For a long time now, the National Hockey League has called their on ice officials referees and linesmen because all of officials have been men up to this point. But within tbd last few years, we've seen an uptick of women break into the pro ranks as on ice officials.
Now, according to Marc Spector of Sportsnet, the NHL has made an interesting change on their game sheets recently as instead of the word linesmen they have replaced it with linespersons; take a look.
As Spector points out the American Hockey League does have a very promising women who works the lines routinely in games, Kirsten Welsh who could very well be the reason the NHL has changed ‘Linesmen' to ‘Linespersons'.