Hello, welcome to full-time with Meg Linnehan. You are listening to a podcast all about women's soccer on the

Athletic Podcast Network. I'm Meg, your host, and I'm a national staff writer at the Athletic

covering the NWSL and the US Women's National Team. But while this is a show all about

women's soccer today, this is actually a bonus episode all about women's hockey.

Megan Duggan retired from the professional game in USA hockey back in October

after an absolutely amazing career, including winning gold in the 2018 Olympics, seven women's

world ice hockey championships, three NCAA national championships with Wisconsin. I mean,

that list could keep going for a while, but we don't have all day.

She is here today to discuss the PWHPA, the Professional Women's Hockey Player Association,

which just played the first pro-women's hockey game ever in Madison Square Garden.

Now, you might have also seen Alex Morgan wearing one of the PWHPA's new hoodies or the Stick in the Ground campaign,

but the PWHPA will be back on national TV this upcoming weekend for another game between

Team Minnesota and Team New Hampshire. You can watch that on NBCSN here in the States at 3 p.m. Eastern,

2 p.m. Central. they will be playing at the United

Center in Chicago. Megan is the perfect person to try to give you an introduction to the

PWA, the state of hockey right now, how that might intersect with women's soccer. So let's

get right to it. All right, Megan. I want to start with you just in terms of, you know, you're around for the formation of

PWHPA.

So for folks who might not be familiar with what it is, I think also the joy of women's hockey

is that there have been so many acronyms and to try to keep track of them can be a bit

of a challenge if you're looking at it from the outside

end. But could you maybe explain to folks what the PWHP is and why it exists? Yeah, absolutely.

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