Inside the Toronto Six team facilities, where family feel meets military motivation

Asked what she's most jealous of in modern women's professional hockey, longtime goalie and current Toronto Six president Sami Jo Small chuckles.

"Handing out the salaries, it is an incredible thing that we get to do. We get to empower these women with a paycheque to be full-time hockey players. ... We dreamed that this moment would happen, and we knew that eventually it would," Small said.

"Just if it were 10 years earlier, it really would have helped our careers. But it was really special when we got to do that."

A three-time Canadian Olympian and four-time world champion, Small stepped away from the sport in the wake of the CWHL's collapse before taking the Six job over the summer of 2022.

The Premier Hockey Federation, isn't exactly where she thought she'd end up. Small admits now that the 2019 version of her might have viewed this as a sort of betrayal.

WATCH | CBC Sports examines the growth of the PHF's Toronto Six:

The PHF, previously known as the National Women's Hockey League, was a direct competitor of the CWHL.

"For me in this role here, I don't see it as simply me. It's me standing on the shoulders of giants that have come before me, that have created all of this, and now I get to be the one that really gets to reap the rewards and gets to lead this incredible organization," Small said.

Meanwhile, nearly all of the sport's top players are biding time as part of the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association in search of a "sustainable" league.

To PWHPA players, sustainability boils down to being paid and treated like full-time professional athletes. A key part of that is a team's facilities, and whether there are suitable training and recovery resources.

"[Sustainability] is a little bit of a