Adrienne Clarkson was thrilled to hear players would not touch the hockey trophy named after her, unless they'd won it.
Canada's former governor general donated the Clarkson Cup to be given annually to the best women's hockey team in the country.
NHL players don't want their fingers on the Stanley Cup unless they've won it.
Brampton forward Cherie Piper refused to handle the trophy on its recent tour of Barrie, Ont., where the third Clarkson Cup championship opens Thursday.
"Goodness, is that superstition or what?" Clarkson said. "It's become an object of important and has magic qualities.
"That's what I like. We have to have something for women that has that magic quality the way the Stanley Cup does."
Defending champion Minnesota, Montreal, Brampton and Toronto will battle for the Clarkson Cup. The winner will be crowned Sunday (TSN, tape delay 8 p.m. ET).
The championship features Canadian Olympians Piper, Jayna Hefford, Jennifer Botterill, Gillian Apps, Sarah Vaillancourt, Caroline Ouellette and Charline Labonte, as well as Julie Chu, Jenny Potter and Molly Engstrom from the U.S. Olympic team.
After handing the Clarkson Cup to the victor the last two years, Clarkson will be travelling in Europe and unable to attend this year's tournament. She's leaving the presentation of the silver trophy to her daughters Kyra and Blaise.
Minnesota represents the four-team Western Women's Hockey League (WWHL), while the other three clubs are part of the five-team Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL).
A change to the format this year has made the tournament longer. All teams play each other in a round robin Thursday to Saturday with the top two teams meeting in Sunday's final at the Barrie Molson Centre. Last year, the tournament consisted of just two semifinals and a final.
"That's a big step for us because it's more games," said Sami Jo Small, both Toronto's goalie and vice-chair of the CWHL.
"Because this is the biggest thing we have in women's hockey next to the world championship, we really wanted it to be a real festival. We wanted to create sort of a Memorial Cup-style event."
Toronto meets Brampton and Minnesota takes on 2009 champ Montreal to open the tournament Thursday.
Both women's hockey leagues in Canada are aiming for stability in the hopes their product will attract more sponsors and move them further on the road to becoming professional leagues. The CWHL is currently the more robust of the two leagues.
The CWHL brought Boston on board this season, which allowed American players on the U.S. Eastern seaboard to play in the league without having to relocate to Canada. The CWHL is a half-million dollar operation now, according to Small.
The CWHL also held a draft last summer for the first time and contracted from four to three teams in the Greater Toronto Area to make the clubs stronger and ensure parity.
The WWHL operated only three teams last season and went up to four this year with the addition of Manitoba. The league still lacks a team in Calgary. The Oval X-Treme suspended operations two seasons ago because of financial issues.
Many national team players moved from Alberta to Ontario to play in the CWHL this year, including defenceman Tessa Bonhomme and defender Delaney Collins.
Clarkson is a proponent of a women's pro league.
"They want to play hockey so much, so why do they have to have a day job and then play?" she asked. "We won our gold medal in 2010. We are really good as players.
"Why do we have to have anything like this, this idea that we're not good enough somehow to play professionally? Women want to be professional hockey players. We should be the first in the world to do it because hockey is our game."
How far the leagues are from professionalism depends on the money, Small says. While the CWHL has signed a few sponsors to three-year deals, it's still not an easy sell despite the exposure of the women's game at the 2010 Winter Games.
"It's a constant struggle," she says. "Being the sponsorship chairman of the CWHL, it's not so much you get 'no' and they're not interested in women's hockey. It's that they're supportive, but 'oh, we don't have the money right now."'
Small says the Olympics boosted the CWHL's attendance this season from "mom and dads" to an average of about 200 people per game. At $5 a ticket or $50 for season tickets, it's welcome revenue.
"We didn't really budget for much income from attendance and it definitely exceeded our expectations 10-fold," she says.
The CWHL has held off naming its teams to give prospective sponsors a say in the name, or at least get some marketing bang when they do name a team.
In the case of Toronto, they've enlisted the help of History television's "Name This" contest. From such submissions as the Toronto Fire Antz and Ontario Amazonz, the short-list includes Force, Snipes, Fury, Tornadoes and Vamps. Toronto's new name will be announced Thursday, says Small.
The team squeaked into the Clarkson Cup with a 3-1 win over Boston on March 12.
"We'd just come off a weekend where we'd lost two games to Burlington that was below us in the standings," Small says. "I'd never seen our team play like that before, diving in front of pucks and blocking shots. They really wanted to get to the Clarkson Cup."
Source: TSN (http://www.tsn.ca/canadian_hockey/story/?id=359229)
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