Substack, you have already seen this. It’s just the hockey without the music.)

I want to say some things about women’s hockey, which is having a moment.

As you may know if you have been here a while, I am a fan. I have been a season ticket holder or regular attendee since I became acquainted with The Boston Pride, the professional women’s team that preceded our Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) Boston Fleet.

I still don’t really understand hockey – baseball is my game – but I am learning, and you know what? It just doesn’t matter. The experience of attending these games is its own reward. The games are athletic, electric, entertaining, warm, and most importantly – inclusive. There are so many girls – littles, pre-teens, and teens, who are visibly delighted at being there to support their heroes. I get the sense that a lot of them play youth hockey. There are girl dads, devoted to their daughters, who love to embarrass them by performing for the dance cam. There are hundreds of queer people, and older women in groups. (My Mom was widowed very young, and used to complain that she had a hard time keeping in touch with her many girlfriends, whose lives were very different from hers. But when they all got older and divorced, and/or widowed, they all came back, and they were like a pack of senior party girls, planning travel and activities and living their best lives together. My Mom was not a sports fan, but would have LOVED pro women’s team sports.)

There are also (woke) white men who aren’t girl dads, which is amazing. They appreciate the game, and I assume the vibe, and I want to thank them all for supporting the league.

My introduction to The Pride came in my time at City Hall, when the championship team was being kind of ignored, and someone reached out to the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement, which was part of my portfolio there, and I wanted to help. Part of helping is being present, so I started buying tickets, and dragging everyone who would come to games.

I was actually at their semi-final game at Warrior Arena on Sunday, March 8, 2020 with about 20 friends, watching then-Boston Public Schools superintendent Barbara Casselius, an avid hockey player, drop the ceremonial puck. It was eerie, as we were all grappling with this new coronavirus, nervously wondering what was to come. It would end up being their last public game for a year, and we would shut down the whole city one week later, on March 15.

After I left City Hall, I was part of an informal group of women pleading with local media to cover the Pride (and later the Fleet) just as they covered the men’s teams. We were jealous of the way Canadian media covered their women’s teams, while our local outlets, if they were covering it at all, were using wire reports and burying one paragraph on page seven, or the equivalent. (I’d like to publicly thank our local radio stations WBUR and GBH for responding to us early on and starting to provide coverage.)

I was thrilled when it was announced that Billie Jean King and others would be investing in a new league, and that Boston would have one of the inaugural teams. I was not as thrilled that they would be playing in Lowell, which is a 40-mile, 2-and-a-half-hour drive from my house on a weeknight, but I know getting affordable ice time is a struggle in a hockey town. I still got to as many games as I could, and want everyone to know that there is an excellent Vietnamese restaurant across from Lowell City Hall, a couple of blocks from the arena. You’re welcome.

In 2024, I invited my favorite United States senator to a game, and she’s almost always up for an adventure. We were just going as spectators, but her team of course has to advance her activities, and when they called the team to ask a few questions, the team excitedly told her it was a women’s history-themed event, and invited her to drop the ceremonial puck.

Fun, right?

I will admit, I was a little bit nervous, because she has been the target of a fair amount of vitriol directed at her from a demographic monoculture that boasts some of the biggest assholes I’ve ever encountered in my life, and hockey is their game. (I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out. – Rodney Dangerfield) I was sitting in our seats when she walked out on to the ice, and was relieved when there was a roar of appreciation and loud applause. That is except for one pale doughy blob of a man behind me who yelled a racial slur related to the fallout of a story her grandmother told her about her family lineage and she repeated. He was literally in the seat behind me. But he was drowned out, and very few people heard him.

He must have been SUPER uncomfortable when she took the seat next to mine, and then as he watched a parade of girls and women come to her between plays for selfies. She must have done 200 that day, and I overheard at least a dozen moms tell E-Dubs that their daughters wanted to be a senator just like her. That God up in heaven – she has a sense of humor.

When that 2024 team went on to the finals but lost, I was there. This was the inaugural season, and what struck me about that game, which happened on our home ice in Lowell, was that the Boston fans were so happy and supportive of the team that won (Minneapolis). Everyone in the arena seemed to realize that the season was a win for the league, which was a win for the fans, which was a win for professional women’s sports, which is a win for women and girls.

(I met Billie Jean King that night!!! Thanks to the Lieutenant Governor for forcing me to get a photo. I am always uncomfortable doing that, but goddammit she is Billie Jean King, and I would have regretted not having it.)

In the two subsequent years, the Boston Fleet have played a handful of games in Boston, and I have gone to all of them. Next month, on April 11, they will play their first game at the Boston Garden, and it’s sold out. I will be there. I am taking my sister, who has always loved hockey, and Melissa Ludtke, because that particular trailblazer should be in all the rooms, for what she’s done for women in sports. We need someone to drive us too, so I also invited my friend Dave Silk, Gold Medal Olympian, member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, who I know to be a great supporter of women’s pro sports.

And of course, three members of the Boston Fleet played on the Gold Medal-winning U.S. women’s hockey team, and four others played on teams from other countries. In total, 61 PWHL players played in Milan, including 16 for the U.S. team.

Women’s pro hockey fever has commenced. Excuse me while I try to exploit that. Welcome, everyone! Even pink hats! Like I said – INCLUSIVE.

I should mention that hockey, no matter the gender, does struggle with racial diversity. But I do feel like the PWHL is trying. It has to be a long-term development strategy. And because I can’t stop myself, I would like to implore the PWHL to start paying more attention to music. Yes, I admit that I am a snob. This is well established. I don’t know what they’re doing there exactly, but it sounds like there may be AI involved in the programming, and they play in a venue in Lowell with terrible audio. But I know that they are missing an opportunity to make a great thing greater.

I won’t write much about the incident last week with HeWho and the men’s team, because there have been many good takes explaining how many of us felt in that moment. I will say that I am in awe of the male player who, in that moment of excited confusion, had the poise and composure to yell, “Two-for-two!” It was a joyful outburst in which I found hope. I expect his mom is very proud of him. I know I am.

That’s it for now. Be kind. Don’t participate in locker room talk. Always be the “two-for-two” guy.

Joyce