Toronto Maple Leafs: Wickenheiser, Needham Signal Progress

The Toronto Maple Leafs announced this morning the hiring of Canadian hockey icon Hayley Wickenheiser to the role of team Assistant Director of Player Development.

It’s a long-awaited move.

Wickenheiser’s future with the Leafs has been subject to rumour mill speculation for quite some time now, dating back to her attendance at the team’s development camp in May. At the time, Wickenheiser herself even mused about such a possibility, hinting at the likelihood of ongoing discussions between her and “Kyle” to determine her organizational fit.

With Wickenheiser’s hiring now official, its true magnitude can be felt.

According to theScore’s John Matisz, Wickenheiser and Noelle Needham, hired as an amateur scout today by the Leafs as well, join a select group of women who currently occupy full-time positions on NHL teams.

The list, as one could guess, is dubiously short.

NHL front offices have undergone slight demographic shifts over the last decade, a move which gestures in the direction of progress. Although, teams have only begun hiring women to fill legitimate titles recently, largely in the capacity of operations or administration.

It’s a nice step, working to drag hockey, kicking and screaming, into the 21^st century where it belongs. It’s also a step that should have been taken a long time ago.

Wickenheiser and Needham signify actual forward movement in hockey’s culture, a welcome and needed change in this current climate, while further illuminating how Kyle Dubas intends on shaping his personnel staff as well.

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill additions. Not in the slightest.

Both Wickenheiser and Needham enter the Leafs following the ground up creation of their own successful organizations, respectively.

Let’s give them a look.

Noelle Needham

Needham joins Toronto’s scouting staff having co-founded Legend Hockey, a premier hockey service company offering comprehensive skills and development training to developing athletes, with an emphasis on education.

Operating out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Legend Hockey focuses on the specific and individual aspects of youth athletics, all at relatively affordable prices.

It’s important to note how vital to the future of the sport this is.

Hockey is currently in the midst of pricing itself out of the next generation, a path the sport has been travelling down for decades now. Becoming only less affordable for the average family as time moves on, hockey tops the list of most expensive North American sports easily, with few others even coming close.

Needham and her staff remedy this, to a degree, conducting week-long workshops such as their “Mite Day Camp”, which include the features of extended on-ice and off-ice sessions, along with dry-land training for those with two or more years of hockey experience. The total price is $175.

For good measure, they’ll even throw in a jersey.

According to Legend Hockey’s website, their persistence lies in allowing kids to receive the most out of their training as possible.

“We provide ice hockey players with a comprehensive and innovative training experience,” reads their mission statement, “as well as the right resources, opportunities, and support to attain their individual ambitions”

Once again, truly refreshing to see.

The sport of hockey doesn’t typically lend itself all that well to the concept of individuality, with players encouraged from a young age to blend in rather than stand out. Which isn’t to say that’s a completely misguided mantra. Sports are fundamentally geared towards achieving greatness, it’s just that, greatness tends to emerge as a result of unhealthy methods far too often, this seen with alarming frequency in youth athletics.

This is what makes Legend Hockey stand out. That a cutting-edge development company seeks to prioritize both individual ambition and quality of experience in lieu of producing thinly veiled boot camps speaks volumes.

Needham’s hiring sets a stirring precedent as well.

When the Toronto Star commissioned an interview with Wickenheiser back in July, their piece concluded with a list of all the women who occupy prominent positions in the various branches of hockey.

Not one name preceded the title of “scout”. Not a single one.

Barring any oversights, and if you happen to know of any I strongly encourage you to let me know, Needham is the first woman to be employed within an NHL scouting department on a full-time basis.

And she’s doing it for the league’s most prominent franchise.

Hayley Wickenheiser

Wickenheiser’s on-ice accomplishments are well documented, reaching the status of Canadian hockey mythology in their nearly comical dominance.

Since joining the Canadian National Women’s Team in 1994, Wickenheiser amassed a haul of 4 Olympic and 7 World Championship gold medals to pair with a silver finish at the Olympics and 6 at the World Championship.

Off the ice, however, is where Wickenheiser strives to impact the most.

Despite still operating within the structure of Hockey Canada at the time, Wickenheiser graduated from the University of Calgary in 2013 with a degree in Kinesiology, and in 2017, announced her intent to return and pursue a medical degree upon her retirement.

The Leafs’ player development staff, staggeringly successful already, will now welcome Wickenheiser’s vast knowledge of sports medicine into the fold. That’s a truly enticing prospect for any Leafs fan.

Perhaps even more enticing, however, is the precedent her hiring can set.

As by far the most marquee female name to join an NHL front office, news of Wickenheiser’s hiring may very well ignite a trend that travels across the league.

It’s not as if she’s a stranger to breaking down the barriers of hockey, either.

Wickenheiser was consistently bucking convention before the entire 2019 draft class were even born, earning invites to Philadelphia Flyers training camp in both 1998 and 1999 as one of the first women to truly vie for an NHL roster spot. 2002 etched her name in history as well, with Wickenheiser becoming the first female player to notch a point in a men’s professional league while playing for HC Salamat of Finland’s Division III.

And yet, at the crux of it all, Wickenheiser demonstrates hockey’s perfect cohesion of tangible experience and outside knowledge.

No one can accuse her of “not playing the game”, because, chances are, she’s played it at a far better level than any person in any room she happens to occupy.

Countless NHL teams have hired GM’s with resumes paling in comparison to Wickenheiser’s.

Here’s to the conclusion of that trend, and the beginning of another.

Thanks for reading!