Until this past week, the majority of the best players in women’s hockey have been shielded from the dirtier side of the business side of professional sports and how that could impact their day-to-day lives.

An expansion process focused on maintaining league-wide parity ended that shielding once and for all.

And kudos to the women — the likes of Hilary Knight, Sarah Nurse, Alex Carpenter and Emerance Maschmeyer to name just four — who handled this all with so much grace.

It can’t have been easy for hockey players who all their lives have been told they are at the very elite level of their sport, to suddenly hear from the general managers of the teams they helped form that there were three other players they would rather protect going forward.

All four of the aforementioned players were

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