Sophie Jaques had just braved the grocery store on Super Bowl Sunday when she got the call that she’d been traded.
“I was going to head over to one of my teammates’ for (the game), so I had just gotten snacks to bring,” she told The Athletic. “And then I was like, Oh gosh, I can’t go anymore.”
Instead of watching the Kansas City Chiefs win back-to-back championships, Jaques spent the night packing up her things in the home she shared with PWHL Boston teammates. The next day she was on a flight to Minnesota, as part of the first trade in PWHL history.
Advertisement
That Sunday afternoon it was announced that Boston had traded Jaques, the 2022-23 Patty Kazmaier-winning defender, to Minnesota in exchange for forward Susanna Tapani and defender Abby Cook.
The details of the deal — a 10th overall pick traded away after just seven games — were shocking. But the fact that it happened at all is a reminder of the new reality for players in the PWHL.
In previous women’s hockey leagues players were drafted, signed, and traded to the markets they had chosen. That is no longer the case, which has changed the dynamics for front offices, players and league executives in women’s professional hockey.
General managers can make hockey trades. The league has to figure out how to get a player from Boston to Minnesota in time for practice, or how to help them find a new home. And those players need to navigate a new world in which being uprooted is part of the business.
Since the deal last week, The Athletic has spoken to the players, general managers and league officials involved about the machinations of the trade.
Here’s how it all happened.
When Danielle Marmer reached out to Natalie Darwitz, her first question was about Patagonia jackets.
Darwitz, Minnesota’s GM, had a connection with the outdoor clothing brand that she had used to buy her staff matching coats for the winter, and Marmer, her counterpart in Boston, wanted in on the action.
“That just opened the door to having a conversation about our rosters and where (our) team needs are,” Darwitz said.
Marmer had been taking the PWHL’s international break — from Feb. 5 to Feb. 13 — as a chance to reflect on the start of the season. At that point, Boston had only two regulation wins and a star-laden roster — dubbed one of the best in the league in preseason — that had scored the fewest goals in the league (17).
Advertisement
“With the personnel that we have, we expected to be scoring more goals at this point in the season,” she said.
Throughout the week Marmer said she touched base with most of the GMs across the league, to test the waters with the March 17 trade deadline one month away. Some conversations went well, she said, while with others, “We just couldn’t get on the same page.”
Darwitz was Marmer’s final call. As it turns out, the two general managers shared a similar philosophy. They were willing to make a trade of consequence to improve their teams, but they did not wish to uproot players, particularly those at the bottom of the lineup and salary list, just for the sake of change.
“If I’m going to make a trade, it’s going to be a trade that’s going to have an impact,” Darwitz said. “We’re asking players to move across the country, in our case with Minnesota, so all the boxes need to be checked for this to happen.”
“Unfortunately, this isn’t the NHL where we’re paying these players a ton of money and we can ask them to pick up and move,” Marmer said. “It just made more sense to move bigger players with bigger salaries in order to actually fill the need that will impact our team.”
Boston was looking for a second-line center. Minnesota wanted to strengthen its blue line and perhaps add someone with some more offensive flair to a group of stay-at-home defenders.
After nearly three days of back-and-forth, the two sides landed on Tapani and Cook for Jaques, which Darwitz called “a win-win for both organizations.”
Marmer didn’t enter trade conversations with Darwitz, or any GM for that matter, thinking she would be sending her 10th overall pick out the door within the first month of the season. But that’s ultimately what it took to get Tapani to Boston.
“Sophie has such a bright future in this league, so of course it stung to give up a player like that who has such promise,” Marmer said. “If we were putting pucks in the net at the rate I hoped we would be at this point, maybe we wouldn’t have needed a Tapani.
Advertisement
“But I wanted to put my team in a position to win a championship and I felt like I would regret getting to the end of the season and not having done something.”
In the NHL, trades that are agreed upon between two teams go through the league’s central registry and are approved (or not) by the NHL via a trade call. In the PWHL, trades are sent to a specific league email address. Members of the hockey operations department review the players and contracts being moved, and evaluate if it’s a fair trade.
“We want GMs to be able to make decisions about their rosters. We don’t want to take that away from them,” explained Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s senior vice president of hockey operations. “But our job is to protect the integrity and parity that exists within the league.”
Darwitz and Marmer submitted the trade to the league on Feb. 10 and it was officially approved the next day at around 4 p.m. ET. Hefford said the league review took longer than it typically will moving forward because it was the first trade and “we really wanted to walk through all the implications.”
After the league signed off on the trade, it was time for another set of conversations. First the GMs spoke to the players involved to tell them they’d been traded, and make them aware of what they were entitled to in terms of moving reimbursements via section 8.8 of the collective bargaining agreement. The trade was announced right before kickoff of the Super Bowl. And then it was time to address the rest of the roster.
In Minnesota, Darwitz made a point of speaking to her team first thing in the morning when they returned from break.
“Trades are new for everyone,” she said. “And I wanted them to know that this isn’t fantasy football. This isn’t trading Pokémon cards. This is real. You’re dealing with people’s hearts and we’re going to make sure we’re doing this the right way and we’re not taking it lightly.”
Less than 24 hours after Jaques got the trade call, she was on a flight to the Twin Cities. The next day, she was on the ice with PWHL Minnesota.
“I think I was mostly in shock that it happened and how fast it happened,” she said. “I don’t think it sunk in until I stepped on the ice.”
Players have 48 hours to report to their new cities, per the CBA. But with Minnesota practicing on Tuesday, and a game on Wednesday, Jaques opted to get on a flight Monday morning.
Advertisement
Jaques reported to PWHL Minnesota practice on Tuesday Feb. 13. She met with head coach Ken Klee before getting on the ice to “get to know me as well as he can in a day and tell me every single system they run.”
“So my first practice was crazy,” she said.
When players are traded, they qualify for the relocation reimbursements laid out in the CBA. That includes reimbursement of up to $2,500 in reasonable relocation expenses — like moving boxes and other materials — as well as temporary lodging expenses, a per diem and a rental car or alternative transportation (i.e., Uber) for up to 14 days. Players will also be given support if they are required to break a lease as part of their relocation.
Instead of staying in a hotel for two weeks, Jaques is staying with her former Ohio State teammate, Liz Schepers, who signed a one-year contract with Minnesota back in November.
“(Staying with Liz) has been great to get settled and just to have her here,” Jaques said. “It might be where I stay, but I don’t know yet. Everything has just happened really fast and things are still getting sorted out.”
As hectic as things have been, Jaques made her debut for Minnesota on Feb. 14 and tallied her first career point in the PWHL, an assist on Abby Boreen’s power-play goal. Through three games in Minnesota, she has been paired with Minnesota’s No. 1 defender Lee Stecklein.
“It was a lot of fun,” Jaques said. “I’m really happy that I got paired with Lee. She has been amazing as a person, just welcoming me and giving me guidance and supporting me. I think she really helped me to succeed in the first game.
“I think I can fit in well here.”
Susanna Tapani had been traveling for almost three days back to Minneapolis when she got a text from Darwitz.
Tapani had been playing for Finland at the Euro Hockey Tour series in Czechia during the PWHL’s international break. Her second flight of the trip, from Amsterdam to Minneapolis, was canceled Saturday afternoon, delaying her travel an extra day. When she saw Darwitz’s text on Sunday afternoon Tapani called her GM right away.
Advertisement
The conversation was brief. She had been traded and had 48 hours to report to Boston.
“I was shocked, but I think I was so jet lagged and so tired that I didn’t actually realize it at first,” Tapani told The Athletic. “I was so happy to go home (but then) I had to go home and move again … It was tough.”
Tapani soon found out that her roommate, Abby Cook, was also part of the deal. Together, they packed up their apartment and booked flights for the next day (Monday) to be able to report to Boston’s Tuesday afternoon practice.
“Everything happened so fast,” she said. “Less than 24 hours after I landed we moved out from our apartment.”
Cook and Tapani met at Minnesota’s training camp before the start of the season and were among the few players who stayed in the team hotel during camp — many players on PWHL Minnesota are either from the state of hockey, or played their college career in the state — and decided to move in together for the season.
The pair were supposed to be teammates on the Metropolitan Riveters before the Premier Hockey Federation ceased operations in the summer, too.
“We were meant to be teammates because this is now the third team we’re on together,” Tapani said with a laugh.
Tapani said she knew getting traded was a possibility in the PWHL, so they asked their landlord before moving in if they could leave their lease early in the event of a trade. “I’m glad we did that so leaving was a bit easier,” she said.
Now, the roommates are in another hotel in Boston — which they can stay in for two weeks, per the collective bargaining agreement — and looking for a new apartment. Cook, 25, went to Boston University and knows the city better than Tapani, who grew up in Turku, Finland, does. That has made the search easier, Tapani said.
It’s all made for a busy few months for Tapani, who moved to North America for the first time in a decade — she played one season at the University of North Dakota in 2013-14 — and was traded only nine games into a two-year contract she signed in October.
Advertisement
“It’s been a lot, honestly,” she said. “Any time you move so far away, you have to figure out everything in your life all over again.
“I feel like I haven’t really settled down at all. I hope the end of the season is going to be easier and I can actually focus on the games and playing more.”
(Photos of Susanna Tapani, Sophie Jaques and Abby Cook: Richard A. Whittaker / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images, Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)