Women's hockey, from Rideau Hall to the PWHL.

The first recorded games

The IIHF's history of the women's game says Lady Isobel Stanley, daughter of Governor General Lord Stanley, was quite possibly the first woman photographed playing hockey, around 1890 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa. Which game counts as the first women's game is disputed:

• Search summaries report that the Hockey Hall of Fame regards a game involving Isobel Stanley at Rideau Hall in 1889 as the first.
• The IIHF, and Hockey Canada according to a search summary of its page, point instead to an account in the Ottawa Citizen of 11 February 1891 as the first recorded women's game.

The IIHF adds that a similar notice appeared in a Barrie, Ontario, newspaper in 1892, and that the University of Toronto beat McGill in 1921 to win the first Canadian university women's national championship.

The Rivulettes, and a long gap

In the 1930s the Preston Rivulettes, with Hilda Ranscombe, dominated the women's game until the Second World War ended their run in 1939. The IIHF says women's hockey was slow to restart after 1945. Its history picks the story up in the mid-1950s, when nine-year-old Abby Hoffman was barred from a boys' team after it was found she was a girl, and her parents took the case to the Ontario Supreme Court.

Rebuilding, 1966 to 1990

The IIHF's history records the steps that rebuilt the game:

• 1966: Brown University's Pembroke Pandas become the first women's college team in the United States.
• 1975: Fran Rider founds the Ontario Women's Hockey Association.
• 1982: Finland's Naisten SM-sarja becomes the first national women's league in a major European hockey country, and Canada creates its national women's championship.
• 1987: Rider organises the first, unofficial, international women's world championship in Toronto, with eight teams.
• 1989: the first IIHF European Women's Championship is played in Dusseldorf and Ratingen, West Germany, and won by Finland.

The first Women's World Championship, 1990

The first IIHF Women's World Championship was held at the Ottawa Civic Centre from 19 to 25 March 1990, with eight teams, and Canada beat the United States 5-2 in the final. The Canadian Museum of History says organisers dressed Team Canada in pink jerseys and white satin pants as a publicity measure because tickets were not selling, and that the pink jerseys were retired after Canada won. According to Wikipedia, the gold medal game drew 8,784 spectators, reported at the time as the largest crowd for a women's game.

Wikipedia also says full body checking, with restrictions along the boards, was allowed at the 1990 tournament, making it the only major international women's event to permit it, and that the IIHF ruled body checking out of women's hockey afterwards. One search result claimed checking was not allowed at the 1990 event; its source could not be identified. The year the IIHF ban took effect was not found.

The Olympics and the 1990s

Manon Rheaume played a period in goal for the Tampa Bay Lightning in a 1992 NHL exhibition game. From 1997 the IIHF required all on-ice officials at the Women's Worlds to be women and began holding the event every non-Olympic year. Women's hockey became an Olympic medal sport at Nagano in 1998, and the United States won the first title, beating Canada 3-1 in the final, played on 17 February 1998 according to a search summary of History.com. That team was inducted into the US Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009 and the US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2019, according to Team USA.

The college game grew in step. The IIHF's history says the NCAA introduced the Patty Kazmaier Award in 1998, that Canada's National Women's Hockey League was founded in 1999, and that Minnesota-Duluth beat St. Lawrence 4-2 for the first NCAA women's national title; the exact year of that final was not checked against the NCAA.

Into the 21st century

• 2005: the United States wins its first Women's Worlds gold, beating Canada 1-0 in a shootout (IIHF).
• 2006: at Turin, Sweden beats the United States in a semi-final shootout and takes silver, the first Olympic women's silver for a European team (IIHF).
• 2009: the Clarkson Cup is first awarded, to the Montreal Stars (IIHF).
• 2010: the first women enter the Hockey Hall of Fame (see below).
• 2019: the Canadian Women's Hockey League folds, and players form the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) (IIHF).
• 2022: the IIHF announces that the Women's Worlds will be held every year, Olympic years included.

The first women in the Hockey Hall of Fame are also disputed in detail. Reuters, carried by Fox News, reported that Angela James of Canada and Cammi Granato of the United States were enshrined on 8 November 2010 as the first women. The IIHF's history page, as read, lists Geraldine Heaney alongside them as a 2010 inductee. Hayley Wickenheiser, with four Olympic golds, one Olympic silver and seven world championship golds, was inducted on 18 November 2019 as the seventh woman in the Hall, according to Fox News.

There were NHL firsts too. According to Wikipedia, Marguerite Norris, president of the Detroit Red Wings from 1952 to 1955, was the first female NHL executive and the first woman engraved on the Stanley Cup, and in 2019 Kendall Coyne Schofield became the first woman to compete in the All-Star Fastest Skater event.

The PWHL, 2024 onward

The Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) played its first game on 1 January 2024 at Toronto's Mattamy Athletic Centre. New York beat Toronto 4-0, Ella Shelton scored the league's first goal and Corinne Schroeder made 29 saves, with Billie Jean King and Jayna Hefford taking part in the ceremonial faceoff. The league began with six teams; search summaries of the PWHL's venues announcement put three in Canada and three in the United States. ESPN says it was established in 2023 by Billie Jean King and Mark Walter; some reports place the Walters' involvement in 2022, when a letter of intent was signed with the PWHPA.

Minnesota won the first two Walter Cups, in 2024 and 2025, and the Montreal Victoire won in 2026, the first Canadian team to take the trophy, according to the PWHL. The 2026-27 season has not started as of October 2026: it opens on 5 December 2026, with the league grown to 12 teams. Results are on the PWHL page.

Where the game stands in 2026

At the World Championships, AP counted Canada's titles at 13 and the United States' at 11 after the 2025 final. At the Olympics, Canada won gold in 2022 for its fifth women's title, and the United States won in 2026, beating Canada 2-1 in overtime on 19 February 2026. The 2026 top-division Women's World Championship is scheduled for 6 to 16 November 2026 in Denmark and has not yet been played. Hockey Canada reported more than 115,000 women and girls registered in 2024-25, the most in Canadian history.