Up until last month, John Boynton of Concord held as much sway as anyone in North American professional women’s hockey.
He was chair of the Premier Hockey Federation’s Board of Governors and co-owner of four of the league’s seven teams, including the Boston Pride.
Now, though, the PHF is no more, courtesy of being bought out last month by the Mark Walter Group. The new owners of the currently nameless league plan to drop the puck in January.
From an unfamiliar perch of being on the outside looking in, Boynton is rooting for the new league to succeed and believes it is fully capable of doing so.
But in the wake of the years-long, intense antagonism between the PHF and the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, coupled with a recent interview by Pride lead owner Miles Arnone that cast considerable dismay over the buyout’s process and results for the players, Boynton also issued fair warning about the road ahead.
“I think that the next six months is going to be rocky, but again, that’s inevitable when you have two sides that have been bitter rivals and those two sides come together,” Boynton said. “It doesn’t happen immediately. But, I think that if everyone proceeds in good faith and puts in the effort and the time, there’s huge potential.
“There’s no reason that the new league should not be mentioned right alongside the WNBA and the NWSL — those three logos should be side by side, every time.”
Boynton declined to comment on The Hockey News interview with Arnone, who is part of the BTM Partners group that included Boynton and his wife Johanna and owned the Pride, the Metropolitan Riveters, the Toronto Six and the expansion Montreal Force. Johanna Boynton was the Montreal team’s governor.
Also declining to comment on Arnone’s THN talk was Stan Kasten, who as the point person of the new ownership group good-naturedly cited “personal growth” for turning down an offer to react to reflections from Arnone that for the most part did not shine a particularly flattering light on the takeover.
Only six teams reportedly will be in the new league come January.
Whether or not Boston will be included is highly uncertain, but that the new league will start with one fewer team than the PHF was going to play with this fall comes as a letdown to Boynton.
“I am disappointed that there are only six teams because I think that there’s enough talent to fill 10 teams, or 12 teams. There’s a ton of talent in women’s hockey — they could have staffed more than six teams,” Boynton said. “But I understand they’re trying to be conservative to make sure they can kind of get it all figured out before they scale. So there’s a business rationale for it. But I do think it’s unfortunate, because it’s going to result in fewer opportunities rather than more.”
Besides fewer paying jobs for the best hockey players in the world, reports of the pay structure from the new collective bargaining agreement apparently did not reflect an improvement in player conditions or salaries.
“There are many things in there that we were already doing and there are certain areas like compensation, where we had actually gone beyond what’s contemplated in the CBA,” said Boynton. “But, I understand the rationale of walking before they run, so I think the notion of starting with six teams, it makes sense to me. I just wish that they were able to start with a higher number of teams.”
Boynton hopes the single-owner structure of the new league is temporary.
“At a certain point, you want to have strong local ownership that’s deeply connected to its local market, to partners and fans, and it’s hard to do that in the same way with a single entity,” he said. “You get a lot more passion [with local owners], I think people work harder and go farther if you have local ownership, so I would expect it in time, Mark [Walter] will probably start selling off teams.”
Arnone conveyed a considerable degree of disappointment in the engagement style of tennis legend Billie Jean King, one of the part owners in the Walter Group. After expressing admiration for King’s leadership in women’s sports and gay rights, Arnone’s recollection of her in Zoom meetings and her support of the women’s tour engaging with Saudi Arabia left him feeling “today it looks like she’s just an average run of the mill capitalist.”
“I never actually met in person with her,” Boynton said. “From Miles’s story, she participated in some meetings. And that’s all I’ll say on that.”
Now that John and Johanna Boynton are no longer helping to shape the direction of pro women’s hockey, they already miss it. But John Boynton is appreciative of the fact that there is only one pro league.
“We do think that the existence of one league as opposed to the potential for two is going to allow more sponsors to get on board, it’s going to allow the NHL to jump behind it, it’s going to allow the whole enterprise to move faster and at the end of the day, I think it’s the right thing for the game,” he said. “I do think that the next many months are going to be a bit chaotic, but that’s to be expected. If everyone can throw their efforts and their good faith behind the idea that one unified women’s hockey league is the best path forward, then I think it will be successful.”
That success will just have to take some time.
“My hope is that once everyone comes to understand that there is only one league, they’re all going to have to figure out how to get along with each other,” Boynton said. “It’s like they’re all stuck on the same island together, and they’ve got to find a way to survive. I think that will happen in time, for sure.
“Women’s hockey players don’t do it for the money, they do it because they love the game.”
Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com.