On Merit, Curiosity, and PWHL Transactions

An unexpected first post

The PWHL has been running for just under two months and each team has already gone through a decent amount of roster tweaking. One of the most recent transactions was PWHL Ottawa cutting Mikyla Grant-Mentis from their roster after a total of six games played and a few healthy scratches. 

We do not know why Mikyla Grant-Mentis was cut from Ottawa, and the answer is not immediately obvious, despite what some may try to argue. She put up a respectable three assists in six games, more than most of her team in that time span, with two of them being primary assists. In her six games played, she had twelve shots and was only held without a shot one time. We don’t have access to the more advanced data- zone entries, puck battles, etc.- that the team has, so it’s possible that the team saw something that stood out there. If they did, it’s not something that was immediately apparent when watching games, where Grant-Mentis appeared to be an important factor for play driving in Ottawa’s bottom six that was sorely missed once they began scratching her. 

Of course, it is possible that the move had nothing to do with on-ice play at all. How many of us have had jobs where personnel decisions were not based on merit? Some of these alternate explanations are innocent: maybe other commitments in Grant-Mentis’s life meant this was no longer something she was able to pursue, maybe she found out she is a talented magician and is going to change career paths. We don’t have salary cap information, but while this could be a move related to cap space, it’s hard to imagine that Grant-Mentis’s salary was that significant as a free agent walk-on. 

Other explanations are more sinister, and I won’t explore them too much because I enjoy not being sued. You can use your imagination to think of why a talented Black woman who made headlines for being one of the highest paid players in women’s hockey two seasons ago and was vocal about how the transition from PHF to PWHL wasn’t a 100% joyous one in the immediate aftermath may not be afforded the same opportunities as other players. Not to mention the PWHL being a league with heavy involvement from current or previous Hockey Canada front office members, who passed up Grant-Mentis at camp time and time again. 

The decision to cut Grant-Mentis may have not been made with any kind of malice, but it should raise questions from anyone following or covering the sport regardless. In the NHL, it is not uncommon for reporters to inquire about lineup decisions, trades, or demotions from coaches even when the answer is fairly obvious. Yet there’s been a total lack of curiosity from the majority of the women’s hockey world about this move, the same way there was a lack of curiosity about other head scratching transactions. Like Ottawa moving on from Tori Howran for Emma Buckles despite barely awarding either of them ice time. As fans have questioned these moves, the overwhelming response has been that this is the nature of professional sports: teams want to win and are going to do what they can to win. No one seems interested in asking the general managers, coaches, or other staff of these brand new teams and their front offices how exactly they see these moves as a path to winning, despite that being exactly the kind of question you ask in professional sports. 

Merit is not an objective concept. Teams evaluate players differently and outsiders of the team have the right to be curious about those evaluation processes. Particularly in a league where teams are developing an identity and every front office member is in their first year of their role (they may have similar experience, but the PWHL is a whole new setting), team philosophies are a huge point of interest for anyone getting invested and what drives a lot of the main topic of conversation of sports in the public sphere. We can make our own assumptions based on game analysis and no team is going to give up all of its secrets, but it would still be nice to get some sort of insight into the decision making process. 

The idea that professional sports functions how PWHL transactions such as Grant-Mentis’s or Howrans have functioned thus far is one that feels willfully obtuse. Yes, in sports, you need to perform or you’ll get cut because winning comes first. But the nature of PWHL contracts not being guaranteed means that cutting a player does not have the same weight for the team as it does in other sports. Being on the hook financially for contracts incentivizes the team to do whatever they can to make a contract work before cutting a player, rather than have a Howran situation of cutting a player after she plays one game to get another player the team is also apparently not interested in playing. The lack of guaranteed contracts is exactly the kind of thing many worried would be overlooked in the CBA negotiations, considering the makeup of players that signed off on it not being the same players likely to be affected by this. The majority of the one year deals in the league are held by players who were in the PHF, overseas, or not playing professional last year, and thus did not sign off on the CBA.  

I have more I could say on this, like the selective nature of who is given grace by front offices/teams when adjusting to a brand new league and who isn’t, but I’ll keep this short. What I would like to leave you with is this: considering the lack of guaranteed contracts, the least we can do as fans is demand more insight into the talent evaluation behind these decisions and for media members to explore them more. Right now, there is very little stopping Toronto from waking up tomorrow and deciding to cut Erica Howe or Maggie Connors because they don't like her vibe and lying and saying it’s because she looks bad in practice. One can file a grievance, but if there was nothing said out loud or in writing that this decision was based on arbitrary judgment and not based on talent, it’s unlikely she would get anywhere with that. Demanding more insight and accountability into these decisions won’t stop this from ever happening but it can at least make it more of a headache for a team to do. It’s certainly a lot more interesting to read about roster decisions and strategy than it is to read the millionth post from a journalist with the “tough day for the ‘nobody watches women’s hockey’ crowd” caption. 

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