New PWHL Players Association director aims to keep raising bar for players

It's been a whirlwind of a month for Malaika Underwood.

After taking over as the PWHL Players Association's executive director on March 3, she visited all six PWHL markets to meet with players and try to understand a bit more about each team's day-to-day routine.

She saw where players train and attended a game at each arena, all to help give her perspective on the day-to-day working life for PWHL athletes.

It's all part of the former elite baseball player's plan to improve communication and empower players, who launched the league in 2023 with an eight-year collective bargaining agreement in hand.

"This has been an amazing ride for so many of them and it's such an impressive movement that these players have been a central part in," Underwood said in an interview with CBC Sports. "Helping advocate for them and be their collective voice is really exciting for me."

Underwood played both volleyball and baseball at a high level, captaining the University of North Carolina's volleyball team and spending 17 years on the USA Baseball national team. After her playing career ended, she helped coach that same team to a Women's Baseball World Cup silver medal in 2024.

She also understands the corporate side of sports, having advised sports organizations and players' associations, including the NFLPA, WNBAPA and MLBPA, to name a few.

Now, she's taken the reins of the association representing players in the PWHL, just as the league is considering expanding by as many as two teams as early as next season.

Underwood's job is to make sure players are always at the forefront of decisions like that.

Expansion will create more jobs across the league and is a sign of the PWHL's success. But it could also mean an expansion draft, which could upend players' lives.

And as players wait for news about expansion, uncertainty weighs on them.

"They need to feel comfortable coming to me and saying, hey, this uncertainty around expansion, for example, is putting us in a tough spot because our landlord just came and said we've got two weeks to tell them before renewing our lease or not, and we don't want to renew it for a long term if there's a potential for expansion and for expansion trades," Underwood said.

"Those are real world issues and that's what I deal with on a day-to-day basis, which is meaningful work."

Underwood takes over from veteran NHL executive Brian Burke, who had agreed to a two-year term with the players' association when the league launched.