Women have already beaten USA Hockey at bargaining table

As representatives of the 23 players on the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team and USA Hockey continue discussions that would end the players’ holdout over better wages, we can already declare the winner:

The women.

When last we left our story, the men running USA Hockey had set a deadline of 5 p.m. ET last Thursday by which the reigning world champions and 2014 Olympic silver medalists had to declare their intentions about playing in the upcoming world championship. By the appointed hour, each and every player had said she would not play.

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Dave Ogrean, USA Hockey’s executive director, threw down the gauntlet, telling USA TODAY Sports that his organization had a “Plan B” for the boycott, meaning it would field a team of replacement players at the world championship in Plymouth, Mich.

Well, the deadline came and went. There is no replacement team. USA Hockey is adjusting the training schedule for the world championship in a manner that clearly indicates it expects its real team to be playing. And negotiations with the players are ongoing.

The takeaway is quite simple: USA Hockey blinked. The women won.

What the terms of their new deal will be are still unknown, but they’ll undoubtedly be better than the stunningly awful equivalent of $1,500 per year each player now receives from USA Hockey. You read that right: $1,500 a year.

This is an organization that brought in revenue of $41.9 million in 2014, according to its tax return. You read that right too.

It’s natural to wonder how this compares with what other national governing bodies give their athletes. Here’s the answer in a nutshell: Not well.

U.S. Figure Skating, with revenue of $17.9 million in 2014, pays its elite athletes more than $50,000 a year, and that’s just the beginning. Skating shows, personal appearances and endorsement deals, often put together with the help of USFS, give top U.S. skaters income of well over $100,000 per year.

How about tiny U.S. Biathlon? Its 2014 revenue was $2.3 million, which makes it hard to give athletes much of anything. But here’s what President and CEO Max Cobb did:

As part of a sponsorship agreement with the financial services firm State Street from 2014-16, Cobb carved out $90,000 for the NGB’s top performers over those three years, $30,000 per year. The first year, he gave elite athletes Susan Dunklee and Lowell Bailey $15,000 each. The next two years, Dunklee and Bailey were joined by Tim Burke in receiving $10,000 per year.

“We try and do as many of those collaborative sponsorship deals as we can,” Cobb said Wednesday. “Keeping talented athletes who have medal-winning potential is job one for us.”

The strategy paid off last month when Bailey won the nation’s first-ever world championship gold medal and Dunklee became the first American woman to win a world championship medal.

So, has USA Hockey cobbled together anything like that for its women’s hockey players?

“No,” said player agent Brant Feldman. “I had (four-time Olympian) Julie Chu last Olympics and she had eight endorsement deals. None were with a USA Hockey sponsor at the time we did the deal.”

This lack of innovation – or blatant lack of interest – in paying and promoting the U.S. women’s national hockey team is confounding. This has been one of the country’s most successful national teams over the past two decades, never having left an Olympic Games without a medal, while also winning seven of the last nine world championships.

Yet the disrespect this team receives from the men who run USA Hockey is palpable. When the governing body unveiled the 2014 Olympic jerseys to be worn by the men’s and women’s teams, something was missing — mention of the Olympic gold medal won by the women. Written on the right sleeve were the years “1960” and “1980,” the two times the U.S. men have famously won the Olympic gold medal. Conspicuously absent was “1998,” the year the U.S. women won the Olympic gold medal.

To this day, USA Hockey continues to sell jerseys without “1998” on the sleeve.