A League of their Own
Why every hockey fan should be rooting for the PWHL to succeed.
Last year in the middle of the NHL season, we were all treated to the beginning of a new hockey league. Years of hard work and dedication to growing the women’s game had finally columnated with the puck dropping on the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).
I’ve asked friends of mine who are hockey fans if they’ve seen (or heard of the PWHL) before, and the answer is usually no. I assure you, this is a league worth watching and supporting.
If you’re a hockey fan and haven’t watched the PWHL, you’re only screwing yourself over.
The start of something good.
Back in 2007, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) formed but folded in 2019. 2015 saw the formation of the National Women’s Hockey League, which became the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) in 2021. After the collapse of the CWHL, and the creation of a player’s association to represent women’s hockey players (PWHPA), the PWHL was born in 2023, with play beginning in January, 2024.1
Minnesota, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, and Toronto all received teams for the inaugural season, with each team being simply referred to by their home city to start.
Kicking off their inaugural season with a bang, the league set several attendance records for women’s hockey, including one game in Montreal seeing over 21,000 fans in attendance. 72 total games were played in the first season, averaging over 5,000 fans in attendance.2 Anecdotally, as I watched several games over the last season, with one exception, it seemed like every team was not having an issue drawing a crowd. At the end of the season, it was the Minnesota team that raised the Walter Cup (named for Mark and Kimbra Walter- major investors in the PWHL), with Taylor Heise as the MVP.
In the off season, each team rebranded themselves, and the Ottawa Charge, Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Boston Fleet, Minnnesota Frost, and New York Sirens were born, represented by the jerseys you see the ladies wearing in the picture at the top of this article. I think Montreal is my favorite so far, but they’re all slick.
PWHL’s impact on the game, and why this is good for hockey as a whole.
Recently, the PWHL started a neutral-site “Takeover Tour,” traveling to Seattle for a match between Boston and Montreal, Vancouver for a tilt between Montreal and Toronto, and Denver for a match between Montreal and Minnesota.
Each game was extremely well received, with Seattle, Vancouver, and Denver registering attendances of 12,608, 19,038, and 13,736 respectively.
What’s more, the fan response to each of these games has been enormously supportive, with chants of “we want a team!” coming out over the course of the games. The Takeover Tour finishes off later in the season with games in Edmonton, Buffalo, Raleigh, Detroit and St. Louis.3
By any metric, the league has been a success, even when compared to the NHL, for a variety of reasons. Players are more accessible to fans, young women who aspire for hockey careers get to see their heroes in action, and even some new rule changes have had positive impacts- the ‘jailbreak’ rule for instance of allowing the short-handed team to score on a penalty kill to cancel the power play is one rule that has had a very positive response…and one I’d like to see the NHL adopt.
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But then there’s the accessibility of the games as a whole. From the initial puck drop, each game is freely broadcast on Youtube for anyone to sit and watch. No blackouts. No nonsense. Just excellent hockey. This resonates even more considering the NHL’s crackdown on content creators.
The NHL is obviously a much more matured league, with billions of dollars in streaming and broadcast deals, as well as sponsorships, investors, etc. that the PWHL simply hasn’t gotten yet. It is entirely possible that the PWHL begins migrating away from Youtube at some point in the future, especially as it eyes expansion as soon as next year.
But this simple change of pace of making games just easy to watch has already given them a leg-up in generating a fanbase that previous women’s leagues didn’t have.
For its part, the NHL has generally been receptive to the PWHL, and women’s game as a whole. There have been women’s tournaments in recent all-star games, and even women competing directly against their male counterparts in the skills competition. And there have been collaborative efforts between the two leagues, something I hope continues well into the future as the PWHL builds its’ foundation and grows.
But how’s the on-ice product?
One common argument against women’s sports is that the game talent simply doesn’t match up with the men’s, and makes for less entertaining games.
Watch the video above, and you’ll see that that critique is pretty ridiculous.
Hitting, scrums after whistles, pretty goals…it’s all here. The only real difference? Fighting goes on international rules, where both players are given match penalties after a fight. Oh, and they wear cages (bfd).
There are other small rule differences, but nothing a casual fan would notice if they turned on a game.
Simply put, a hockey fan is only robbing themselves of excellent hockey by skipping this. And aside from the typical nonsense of Twitter clowns complaining about women playing hockey, there isn’t any legit criticisms of this game that make it inferior to the NHL.
What lies ahead…
Things stilll aren’t perfect for this league. While this league made minimum player salaries and better overall parity with the men’s game a priority, the average player still only makes about $56,000 a year. This is something that will hopefully grow in time as the league does.
The league’s limited reach so far is another consideration. While there are still only six teams, the league is set to expand by up to two teams next season. I cannot find solid information about where the expansion teams may end up, some candidates that have popped up are Detroit, Vancouver, Chicago, and Pittsburgh (and naturally, a push to get a team in hockey-starved Quebec City…which I fully support). Some other considerations have to be Denver and Seattle after the recent Takeover success. And then there are other NHL markets, like D.C., which I have to advocate for a team since I live in this area and would love to go to a PWHL game.
But the limited reach is slowly expanding. The Takeover Tour’s success is a perfect example of this. The PWHL’s inclusion in the NHL All-Star festivities is another, although there is no 2025 all-star game in the NHL, with the silly “Four Nations Tournament- a perfect time for the PWHL to seize the time for being the only meaningful hockey being played while the NHL does their senseless tournament. And, the PWHL’s inclusion in EA’s NHL 25 video game also helps breakdown those barriers.
Then there’s the aspect of equality and promoting the women’s game as a whole. This is something many of these ladies have been fighting to establish for several years now, and this league is the fruits of that labor. There is still a long way for them to go, but this is excellent progress.
Competition (theoretically) should build a better product, and in many ways, the PWHL is a direct competitor to the NHL, albeit a smaller one. But there are some things about the PWHL that should make the NHL take notice and consider for their own game.
As for us, the fans? This is just more excellent hockey to watch, and an underdog up-start league to support. Skipping out on this is only screwing yourself out of excellent hockey.
The PWHL season began on Nov. 30th, concluding on May 3rd (each team plays 30 games).
“Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) | Teams, History, & Schedule | Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023, www.britannica.com/topic/Professional-Womens-Hockey-League.
Mai, H.J. “Why Women’s pro Hockey May Be Here to Stay — and How You Can Stream Playoffs for Free.” NPR, 14 May 2024, www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1251200145/latest-womens-pro-hockey-league-shows-signs-of-eclipsing-other-attempts.
WAWROWq, JOHN. “PWHL’s Neutral Site Takeover Tour Drawing Attention and `We Want a Team’ Chants as Expansion Looms.” Imperial Valley Press Online, 17 Jan. 2025, www.ivpressonline.com/sports/pwhls-neutral-site-takeover-tour-drawing-attention-and-we-want-a-team-chants-as-expansion/article_53b20c41-71b0-5bf3-80e9-deb6754a9584.html. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.
Great work Bart!