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US Senators demand that USA Hockey pay their women players their fair share.

Everyone plus their dog is on Team USA for not doing this.

By SkyonAir

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USOC Media Summit Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

As you might have heard, the United States Women’s team is boycotting the IIHF World Women’s hockey Championship. Nearly every professional women’s player, College women’s player, and even U18 players and rec-league players have stood in solidarity with them as they seek a living wage. Even the Men’s team stood in solidarity with them. Their current stipend is $6000 over four years, which is...inadequate for even keeping a year or two’s worth of hockey equipment up to date, let alone get players to where they need to go to represent their country over four years, of which USA hockey DOES cover for the men, among a host of other things they get and the women don’t.

Meanwhile, USA Hockey has slowly begun looking for scabs at every level of play, even looking at high schoolers to represent their country in place of these athletes that, by all accounts, are winning far more gold than the men’s team has ever dreamed of across all levels of play.

Now, US Senators are taking time out of their busy day to tell USA Hockey to pay these players. Of which both senators from the state of Mass, one from New Hampshire, one from Vermont, and one from Connecticut supported and endorsed.

The Letter shown here courtesy of Jen Neale and her twitter feed.

14 senators, almost every woman in the US, and a host of other organizations can now count themselves as backers of the Women’s team’s boycott.

Team USA has continually zagged instead of zigged in these negotiations, pretty firmly making themselves hard to root for in this fight. It would probably do them well at this stage of the game to just capitulate and squeeze their enormously wealthy corporate sponsors for a little support if they feel like they seriously can’t handle it out of pocket, then sit back and watch as all these women bulldoze the competition at the World Championships.

Until then, we must wait as USA Hockey finds the courage to stop being a saturday morning cartoon villain about this and capitulate.