For nearly a decade, Jill Saulnier was an vitality line ahead for the Canadian ladies’s nationwide staff, successful two Olympic medals and a world championship.
Now she will be able to add a brand new line to her resume: She threw the primary actual punches within the historical past of the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League, in a battle with Ottawa ahead Tereza Vanišová.
“We had been battling on the market,” Saulnier instructed The Athletic. “She acquired a maintain of my stick and dropped it down, and that was simply sort of the inexperienced flag for me …. I stated, ‘Let’s go.’”
The primary reputable 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 recreation 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 totally new to ladies’s hockey. There was a line brawl between Canada and the USA at a pre-tournament game forward of the 2014 Olympics, and one other within the now-defunct Nationwide Ladies’s Hockey League in 2016.
There are often massive hits and scrums after whistles on the skilled and worldwide stage. 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 recreation and a product of the elevated physicality allowed within the league.
GO DEEPER
The art of hitting in women’s hockey: How are PWHL players adapting to a more physical game?
“It’s a heated recreation, it’s a bodily recreation, and we’re all very aggressive,” stated Saulnier, now a ahead for Boston after a January trade from the New York Sirens. “It’s simply the way in which that the chips sort of fell within the nook.”
The build-up to the battle included a success and not less than two additional crosschecks by Saulnier in opposition to Vanišová, one among Ottawa’s prime scoring forwards. When Vanišová acquired up, she threw Saulnier’s follow the bottom.
“I felt just like the warranted subsequent transfer was a tough proper,” Saulnier stated. “Within the second, it was bodily and that battle needed to occur. It was proper there and it was a message from both sides.”
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 go away most of their face uncovered. In each leagues, gamers are usually not allowed to take away their helmets to battle.
“You’d simply look foolish to totally drop the gloves,” Saulnier stated, 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 toes. 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 acquired out of the penalty field, she scored with solely three seconds left within the recreation 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 purpose, assists on a purpose and fights in the identical recreation.
“I believed it was superior, it acquired the followers going,” Saulnier stated. “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 a number of enjoyable.”
Ottawa in the end 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,” stated Ottawa coach Carla MacLeod after the sport. “Neither participant backed down and I believe there will probably be a bit little bit of buzz about it, which is rarely unhealthy for the sport both.”
The battle made worldwide information with headlines in TMZ and the Each day Mail, retailers that don’t sometimes cowl ladies’s hockey. And it went viral on social media whereas 16 million folks 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 “Combat Membership” in beads and T-shirts that say “Jill Saulnier Combat Membership,” which one among her members of the family wore to Boston’s recreation in opposition to Montreal on the Bell Centre on Saturday.
“I believe extra folks reached out than once we received a gold medal,” stated Saulnier, a member of the 2022 Canadian Olympic staff. “Clearly you shouldn’t battle each recreation, however I believe it was really good as a result of it acquired 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 filled with expert gamers who can play with finesse and velocity, but additionally 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 recreation.” And earlier than final month’s altercation, there wasn’t a ton of readability on what penalties referees would possibly 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 foundations. Last week, the league clarified {that a} battle will now be penalized with a 5-minute main penalty and a recreation misconduct, with a risk of additional self-discipline following a evaluate and considering repeat offenders.
In line with Saulnier, Boston common supervisor Danielle Marmer calls it “the Jill Saulnier rule.”
The brand new guidelines ought to deter gamers from regularly combating. In a brief, 30-game season, gamers won’t be prepared to take a seat out an additional recreation simply to provide their staff a lift of vitality post-fight. The tools barrier may 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 recreation. Even bodychecking has by no means been permitted in youth ladies hockey, which implies these expertise are usually not sometimes taught. In boys hockey, bodychecking is launched on the under-14 stage and by the point a participant will get to the skilled stage, 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 stated, it definitely received’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 stated.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photographs: Troy Parla / Getty Pictures)
