When Dani Rylan, 28, failed to land an expansion team for New York City in the Canadian Women's Hockey League, she did the next best thing. She started her own league. With franchises in New York, Buffalo, Connecticut and Boston, the National Women's Hockey League is the first such league in North America to pay salaries, a historic breakthrough that gives its players a better chance to develop their skills between Olympics. No one is getting rich -- the top salary is $25,000 -- but it's a start.
Shortly before the league's inaugural weekend, espnW caught up with Rylan.
espnW: Since you launched the league last March, people have questioned where your financing is coming from. You've never identified your investors, not even to the players. How come?
Dani Rylan: These are people who are totally comfortable and OK with being anonymous. I think that speaks for the game of women's hockey, hockey fans, hockey players in general. No one needs to take the credit for the success that's happening. I respect the investors for wanting to remain anonymous. They definitely have a huge part in the decisions that the league is making. But as far as being in the public eye, they've asked to remain anonymous, and I respect that.
espnW: You realize some people remain skeptical.
Rylan: That's totally fine. I'm very aware that we have a lot to prove. The product is going to prove itself on the ice. This is a successful business model we've come up with.
espnW: Do you have enough money on hand to get through the first season?
Rylan: Yes.
espnW: What about the second season?
Rylan: Yes. We're in this for the long haul. We definitely have a support system that makes sure this is going to be successful and will be successful. We will be around for a long time.
espnW: So far you've had no luck landing major sponsors for the league. Why do you think potential sponsors are hesitating?
Rylan: There was a huge push to get huge sponsors before the first puck-drop, but sponsors want to know tangible numbers -- how many butts are in the seats, what is our exact demographic. They want things we don't really have the answers to yet. We want to focus on making Year 1 as successful as possible, so in Year 2 sponsors are approaching us. The companies that wanted us to get our bumps and bruises and learn through Year 1, we'll circle back with them, and it will be a no-brainer. It's going to be yeses across the board.
espnW: How do you convince investors and sponsors to invest in women's pro hockey?
Rylan: If you look at the 2014 Olympics, 4.9 million viewers watched the gold-medal game. It was the most-watched [hockey game] on NBC in the 2014 Olympics. That not only says something about the game of women's hockey, but women's sports in general. I don't have to speak to the success of the women's soccer team this summer and Ronda Rousey. There have been so many success stories lately that only further prove there is a business in women's sports. This is what people are believing in and supporting, so it's not even a hard sell.
espnW: Even before the league played its first game, you hinted it might consider expansion if the first year goes well. That's pretty bold. Aren't you getting ahead of yourself?
Rylan: It does sound crazy, the idea of expansion. But you'd be shocked how many fans are begging for it. Everyone wants to see the best players in the world playing in their backyard. If we have a successful Year 1, expansion in Year 2 is definitely on the horizon.
espnW: You've been actively courting the Minnesota Whitecaps. They're pretty far afield from the Northeast. What's the attraction of Minnesota?
Rylan: The Whitecaps are a great organization with a lot of talent. While we are in the Northeast to start, we do recognize there's a lot of talent in the state of hockey in Minnesota. The numbers show 33 percent of all USA Hockey registration among girls and women is in the Northeast, and 19 percent is in the state of Minnesota alone. When we think of expanding down the line, it's somewhere we definitely want to go. We want to start building that alliance and that relationship as soon as we can.
espnW: How many teams are you thinking for expansion? One? Two?
Rylan: We may have 10. We'll see how successful we are. There are definitely a lot of viable hockey markets, not only in the U.S. but in Canada as well.