Women's hockey's best players finally have a league of their own

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A confusing and frustrating time for anyone who cares about women's hockey is about to end. Last night, a union made up of most of the world's best players ratified a collective bargaining agreement and a constitution for a new league that's been in the works for years before finally coming together rather suddenly over the long weekend.

While the details remain sketchy — we don't know exactly where the franchises will be located or even what the name of the new league will be — the bottom line is this: players from the archrival Canadian and U.S. women's national teams, which have squared off in so many memorable battles at the Olympics and world championships over the years, will finally compete in a single professional league alongside many of the world's other best players.

The genesis of the new league dates back to 2019, when the Canadian Women's Hockey League folded. Rather than join the rival, U.S.-based National Women's Hockey League, Canadian and American national team members decided to strike out on their own. They formed the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association with the goal of establishing their own "sustainable" league — one that would offer better pay, benefits and working conditions than anything that came before it.

That proved difficult to accomplish. So, for the past few years, when they weren't competing for their national teams, most of the best Canadian and American players toiled on the PWHPA's Dream Gap Tour — a barnstorming series that lacked the trappings (and fan appeal) of a traditional pro sports league. Meanwhile, the NWHL rebranded itself the Premier Hockey Federation, grew to seven franchises after expanding to Toronto and Montreal, and began offering higher and higher salaries.

WATCH | Lack of unified pro women's league limits progress:

As they struggled for the upper hand, the rival leagues implored the NHL to help. But Gary Bettman's outfit refused to subsidize either of them, saying it would wait for there to be a single, unified women's league to back. There were merger talks between the PHF and PWHPA, but they went nowhere.

The big breakthrough came Thursday night when billionaire Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter's business group, which had been working with the PWHPA for more than a year, bought out the PHF in order to essentially merge the two entities. A CBA and league constitution were quickly presented to the PWHPA, and the union approved them last night. According to an announcement last week, the league will be "supported financially" by Walter and his wife, Kimbra, and its board members will include Dodgers president Stan Kasten and tennis great Billie Jean King, whose company had also been working with the PWHPA.

The new league will reportedly launch in January with six franchises — three in Canada and three in the U.S. — and a minimum salary of $35,000 US. According to The Athletic's Hailey Salvian, at least six players on each team will receive three-year guaranteed contracts worth at least $80,000 per year. Stars like Canada's Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse and the United States' Hilary Knight and Kendall Coyne Schofield would presumably be in line for those.

This is certainly good news for the PWHPA players, and probably for fans of women's hockey too. But not everyone's a winner here. The PHF players' existing contracts have reportedly been voided, meaning some of the old league's stars are losing out on the six-figure contracts they recently signed. Read more about the new women's pro hockey league here.