Jenna Trubiano is the head coach of the Women’s Ice Hockey Club at the University of Michigan. She’s in her third year as the team’s head coach, this after spending two years with the program as an assistant coach. Trubiano is a hockey lifer, and one who has dwelled in the higher levels of the women’s game since she was a child.
She’s played for elite club teams like Belle Tire and Little Caesars, organizations known for producing players who go on to careers in U.S. college hockey, Canadian juniors and the professional ranks. After high school, Trubiano played for five seasons with the Wolverines, who compete in the American College Hockey Association and the Central Collegiate Hockey Association at the Division I level.1
With that sort of pedigree, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Trubiano plays in a predominantly men’s hockey league in Detroit at the age of 29. She’s always just played, she reports, at least until last week when things took a nasty turn.
"Last night, I was body checked (a penalty was called) and the man who checked me said "stay on your feet - this is a men's league"," Trubiano wrote. "Throughout the remainder of the game, I was harassed while I was on the ice. Repeated comments of "join a women's league this is men's league" being screamed throughout the rink and can be heard on the Livebarn recording. The other team was composed of adult men, most of them in their 30s and 40s and several with daughters that play hockey."
After the game, Trubiano recounted the story to the league director, and asked that he demand that the offending players apologize to her for their behavior. He did as she asked, and she waited outside the locker room.
"As I patiently waited in the lobby for the other team to come out of the locker room, they passed by and no apology was offered, only a sarcastic "Have a great night!" as a group of five to seven of the men walked by," Trubiano wrote. "I started crying in the rink lobby in public in front of many others. After processing my emotions, my emotions are sad emotions. Sad that misogyny still exists at the rink today after it seems we have made so much progress in so many ways paving the road for girls and women in hockey on paper, especially in Michigan. I know I am not alone in this experience and my heart aches for young girls and other women who have also experienced harassment at the rink."
I played recreational league ice hockey with a woman not too unlike Trubiano in the 1990s. Let’s call her “Sheila.” She was a graduate of a New England university, and played in Division I NCAA. A winger, she was one of our best players and could skate rings around most of us. Her game had real grit, and besides being talented, she knew how to play the game the right way and expected her teammates to do the same.
Every once in a while, the opposition might get a little too rough around the boards with Sheila. On more than one occasion, she snapped at the offender, and word would spread up and down our bench: take a mental note of that jersey number and if anything happens again, be sure to take care of it.
One wonders why Trubiano’s teammates didn’t have her back in this situation. Another friend, a DC-area rink rat of long standing, told me that he’d played with plenty of women in his beer league days, and this sort of abuse would never be allowed to stand.
It’s not easy to be the only woman on a men’s team. While we all appreciated Sheila’s talent and were quick to congratulate her success, she dwelled at the margins of our squad. Anyone who has played the game knows that teams bond off the ice, and when we were away from the game, she was nowhere to be found. Our team socialized quite a bit, but the only time I recall seeing Sheila away from the rink was when I bumped into her and her boyfriend at a Caps game.
She would arrive on game night close to ice time, and dress quickly as we filed out of the locker room and onto the bench. After the game, she would rush in ahead of the rest of the team, strip off her gear in a flash, and be dressed and gone before most of us had our skates off.
That’s a lot to put up with to play ice hockey. But without a critical mass of women’s players who were anywhere near as skilled as she was, Sheila didn’t have a choice. But she loved the game, loved to play, and was willing to pay that price, even if that meant simply playing, rather than bonding with her teammates.
Eventually, after several seasons, our team, which had started out together in hockey school early in the decade, progressed through several of the lowest skill levels in our league. By the Spring of 1998, we won the DC area championship and the team was ready to move to the next level. After winning a title, there was nothing left to prove. They wanted another challenge, even if it was just a recreational league.
Well, at least most of the team was ready for that. I was definitely not ready, nor would I ever be. It’s a heck of a lot harder to improve your game as an adult, and I had hit a wall. I played because I had warm memories of the rink as a child, and needed to get some exercise. I didn’t have anything to prove, I just wanted to have fun.
During the course of my rec league career, I suffered a number of back injuries off the ice over multiple seasons. If you’ve ever played ice hockey you know how the ripple effects of a back injury can weaken a skating stride. I missed more than my fair share of games, and that last season I missed half of the schedule with back pain that forced me to take pain meds for months. In order to simply function normally, I would have to stretch every morning for 30 minutes before dressing for work.2 And even then, all it would take would be for my car to hit a pothole and the burning pain would return between my L4 and L5 vertebrae, and I would have to stretch all over again.
Eventually, as the season drew to a close, word was passed quietly to me that the team was moving up and that there wasn’t a roster spot for me anymore. It was a polite way to let me know my time was up and it wasn’t a surprise. I certainly didn’t stress over it. We had different reasons for playing and we had come to a parting of the ways. Over the seasons, teammates had left the team for different reasons, and ones who couldn’t keep up moved on without being told after hearing it in the locker room.
The player on the end of the bench always knows who they are.
One of the National Hockey League’s underrated rivalries is the “Battle of Ontario” that pits the Toronto Maple Leafs against their provincial rival, the Ottawa Senators. On Saturday night in Ottawa, with the Maple Leafs trailing 4-3 and time running out in regulation, they pulled the goalie for an extra attacker.
Ottawa forward Shane Pinto intercepted the puck in traffic in the Ottawa defensive zone and sent a lead pass into space that center Ridly Grieg caught up with just inside the Toronto blue line. He wound up and released a slap shot from close range for an empty net goal that salted away a 5-3 win for the Senators.
But as Grieg celebrated, Toronto defenseman Morgan Reilly took exception and cross-checked Grieg in the head, earning a 5-minute major penalty and a game misconduct that set off a brief on-ice melee between the teams. Reilly also earned a trip to New York, where he’ll arrive on Tuesday to participate in an in-person hearing arranged by the league’s Department of Player Safety, the body that will decide whether or not Reilly will be subject to any supplementary discipline for the hit.
If you’ve watched hockey for any amount of time, you’ve probably become familiar with the concept of “the code,” a set of unwritten rules that govern the game.3 One of those rules is that you shouldn’t show up the other team when it isn’t necessary, which apparently was the clause that Reilly invoked here.
If it all seems a little ridiculous, you’re not alone. The fact is, we’ve been here before. Almost 31 years ago during a first round Stanley Cup Playoff series between the New York Islanders and the Washington Capitals, Washington center Dale Hunter delivered a blind side hit on New York center Pierre Turgeon moments after he had scored a goal that put the game out of reach for Washington and ended the series.
Turgeon suffered a concussion and a separated shoulder and missed the next playoff round vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins.4 Eventually, Hunter was suspended for the first 21 games of the following season without pay, a punishment the severity of which was clearly influenced by the presence of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in the stands on Long Island when the incident occurred. So there’s nothing that could be termed, “old time hockey,” about this sort of cheap shot.
Reilly’s punishment is now up to retired NHL enforcer George Parros. Working as NHL Senior Vice President of Player Safety, Parros has handed out all sorts of suspensions. Reilly is probably due a significant stay in time out. I’m guessing he deserves at least six games. Then again, as one of the league’s most important franchises, the Maple Leafs are used to getting easy treatment from the league, which is why you’ll never go poor betting the under either. We’ll see on Tuesday.
Yes, like millions of others around the world, I watched the Super Bowl last night. After the San Francisco 49ers kicked a field goal to make it 19-16 in overtime, it seemed inevitable that Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes would lead his team downfield to victory in response. He’s simply that good, and when he threw the winning score to wideout Mecole Hardman, it all seemed anticlimactic.
In the end, we got a close game — albeit one that wasn’t very well played for most of its length — and so I would feel churlish if I complained. After all, compelling Super Bowls are an aberration, not the norm.
I’ve noticed online that some fans are disappointed that the football season is over. I am not one of them. The NFL season is interminably long at 18 weeks. That we’re still playing football almost halfway through February seems like an extravagant indulgence. As I’ve aged and my New York Jets have developed an even more hopeless brand of football, the game has occupied a smaller and smaller slice of my life, and there are entire weekends when I don’t watch the NFL at all.
Training camp for the 2024 NFL regular season is about five months away. In the interim, the league will hold its annual draft in the Spring. In only a few weeks, the new United Football League — formed from the remnants of the XFL and the USFL — will begin play. The 2024 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame will be enshrined on August 3rd, and the annual Hall of Fame Game will be played the following day.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but given that football never seems to go away now, that’s no longer the case.
The months will fly by.
This is club hockey, not the NCAA version. And while it isn’t officially sanctioned by the NCAA, there are a lot of very good players, male and female, in the ACHA. A number of programs have made the jump from the ACHA to the NCAA, including NCAA Division I, the highest level of college ice hockey.
Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie was my bible.
It’s also the name of a very good book by Ross Bernstein.
In one of the biggest upsets in NHL playoff history, the Islanders, without Turgeon, their best player, still managed to beat the Penguins, who were defending Stanley Cup champions, in seven games. Turgeon, who for a time was thought to be lost for the remainder of the playoffs, returned for the Eastern Conference final versus the Montreal Canadiens, a series the Habs won 4 games to 1 before winning the Cup in the Finals against Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings.
I don't know ... that first story doesn't ring true. Either the harassment was actually much worse than reported or she's inexplicably playing the victim ... if she's that experienced in competitive hockey she's undoubtedly heard much worse stuff than that. Something isn't right.