While the NWHL season is still on hold for the final and championship game of the year between the Minnesota Whitecaps and the Boston Pride, the league’s free agency has officially begun.
Unlike last year, where the Riveters were keeping fans nervous by not signing a full team until just weeks before the season was set to begin, the New Jersey team was the first to make a signing and thus far has two of the three players who have signed.
If you are unfamiliar with the league, free agency works very differently from that of the NHL. Players are signed to one-year contracts with salaries ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 for one season. They are all free agents at the end of every season. Not every player’s salary is released, however, we do know last year’s team salary cap was set at $150,000 with a limit of 23 roster spots.
Kendall Cornine was the first player to re-sign with the Rivs. Coming off of her rookie season, Cornine was tied with captain Madison Packer for most goals on the team with 13, led the team in shots on goal with 115, had 24 total points, a .536 faceoff percentage which led the team, and the most shots blocked by a forward. She’s an incredibly important part of the team and locking her down so early in the ‘offseason’ is a great weight lifted off their shoulders.
The second signing so far was Rebecca Morse, who will enter her fifth season in the NWHL. Morse is a veteran presence on the team, wore the ‘A’ this season, shined at the All-Star Game, and really had a breakout year. She had two game-winning goals, which is the most on the Riveters, the most shots blocked on the team, and 11 points on the season, which is the most by any full-time defender for the Riveters. Defense is something the team will need to drastically work on going forward, but signing Morse is, again, a huge weight lifted.
The Connecticut Whale is the only other team to have signed a player in their back-up turned starting goalie Brooke Wolejko. While she began starting games late into the season, she was this year’s biggest All-Star snub. With nine fewer games played, she made just two fewer saves than Pride goalie Lovisa Selander and 12 more shots against.
None of these players released their salary information, as it is up to them to decide if that is made public, so it is hard to gauge where their respective caps are as of now. But I would assume all three players were granted increases if requested.
In this time of great uncertainty, and more importantly no sports to watch, the NWHL has free access to all of their 2019-20 games on their Twitch channel if you haven’t seen them already.