Of the 17 new judges presented before the season, ten are women, and they go into the hot air right away.
Already on Saturday, Katie Guay will be the very first woman to judge an AHL match, when she releases the puck in the match Lehigh Valley Phantoms – Wilkes Barre / Scranton Penguins.
- Everyone in the AHL strives for the next goal and this is my way into the AHL and now it's time for me to perform, just like for everyone else out there on the ice, says Guay, who has experience from both the 2018 Olympics and training matches. with NHL teams.
The AHL are grandparents to the NHL and the ten women have all undergone a mentoring program within the NHL to prepare.
- This has been on our radar for a long time now.
They are all experienced, from the Olympics, university matches, for men and women, and some training matches with NHL teams.
Now it's time for them to graduate and move on to the next level, says AHL chief Scott Howson.
He points to the baseball team Miami Marlin, which last year named Kim Ng the baseball league MLB's first female general manager, and hopes that the AHL will continue to let women into the team's organizations, beyond the female scouts and staff in lower positions already in day.
- It opens doors.
We have all reached as high as we can and when you can not get further you can go other ways and thus get even further, says Howson.
So can women even judge the NHL?
- Everyone who works within the AHL is just one step away.
Now we can see how they handle professional ice hockey, how they judge and if they keep up with the pace in the world's second best league.
From our side, we want to support them in taking the next step, says Stephen Walkom.