Pour lire la version FRANÇAISE clique [ICI].

Training camps for each Professional Women’s Hockey League team are set to start on November 15, 2023. This is a historical step for the league as it will mark the official on-ice start of this new league. Before that, the creation of the PWHL in the summer of 2023 was historical in itself with its promise of a long awaited truly professional structure for the best women’s hockey players in the world. The inaugural draft that took place on September 18, 2023, was equally historical as it allowed 90 players to be selected by the “Original Six”, the six teams forming the league that are Boston, Minnesota, New York, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montréal. Among them, Chloé Aurard was picked in the fourth round, 3^rd European and 21^st overall, by New York and her selection was historical as well. If you don’t know her, Aurard comes from France and a French player drafted by a PWHL team is simply historical.

The draft, broadcast live from Toronto, gathered the league’s top prospects and most of its already signed free agents, including star players Marie-Philip Poulin, Sarah Nurse, and Abby Roque. At the end of that day, 108 players, 18 per team, were part of the PWHL. Without surprise, the 18 free agents were members of Team Canada or Team USA. Without surprise, a large majority of the 108 players, 95 players to be precise or 88%, came from Canada or the US. Without surprise, Taylor Heise became the number 1 draft pick as Minnesota added the young American forward to its roster after signing three Team USA free agents. Without surprise, Switzerland’s Alina Müller, two-time Patty Kazmaier Top-3 Finalist in 2020 and 2023, was also a first-round pick, and the only player outside of North America selected in the first three rounds. The selection of a French player, however, was a surprise. It wasn’t a surprise athletically speaking. After all, Aurard played with Müller at Northeastern University and her NCAA stats were impressive: 89 goals and 115 assists for 204 points in 167 games. But having a player from France selected at all, let alone in the fourth round, was a big surprise.

To understand how big of a surprise Chloé Aurard’s selection is, let’s highlight some additional facts and numbers from the draft. Aurard was the only French player that declared for the PWHL draft this year. The French national was one of 27 players selected during the draft that were NCAA (USA) or U Sports (Canada) players in 2022-2023. That’s 25% of PWHL players not playing in a professional capacity last season vs 75% of players coming from the PWHPA, PHF, or SDHL. She’s also one of only 13 players (12%) coming from outside North America. Among them, five players from Czechia were selected overall, Czechia being logically rewarded for its bronze medals at the IIHF Women’s World Championship in 2022 and 2023. Moreover, two players from Sweden and two from Finland were selected, both countries traditionally part of the Olympic Games and IIHF Women’s World Championship, though Sweden was briefly relegated to Division 1A in 2019. In addition, Müller’s Switzerland finished in the fourth place at the last three World Championships and even won a bronze medal at the 2014 Olympics (Müller has been an important member of the team for the last decade). In stark contrast, Aurard’s France only participated twice in the IIHF Women’s World Championship, in 2019 and 2023, both times finishing in last place and being relegated to Division 1A. France mostly competed in the Division 1A World Championship, winning the event in 2018 and 2022, but briefly competed in the Division 2 and Division 1B World Championships as well. France was never part of the Olympic Games, though they came close for the 2022 Olympics, unfortunately being beaten 3-2 by Sweden in the decisive game of their Olympic qualifying tournament. 

As already mentioned, Aurard was the only French player that declared for the PWHL draft this year. In addition, she was the only player from France that was in the NCAA in 2022-2023. Seven other Team France members played in Canada that season, all in Québec: one in U Sports and six at the CÉGEP (i.e., younger) level. For information, the total number of Team France players who competed in North America before last season is less than a dozen. In recent past, captains Marion Allemoz and Lore Baudrit competed in U Sports for Université de Montréal’s Carabins. The two also played for les Canadiennes de Montréal in the CWHL, then moved to Sweden to continue their career. Prior to them, only a handful of national team players, including myself, stepped on North American ice after learning to play hockey in France. With all due respect to my fellow countrywomen, Aurard is in a category of her own and her selection by a PWHL team tends to corroborate this claim. Aurard’s impact on her NCAA team was tremendous playing on the top line with Müller and she’s expected to be a dominant presence on the ice in the PWHL. 

Considering the current situation of women’s hockey in France and its history, it’s no surprise that Aurard chose to leave France but it’s a surprise that she managed to be so successful despite said situation and history. When I last played in France in the late 1990s, there was a limited number of women’s teams and players in the country and only one division. As a result, the top three teams of this “elite” championship regularly beat the bottom teams by a large margin. There are 12 teams for the 2023-2024 season and still a single division, though a top division and lower division briefly co-existed (for comparison, there are four divisions on the men’s side). In addition, there was no girls’ teams, which meant that my senior team had a 15-year-old in its ranks as there was no other option for her to play. Since then, France has created a “Pôle France Féminin”, a Prep School like structure for 20 girls aged 14-18, with the intent of raising the level of play for Team France in the long term. Interestingly enough, Aurard never integrated Pôle France but many players on the national team did following its inception 15 years ago. 

Professional hockey was and is a completely foreign concept for women in France. I played for Lyon, one of the best teams in the country at the time, and was a full-time undergraduate student. As a member of Team France, I was on my university’s high-performance student-athlete list, which granted me certain privileges (e.g., excused absences for team commitments, extensions for assignments). However, some of my teammates on the national team had full-time jobs and didn’t benefit from the same leniency from their employer. On the contrary, they were required to negotiate vacation days (often without much notice) in order to attend training camps or competitions. It wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t conducive to the best performance on the ice, and it definitely shortened some promising careers. I moved to Canada for my graduate studies and ended up playing a few games for the Mistral de Laval in the original NWHL, the league preceding the CWHL (not to be mistaken with the NWHL that eventually became the PHF). The only reason why I was a substitute player for them was because they didn’t always have enough players for practices and games, especially away games. There was one particular last-minute call to join the team for a trip to Toronto with games planned against Brampton and Mississauga. To this day, I still remember the shock I felt once I realized that I was going to play against the Brampton Thunder and its multiple Team Canada players (we were on our respective blue lines for the Canadian anthem when I saw the names “Small”, “Hefford”, and “Sunohara” on the back of their jerseys. I had only played a few games with France prior to moving to Canada, and not on the top two lines, so I was in no way, shape or form meant to be one of the six forwards facing these Olympians!). I also remember the thunder sound that followed each of Brampton’s goal and there was a lot of thunder that day… 

I had a full circle moment earlier this year in Brampton when I attended the World Championship and we had a mini reunion of former Team France players during one of France’s games. It wasn’t planned but different generations of players were present because the fact that France was participating in the World Championship in Canada was historical and we simply didn’t want to miss it. When I played for the national team, I had to wear my own (red) club helmet because we used the men’s (white) U20 equipment and their smallest helmet was still too big for my head. I am happy to report that all the French players were wearing the same (white) helmets in Brampton! From 500 women and girls playing hockey in France in the late 1990s to over 2,5000 more recently, and from only participating in European Championships to participating twice in the top division of the World Championships, French women’s hockey has certainly grown. My experiences as a hockey player on both sides of the pond and then as a sport sociologist whose research topics include women’s hockey allow me to have a unique perspective on the evolution of women’s hockey in France and North America. I am proud to have played a small part in that evolution as a player. I am prouder to witness the immense strides that women’s hockey has taken since and is continuing to take, notably with the creation of the PWHL. Competing in the Olympic Games is France’s ultimate goal, something that our closest rivals in my days, Slovakia and Czechia, managed to do at some point (2010 for Slovakia and 2022 for Czechia). Chloé Aurard who is going to be a part of the PWHL New York team will hopefully continue to shine and, should France reach this ambitious goal, she would undoubtedly be key in that historical achievement.