For nearly a decade, Jill Saulnier was an vitality line ahead for the Canadian girls’s nationwide workforce, successful 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 Ladies’s Hockey League, in a struggle with Ottawa ahead Tereza Vanišová.
“We had been battling on the market,” Saulnier informed The Athletic. “She bought 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 reliable struggle 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 struggle 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 totally new to girls’s hockey. There was a line brawl between Canada and america at a pre-tournament sport forward of the 2014 Olympics, and one other within the now-defunct Nationwide Ladies’s Hockey League in 2016.
There are often large 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 struggle, it was only a pure a part of the ladies’s sport and a product of the elevated physicality allowed within the league.
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“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 way in which that the chips sort of fell within the nook.”
The build-up to the struggle included successful and not less than two further crosschecks by Saulnier towards Vanišová, one in all Ottawa’s high scoring forwards. When Vanišová bought up, she threw Saulnier’s keep on 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 struggle needed to occur. It was proper there and it was a message from all sides.”
Neither participant dropped their gloves, as is customary in males’s hockey, given girls’s gamers put on full cages that shield their face — not visors like most NHLers put on, which depart most of their face uncovered. In each leagues, gamers aren’t allowed to take away their helmets to struggle.
“You’d simply look foolish to completely drop the gloves,” Saulnier mentioned, given they’d be punching a cage with their naked fingers.
The almost 6,000 followers at TD Place Area in Ottawa had been on their toes. So had been the gamers on every bench. 5 minutes after the struggle, Ottawa defender Ronja Savolainen scored to make the sport 2-1 late within the third interval. When Vanišová bought out of the penalty field, she scored with solely three seconds left within the sport to ship it to time beyond regulation 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 sport.
“I believed it was superior, it bought the followers going,” Saulnier mentioned. “I’m certain I’ll get a pair boos subsequent time I am going in there, however please know, it was all respectful and it was a variety of enjoyable.”
Ottawa finally misplaced 3-2 in time beyond regulation and Saulnier and Vanišová shared a second within the postgame handshake line to say, “Good struggle.”
“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 can be a bit little bit of buzz about it, which is rarely unhealthy for the sport both.”
The struggle made worldwide information with headlines in TMZ and the Every day Mail, shops that don’t sometimes cowl girls’s hockey. And it went viral on social media whereas 16 million folks throughout North America had been watching Canada and america within the 4 Nations Face-Off finale.
Within the final week, followers have given Saulnier bracelets that spell out “Battle Membership” in beads and T-shirts that say “Jill Saulnier Battle Membership,” which one in all her members of the family wore to Boston’s sport towards Montreal on the Bell Centre on Saturday.
“I feel extra folks reached out than once we gained a gold medal,” mentioned Saulnier, a member of the 2022 Canadian Olympic workforce. “Clearly you shouldn’t struggle each sport, however I feel it was truly good as a result of it bought extra eyes on the league.”
The PWHL, which solely formally began in January 2024, will take the publicity. The struggle 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 need to be the norm.
The league’s rulebook clearly states that “combating shouldn’t be 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 struggle shall be penalized and could also be ejected from the sport.
Saulnier and Vanišová had been solely given roughing minors for his or her struggle, which led to some confusion over the foundations. Final week, the league clarified {that a} struggle will now be penalized with a 5-minute main penalty and a sport misconduct, with a chance of additional self-discipline following a assessment and considering 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 ceaselessly combating. In a brief, 30-game season, gamers may not be keen to sit down out an additional sport simply to provide their workforce a lift of vitality post-fight. The gear barrier may even proceed to be a pure deterrent for combating in girls’s hockey.
Past that, combating is way from frequent at different ranges of the ladies’s sport. Even bodychecking has by no means been permitted in youth ladies hockey, which suggests these expertise aren’t 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 assume her struggle 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 struggle in girls’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; Photographs: Troy Parla / Getty Photographs)