hockey. The Clarkson Cup is made of silver and was designed by Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit. Canadian silversmith Beth M. Biggs was commissioned to make the Clarkson Cup. She designed and built the sterling trophy and collaborated with three Inuit artists: Okpik Pitseolak, Therese Ukaliannuk, and Pootoogook Qiatsuk. The Inuit artists designed some of the decoration on the trophy. There are images of the goddess Sedna (one of the most powerful figures in Inuit tradition), Arctic animals, ancient masks, and the flowers of the provinces and territories of Canada. The actual cup portion of the trophy is not much bigger than a large coffee mug. Early problems The trophy was awarded to the Canadian national women's hockey team on July 10, 2006, with the expectation that Hockey Canada would take over the trophy and how it was to be awarded. However, complications arising due to the rights to the trophy (Clarkson wanting full rights to the trophy from the artists in order to turn the trophy over to Hockey Canada, while the artists wanting Hockey Canada to instead license the Cup in order to collect royalties from its use) and the splintered top level of women's club hockey at the time resulted in the trophy not being awarded for three years. At the time of the creation of the Clarkson Cup, there were two top professional women's hockey leagues in Canada: the National Women's Hockey League in Eastern Canada and the Western Women's Hockey League in Western Canada (with one team from Minnesota) — the latter being formed from two former NWHL teams (the Calgary Oval X-Treme and Edmonton Chimos) due to travel costs, with no interleague championships to determine a true national champion. Though the two leagues were expected to merge in 2007 (with the five-team WWHL being absorbed into the 11-team NWHL as a new "western division"), logistics differences (due to playoff scheduling) made the merger impossible — the WWHL playoffs were finished before the Esso Women's Nationals, while the NWHL playoffs had yet to begin (and would not conclude until after the Nationals and the world championships). The NWHL folded at the conclusion of the 2006–07 season, with the Canadian Women's Hockey League taking its place. Though the CWHL and WWHL agreed on a format that would determine a national champion (to be decided with each league sending its two best teams to the Esso Women's