In late May, the Minnesota team of the Professional Women’s Hockey League won the inaugural league championship for the Walter Cup. The PWHL was a solution of for a split between the women playing for the Premier Hockey Federation and the women of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players’ Association.
The solution was a six-team league, with each team playing a 24-game schedule. The Minnesota team had only finished third in league play, and had to go through a tense last week of the season to find out whether they would make it into the playoffs. Minnesota failed to win a game in their last five.
Yet, under head coach Ken Klee, the team was able to win the title in five games against the Boston franchise.
But weeks after Minnesota’s win in the Walter Cup final, general manager Natalie Darwitz was out of a job. There have also been published reports that Klee has notified a handful of club employees, hired by Darwitz, that they would not be with the team next season.
The PWHL is apparently investigating Klee and his behavior not only in the coaches’ room, but also with team members. His language has been described as racist and ableist. “I have never seen something so toxic and handled so unprofessionally,” a source tells The Hockey News.
The coaching situation for PWHL Minnesota has never been stable; prior to the season, head coach Charlie Burggraf had stepped down, and Klee, having applied for the positions of both general manager and head coach, took over the latter.
“When Charlie was let go and Ken came in, it couldn’t have been more opposite. Arrogant, smug…from that day forward there started to be a divide in my opinion; divide in the staff, divide in the players, it became a very toxic environment,” quoted the source to The Hockey News.
The environment was exacerbated by not only Klee’s avoidance of Darwitz in team situations, but in the way he seemed to coddle his captain, Kendall Coyne Schofield. According to sources, Coyne Schofield did not participate in team workouts, and had the support from other veterans and Klee to conduct their own workouts separate from the rest of the team.
Too, the team is dealing with blowback from its decision to draft former University of Wisconsin captain Britta Curl. Curl has raised hackles within the women’s hockey community for transphobic comments on social media.
That, I think, would be the least of the team’s problems if the front office situation in Minneapolis gets worse.
