Inside a historic ladies’s hockey battle and why it modified PWHL guidelines: ‘We had been battling on the market’

For nearly a decade, Jill Saulnier was an vitality line ahead for the Canadian ladies’s nationwide group, profitable two Olympic medals and a world championship.

Now she will add a brand new line to her resume: She threw the primary actual punches within the historical past of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey League, in a battle with Ottawa ahead Tereza Vanišová.

“We had been battling on the market,” Saulnier instructed The Athletic. “She obtained a maintain of my stick and dropped it down, and that was simply sort of the inexperienced flag for me …. I mentioned, ‘Let’s go.’”

The primary authentic battle within the #PWHL. 🥊 @PWHL_Boston’s Jill Saulnier & @PWHL_Ottawa’s Tereza Vanišová sq. off. #PWHL@jill_saulnier @VanisovaTereza pic.twitter.com/L6fr5biVmv

— Melissa Burgess (@_MelissaBurgess) February 21, 2025

The Feb. 20 battle throughout a sport between the Boston Fleet and Ottawa Cost was the first-ever within the PWHL and one of many league’s most viral moments.

Fights aren’t fully new to ladies’s hockey. There was a line brawl between Canada and the USA at a pre-tournament sport forward of the 2014 Olympics, and one other within the now-defunct Nationwide Girls’s Hockey League in 2016.

There are normally massive hits and scrums after whistles on the skilled and worldwide degree. However these moments — with fists flying — have been few and much between.

For the gamers concerned within the PWHL’s first battle, it was only a pure a part of the ladies’s sport and a product of the elevated physicality allowed within the league.

“It’s a heated sport, it’s a bodily sport, and we’re all very aggressive,” mentioned Saulnier, now a ahead for Boston after a January commerce from the New York Sirens. “It’s simply the best way that the chips sort of fell within the nook.”

The build-up to the battle included successful and no less than two additional crosschecks by Saulnier in opposition to Vanišová, one in every of Ottawa’s prime scoring forwards. When Vanišová obtained up, she threw Saulnier’s persist with the bottom.

“I felt just like the warranted subsequent transfer was a tough proper,” Saulnier mentioned. “Within the second, it was bodily and that battle needed to occur. It was proper there and it was a message from either side.”

Neither participant dropped their gloves, as is customary in males’s hockey, given ladies’s gamers put on full cages that defend their face — not visors like most NHLers put on, which depart most of their face uncovered. In each leagues, gamers will not be allowed to take away their helmets to battle.

“You’d simply look foolish to completely drop the gloves,” Saulnier mentioned, given they’d be punching a cage with their naked arms.

The almost 6,000 followers at TD Place Enviornment in Ottawa had been on their ft. So had been the gamers on every bench. 5 minutes after the battle, Ottawa defender Ronja Savolainen scored to make the sport 2-1 late within the third interval. When Vanišová obtained out of the penalty field, she scored with solely three seconds left within the sport to ship it to additional time and register the primary unofficial “Gordie Howe hat trick” within the league’s historical past — when a participant scores a aim, assists on a aim and fights in the identical sport.

“I assumed it was superior, it obtained the followers going,” Saulnier mentioned. “I’m certain I’ll get a pair boos subsequent time I’m going in there, however please know, it was all respectful and it was plenty of enjoyable.”

Ottawa finally misplaced 3-2 in additional time and Saulnier and Vanišová shared a second within the postgame handshake line to say, “Good battle.”

“You see the depth of the sport and that’s the enjoyable a part of this league,” mentioned Ottawa coach Carla MacLeod after the sport. “Neither participant backed down and I think there will likely be slightly little bit of buzz about it, which isn’t unhealthy for the sport both.”

The battle made worldwide information with headlines in TMZ and the Day by day Mail, shops that don’t sometimes cowl ladies’s hockey. And it went viral on social media whereas 16 million individuals throughout North America had been watching Canada and the USA within the 4 Nations Face-Off finale.

Within the final week, followers have given Saulnier bracelets that spell out “Struggle Membership” in beads and T-shirts that say “Jill Saulnier Struggle Membership,” which one in every of her relations wore to Boston’s sport in opposition to Montreal on the Bell Centre on Saturday.

“I feel extra individuals reached out than once we gained a gold medal,” mentioned Saulnier, a member of the 2022 Canadian Olympic group. “Clearly you shouldn’t battle each sport, however I feel it was really good as a result of it obtained extra eyes on the league.”

The PWHL, which solely formally began in January 2024, will take the publicity. The battle was additionally a pleasant little bit of proof that the league is stuffed with expert gamers who can play with finesse and pace, but in addition embrace physicality. Nonetheless, fights aren’t one thing they wish to be the norm.

The league’s rulebook clearly states that “combating isn’t a part of the PWHL’s sport.” And earlier than final month’s altercation, there wasn’t a ton of readability on what penalties referees may impose aside from that gamers who battle shall be penalized and could also be ejected from the sport.

Saulnier and Vanišová had been solely given roughing minors for his or her battle, which led to some confusion over the principles. Final week, the league clarified {that a} battle will now be penalized with a 5-minute main penalty and a sport misconduct, with a chance of additional self-discipline following a evaluate and bearing in mind repeat offenders.

Based on Saulnier, Boston normal supervisor Danielle Marmer calls it “the Jill Saulnier rule.”

The brand new guidelines ought to deter gamers from incessantly combating. In a brief, 30-game season, gamers won’t be keen to sit down out an additional sport simply to offer their group a lift of vitality post-fight. The tools barrier will even proceed to be a pure deterrent for combating in ladies’s hockey.

Past that, combating is much from widespread at different ranges of the ladies’s sport. Even bodychecking has by no means been permitted in youth women hockey, which suggests these expertise will not be sometimes taught. In boys hockey, bodychecking is launched on the under-14 degree and by the point a participant will get to the skilled degree, combating has very a lot been a part of the sport.

Saulnier doesn’t suppose her battle goes to open the floodgates to extra moments like that sooner or later. However, she mentioned, it actually gained’t be the final time we see a battle in ladies’s skilled hockey.

“With the extent of physicality, you’ll by no means not see it within the PWHL,” she mentioned.

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Pictures: Troy Parla / Getty Photos)