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Michele Steele, ESPN ReporterNov 26, 2024, 01:25 PM ET
First, the bad news.
The all-time attendance record for a women’s hockey game — set April 21, 2024 when 21,105 fans attended a Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game between Toronto and Montreal — is unlikely to be broken this upcoming season.
“The 21,000 in Bell Center [in Montreal] will not be broken until we do an outdoor game,” said Amy Scheer, senior vice president of business operations for the PWHL. “Because that is the largest venue in North America.”
For the PWHL — which had one of the most successful opening season launches in recent memory, including winning “Breakthrough of the Year” by Sports Business Journal — the bad news is also kind of good news. They can’t set more attendance records for indoor hockey because bigger venues do not exist.
While the league, which is backed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King, won’t be doing outdoor games this season, it will be hosting nine neutral-site regular season games across the United States and Canada. Dubbed the Takeover Tour, the games will be held in three cities in Canada that do not currently host teams, and six in the United States, including Raleigh, Buffalo and Detroit. The cities will help expose more fans to PWHL hockey, and provide the league with critical information for testing potential markets for future expansion.
“We’re only in six markets and we need to continue to build our audience. We need to have people watch our product live,” Scheer said in an interview in Toronto, where the league has experienced breakneck growth. “There’s a wide swath of fans that are watching and engaging with our sport.”
Building on last year’s wins is the name of the game in the second season of the PWHL, which will feature an expanded 30-game regular season among six teams. There has also been an influx of international talent, which should enhance the quality of play across the league. The biggest change this year has been both the names on the jerseys and the jerseys themselves. In just eight months, the league created six new names and brand identities for its franchises: the Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montreal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres.
While the league declined to share specific jersey sales numbers, Scheer said the week of the team name announcement saw the highest sales week in the history of the new league.
The PWHL is also looking to capitalize on the momentum in women’s sports. A former New York Liberty executive, Scheer said the unprecedented growth of the WNBA this past season could help lift all boats, including her league.
“It is beyond exciting for me … there’s definitely a tailwind that I think we’re all riding, and it’s important to be ready for that moment, to be ready for that tailwind and to ride it for as long as you can.”
So that’s off the ice — and arrows are pointing up for the PWHL — but what can fans expect on the ice this upcoming season? We went around the horn with the league’s GMs and head coaches to find out.
Boston Fleet
2023-24 record (8-4-3-9, 3rd)
The Boston Fleet — which play home games in Lowell, Massachusetts — finished last season third in the league standings and beat Montreal in the playoffs to advance to the finals. Boston lost in five games to Minnesota, who won the league’s first championship: the Walter Cup.
The team is led by U.S. women’s national team members Hilary Knight, Megan Keller and goalie Aerin Frankel. The 35-year-old Knight, who recently recovered from a lower-body injury, is ready to go this season, and the Fleet will look to get their offense back on track. Boston scored just 60 goals last season, last in the league.
“This season, Boston fans can look forward to an exciting and dynamic brand of hockey,” said Fleet GM Danielle Marmer. “The rule change from last year, encouraging a more physical game, is not just something we’ve adapted to — it has become part of our identity, representing what it means to play Fleet hockey. With our core players gaining a year of experience together, we’ll see stronger team chemistry and a deeper commitment to winning habits. This sets us up to play punishing defense while excelling in a fast-paced transition game.”
Minnesota Frost
2023-24 record (8-4-3-9, 4th)
It was a strong first year for the PWHL, and the Minnesota Frost made it memorable by winning the inaugural Walter Cup. However, they followed up the championship with a change at GM, announcing Natalie Darwitz would not return for this season. Melissa Caruso is now the team’s GM.
Kendall Coyne Schofield, captain of the USWNT, anchors this squad, which turned things around in the playoffs after losing the final five games of the regular season. Former NHL player and Frost head coach Ken Klee told ESPN that the Frost will carry a ‘target on your back’ mentality this season as reigning champions. “But also it’s a sense of pride, of accomplishment. It is incredibly hard to win a professional sports championship. So we have that, but also, it’s a new year, a new season — we’ve got to be ready to compete, we know every game is going to be tight, and we’re excited about it.”
Montreal Victoire
2023-24 record (10-3-5-6, 2nd)
It’s been a season of adapting to change for all the PWHL teams, including the Montreal Victoire. Head coach Kori Cheverie, who learned French at a rapid pace to communicate with the press, recently told reporters that she was adjusting to a new league initiative called the “No Escape Rule” for penalty kills. The rule prevents the penalized team from making substitutions until after play resumes, giving the power-play team an advantage.
The Montreal team is led by captain Marie-Philip Poulin, also known as Captain Clutch. She is perhaps best known for scoring the game-winning goal in the gold-medal games in three out of the four Olympics in which she competed. GM Danièle Sauvageau told ESPN she’s expecting “the influx of new talent from the draft and Europe will make the caliber [of players] that much better. Add the exponential fan interest ready for season two, and it should make for a memorable season.”
Montreal already has what could be described as a rabid fan base and will play a neutral-site game in hockey-crazed Quebec City.
New York Sirens
2023-24 record (5-4-3-12, 6th)
There’s nowhere to go but up for the New York Sirens, who started last season strong with a four-game win streak, but faltered down the stretch, completing the season at the bottom of the standings and selecting first in the 2024 PWHL draft. The Sirens have a new head coach and just signed first overall draft pick forward Sarah Fillier (Princeton) to a one-year player contract. Fillier won gold with Canada in 2022 and represented the country at the last four IIHF Women’s World Championships, winning three gold medals and one silver.
“Beyond the incredible individual talent we have at every position,” said Sirens GM Pascal Daoust, “we want our appetite for puck possession, our commitment to taking care of the puck, and our ability to impose our speed and physicality to be New York Sirens business card.”
Ottawa Charge
2023-24 season (8-1-6-9 5th)
Fun fact: The Ottawa Charge feature a couple of rookies — forward and second overall draft pick Danielle Serdachny and defender Stephanie Markowski — who have been best friends since grade school and played together on the 2019 Team Alberta squad that won gold at Canada’s Winter Games.
Ottawa finished the season with a loss to Toronto, which eliminated them from playoff contention. This year, head coach Carla MacLeod wants her team to be a tougher adversary on the ice.
“We want to increase the level of competition. We’ve got to become tougher to play against. We gave up too many goals last year. We want to make sure we become the team that we say that we are. We want to show it. It’s going to be an element of competition in training camp. It’s one thing to bring the compete. It’s another one to embrace the compete. That’s a harder thing sometimes. You have a teammate going at you hard and you’re like, ‘what the heck?’ You have to recognize that is what’s going to elevate us in the moments in games. The competition is going to be strong. The whole league got better. There will be competition at every position and there will be competition every single day.”
Toronto Sceptres
2023-24 season (13-4-0-7 1st)
Toronto was the first team to clinch a playoff spot last season and finished the regular season atop the standings. The PWHL allows the first-place finisher to choose its semifinal opponent, and Toronto chose Minnesota. It turns out, they chose poorly, losing in five games to the eventual Walter Cup Champion. The Toronto team is dominated by Canadian national team members, including Sarah Nurse, Renata Fast, Blayre Turnbull and Natalie Spooner, who won MVP of the league in its first season.
Said GM Gina Kingsburg: “Season 2 of the PWHL will without a doubt bring an elevated level of play from Season 1 with each team in the league getting significantly better on paper, and I believe there will be great parity amongst the six teams. We expect our team to continue to be one of the hardest teams to play against in the league; to be connected, play a collective team game, and play the game with great tempo and pace. We also expect to be physical, gritty and relentless, and to compete consistently day in and day out throughout the entire season.”
