why is this PWHL announcer insulting fans?

and why hasn't the league addressed it?

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why is this PWHL announcer insulting fans?

On December 28, 2024, D.F. Pendrys logged onto X ahead of that day’s PWHL game between the Minnesota Frost and the Montreal Victoire. Pendrys glanced at the broadcast team and fired off a fairly benign tweet expressing annoyance at having to listen to a play-by-play announcer who she isn't all that fond of. On the scale of offensive things that fans post on social media about their favorite players, teams, and television crews, this one barely registered. It even had a typo in it.

Pendrys is a longtime women’s hockey fan and sometimes media member who is no stranger to publicly sharing her opinions on the game (Pendrys uses she, they, and he pronouns). But they were shocked by what happened next: Matvick sent them a DM. Not only that, but the game was still going when the message was sent. Pendrys did not tag him and was tweeting from a new account that had only a few hundred followers. Matvick most likely found the tweet by name-searching himself.

Matvick’s message read, Why ya hating?

Despite Pendrys’ surprise, he decided to respond to the message. “You’ve been better today,” she explained, “but you often center too much on men with your anecdotes.” They continued, offering concrete examples of times that Matvick had compared New York Sirens player Alex Carpenter to her father, noting that it was “a trope that has been repeated over and over by male sportscasters.” Finally, she added, the players “[don’t] need any male affirmation. Nor does the PWHL need any connection to men’s hockey to be legitimized.”

Pendrys wished Matvick a good day and assumed the interaction would end there. But Matvick wasn’t done. “Get over it! Be happier. So sad. Looking for reasons to be pissed,” Matvick said. And then he called Pendrys a “man hater.”

via D.F. Pendrys

Matvick is a veteran play-by-play broadcaster who has been employed by ESPN since 2006. He is a native Minnesotan who has been calling local sporting events in some form since 2001, when he took a job for Fox Sports North. He’s an experienced hockey broadcaster, and has worked everything from the fabled Minnesota high school hockey tournament to the Women’s Frozen Four in 2021.

Matvick called some Frost games last season, which aired on Bally Sports. He has done play-by-play for Frost home games this season, as well, which air on Fan Duel Sports Network. The games also stream in the U.S. on the PWHL’s YouTube account. It’s unclear whether Matvick is calling these games as an employee of ESPN, one of the local networks, the PWHL itself, or the Frost (ESPN declined to comment, and Fan Duel Sports Network, the PWHL, and the Frost all did not respond to requests for comment.)

Pendrys decided to share screenshots of the messages from Matvick publicly because they felt it was in the interest of fans and the league itself to do so. He also reached out to ESPN and the PWHL directly. By January 2nd, the Frost’s next home game, Pendrys still hadn’t received a response from anyone, but Matvick was back on the play-by-play call for the game’s broadcast. Matvick locked his X account but aside from that, there had been no public acknowledgement from anyone associated with a league or network regarding what happened.

The following day, someone from the PWHL finally reached out to Pendrys. According to Pendrys, she received a call from Mandy Gutmann, PWHL Vice President of Communications and External Affairs, who apologized for the delay in response and said that the issue had been “dealt with.” It is unclear how the incident was handled with Matvick, and the PWHL and Fan Duel Network did not respond to my questions about the matter. Matvick’s X account remains locked, and he has been the play-by-play broadcaster for every Frost home game since.

The lack of accountability from Matvick or anyone associated with the league is concerning for some fans. One fan on social media said the incident is one “reason why it's difficult to take the PWHL seriously,” while another felt his actions were “telling enough that he should not be a broadcaster for the PWHL.” Pendrys says they are less concerned about what happened to them, specifically, and more concerned that a broadcaster for a women’s hockey league has such problematic views of people who aren’t men.

“While it's not stunning that a male broadcaster might have these feelings about women, it is odd that he would be platformed by a women's sports league,” Pendrys told Out of Your League.

“I personally would have liked to have seen the league and him acknowledge the mistake publicly and say what the plan was to do better going forward. Instead, a private apology was all that was given and not even from him, but from a league Vice President—an apology that was appreciated, but still really inadequate. Because this isn't ultimately about me, this is ultimately about how a broadcaster views an entire group of people. How he treated me was just a canary in a coal mine.”

This newsletter was edited by Louis Bien.