In late Might, the Minnesota staff of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey League received the inaugural league championship for the Walter Cup. The PWHL was an answer of for a break up between the ladies enjoying for the Premier Hockey Federation and the ladies of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation.
The answer was a six-team league, with every staff enjoying a 24-game schedule. The Minnesota staff had solely completed third in league play, and needed to undergo a tense final week of the season to search out out whether or not they would make it into the playoffs. Minnesota did not win a recreation of their final 5.
But, below head coach Ken Klee, the staff was in a position to win the title in 5 video games towards the Boston franchise.
However weeks after Minnesota’s win within the Walter Cup last, common supervisor Natalie Darwitz was out of a job. There have additionally been printed stories that Klee has notified a handful of membership workers, employed by Darwitz, that they might not be with the staff subsequent season.
The PWHL is seemingly investigating Klee and his habits not solely within the coaches’ room, but in addition with staff members. His language has been described as racist and ableist. “I’ve by no means seen one thing so poisonous and dealt with so unprofessionally,” a supply tells The Hockey Information.
The teaching scenario for PWHL Minnesota has by no means been steady; previous to the season, head coach Charlie Burggraf had stepped down, and Klee, having utilized for the positions of each common supervisor and head coach, took over the latter.
“When Charlie was let go and Ken got here in, it couldn’t have been extra reverse. Conceited, smug…from that day ahead there began to be a divide for my part; divide within the workers, divide within the gamers, it turned a really poisonous surroundings,” quoted the supply to The Hockey Information.
The surroundings was exacerbated by not solely Klee’s avoidance of Darwitz in staff conditions, however in the way in which he appeared to coddle his captain, Kendall Coyne Schofield. In accordance with sources, Coyne Schofield didn’t take part in staff exercises, and had the assist from different veterans and Klee to conduct their very own exercises separate from the remainder of the staff.
Too, the staff is coping with blowback from its determination to draft former College of Wisconsin captain Britta Curl. Curl has raised hackles throughout the girls’s hockey neighborhood for transphobic feedback on social media.
That, I feel, can be the least of the staff’s issues if the entrance workplace scenario in Minneapolis will get worse.
