[Russo and Smith] Inside Natalie Darwitz’s ousting from PWHL Minnesota: Rift with the coach, players taking sides
June 8, 2024
[Russo and Smith] Inside Natalie Darwitz’s ousting from PWHL Minnesota: Rift with the coach, players taking sides
4 comments
I’m still as confused as the staffers…Was it THIS bad or it’s the huge support for Klee around the league + the players?
This is shaping up like the Ryan Suter narrative on steroids. Not really sure what kind of appetite this town has for a player trying to run the team TBH. This is going to get ugly
Here is what I wrote in r/MN_PWHL for those that can’t get past the pay wall:
So essentially the article is just laying out some of the facts and the storyline leading up to this. Not a whole lot we haven’t read already. I’m a little disappointed since it’s a Mike & Joe article.
The key takeaways are how Klee didn’t get either job to start with. Then how Charlie bowed out and Klee stepped up to the plate. Darwitz has a rich history in women’s hockey and Minnesota sports lore. Some players spoke off the record about how she upheld good core values and supported the players at a top tier level when less savory things were happening around them. The end of season situation got messy so the league hired an arbitration firm to mediate the situation and must have reccommended parting ways with Darwitz since that is what we are dealing with now. The league tried to get her in a position in the league operations department and to get her to read a script saying she’s “accomplished everything I could hope for” in order to save face, which she obviously did not go for. Then some quotes from KCS about how much she loves playing for Klee and kind of comes off a bit dismissive of Darwitz. Finally the article ends with a team staffer displaying from their perspective how absolutely befuddling this situation is because of how great of a leader Darwitz is.
One particular note I latched onto is the article reminded us that all the GMs were in one year contracts that end June 30th. I’m willing to bet if nothing else that will be our best bet to get some news, after she is officially not a part of the league anymore.
I’m a little speechless going forward unless we get some major news. All I can think of is how shameful and dirty this is all the way around. There had to have been a better way to go about this and it seems kind of like a veteran-locker room mutiny (I’m thinking the older gals that may have played with her in the past) and the league caved into the pressure of said mutiny. What a blemish on the league and MN hockey history.
I hope things can remain professional and they can still find a way to draft well and roll into next season with the momentum we ended on.
If there’s a rift between the coach and GM, the GM fires the coach. This just makes the PWHL seem like a joke of a league. Like some Arena Football League shit. Why even have a damn GM if the coach has more power/support/authority?
4 comments
I’m still as confused as the staffers…Was it THIS bad or it’s the huge support for Klee around the league + the players?
This is shaping up like the Ryan Suter narrative on steroids. Not really sure what kind of appetite this town has for a player trying to run the team TBH. This is going to get ugly
Here is what I wrote in r/MN_PWHL for those that can’t get past the pay wall:
So essentially the article is just laying out some of the facts and the storyline leading up to this. Not a whole lot we haven’t read already. I’m a little disappointed since it’s a Mike & Joe article.
The key takeaways are how Klee didn’t get either job to start with. Then how Charlie bowed out and Klee stepped up to the plate. Darwitz has a rich history in women’s hockey and Minnesota sports lore. Some players spoke off the record about how she upheld good core values and supported the players at a top tier level when less savory things were happening around them. The end of season situation got messy so the league hired an arbitration firm to mediate the situation and must have reccommended parting ways with Darwitz since that is what we are dealing with now. The league tried to get her in a position in the league operations department and to get her to read a script saying she’s “accomplished everything I could hope for” in order to save face, which she obviously did not go for. Then some quotes from KCS about how much she loves playing for Klee and kind of comes off a bit dismissive of Darwitz. Finally the article ends with a team staffer displaying from their perspective how absolutely befuddling this situation is because of how great of a leader Darwitz is.
One particular note I latched onto is the article reminded us that all the GMs were in one year contracts that end June 30th. I’m willing to bet if nothing else that will be our best bet to get some news, after she is officially not a part of the league anymore.
I’m a little speechless going forward unless we get some major news. All I can think of is how shameful and dirty this is all the way around. There had to have been a better way to go about this and it seems kind of like a veteran-locker room mutiny (I’m thinking the older gals that may have played with her in the past) and the league caved into the pressure of said mutiny. What a blemish on the league and MN hockey history.
I hope things can remain professional and they can still find a way to draft well and roll into next season with the momentum we ended on.
If there’s a rift between the coach and GM, the GM fires the coach. This just makes the PWHL seem like a joke of a league. Like some Arena Football League shit. Why even have a damn GM if the coach has more power/support/authority?