The IIHF World Championships are coming to the Detroit area, but there may not be an American team on the ice.

That is because the U.S. women’s hockey team has threatened to boycott the tournament that will be held in Plymouth starting March 31. The women have said that they want better wages, benefits and increased support for female hockey programs.

As some of you may have heard, USA Hockey issued a deadline for the ladies to decide whether they will report to training camp next week and the team let it pass without budging and now the national hockey organization has a big problem on its hands.

Asking for better compensation and benefits isn’t a new concept in sports. Student-athletes have been trying to get legitimately paid for the revenue they bring to their respective colleges.

Football players at Northwestern even attempted to create a union a couple of years ago before that idea got squashed.

The U.S. women’s soccer team is trying to get paid at the same level as the U.S. men’s team and they have a legitimate beef, too. The men’s team has done very little on an international stage, while the women have won multiple World Cups and OIympic gold medals. If you’re significantly more successful than a coworker, why shouldn’t you get more money than they do?

The women’s hockey situation could be fixed fairly soon, but USA Hockey is sending out mixed messages. Shortly after the boycott was announced, it released a statement that said that the organization is implementing a training camp for the Olympics and stipends and incentives for medals that could end up giving each player $85,000.

On the surface, that seems like a decent offer until the women’s team said the statement was inaccurate.

The team said that USA Hockey never made that offer and that it only covers the Olympics, but not the World Championships or anything else in between.

The team also called out USA Hockey on its “long-standing commitment” to women’s hockey by stating that it isn’t doing anything to address the concerns that they addressed with the threat of a boycott.

So it appears that USA Hockey is either inept, full of crap or both. I’m leaning toward the third one.

With their weak deadline threat being a bust, USA Hockey could now look to professional women’s players, but the players in the National Women’s Hockey League support the boycott.

So junior players are its only option and that brings forth a whole new set of problems. First, some younger players have backed up the women’s movement, and second, there would also be a massive talent discrepancy between the U.S. team and countries like Canada or Sweden.

So now what? Well, it looks like if USA Hockey wants to have a team that doesn’t look bad on its home ice, the organization will have to grudgingly try to negotiate with the current women’s team — and they better do it quickly.

The tournament begins in less than two weeks and it would look ridiculous if the host organization couldn’t find a way to put a competitive team on the ice.

Women tend to get the short end of the stick in sports and there are always excuses for it. However, there is no excuse for a national organization like USA Hockey.

The U.S. men’s team was made up of NHL players at the previous Olympics, who have their pro salaries to go off of. The women’s team doesn’t have that luxury and half of them have other jobs.

You can’t expect someone to take time off of work to go compete in a massive tournament and expect them to do it for free.

One of the players in an interview with the online site espnW said that this is becoming a debate over “chasing your dream or giving in to the reality of the financial burden.”

Forcing athletes to have to make that choice is wrong and it needs to stop.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.