There's no overstating just how significant this week's Upper Deck PWHL release is. In 1992, Manon Rheaume became first woman to appear on her own hockey card. Rheaume’s 1992 Classic cards were the first cards of an individual women’s hockey player ever produced, over 100 years after women started playing hockey.
To put this into context, the first male hockey players to appear on cards were in a set released by Imperial Tobacco in 1910. Hockey cards of male athletes were printed for 82 years(!!!) before the first woman was given the honour of appearing on one.
After Rheaume, more stars of the women’s game - American superstar Cammi Granato and Erin Hamlen (a U.S. goalie and second woman to play in a professional men’s league) - were also depicted on cards.
In 1994, Classic released a set named ‘Women of Hockey’ which included stars from the Canadian and American World Championship rosters. While men's cards still outnumbered womens 1000:1, within two years of the first-ever women’s hockey card, more and more athletes were receiving their first/rookie card.
After that, women’s hockey cards continued to be produced by major card companies but only ever as cards to commemorate special events/moments or as a part of men’s collections, never as a separate, standalone sets (ie. Team Canada Women as part of the Canadian Men's Junior set).
This set breaks the mold. It is a release completely dedicated to a professional women's league and places women's hockey players on long-established and well-loved designs like Young Guns and UD Portrait.
We didn't get cards with embedded memorabilia or autographs this time around, but they will come in future Upper Deck sets.
We're off and running and I, for one, had a blast ripping PWHL packs!