The PWHL: Two Months In

By Ian Welsman News In January 2024, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), became North America’s newest professional sports league. The first game was played in Toronto after announcing its founding in 2023. It attracted 2,900,000 fans to tune in to watch New York play against Toronto, the former shutting out PWHL Toronto 4-0. While the home fans may have wanted a different result, it was a notable milestone in women’s sports nonetheless. The Professional Women’s Hockey League is comprised of six teams across the US and Canada and is the most well- received women’s sporting league since the WNBA. It is the successor to the more obscure and outdated Premier Hockey League, with its season running from January to May. Despite the incredible reception, PWHL games are played in arenas like the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto with a capacity of 3,850 people, which is far from the average of 20,000 in a standard NHL arena. Games in Canada are broadcast on CBC Sports, TSN, and Sportsnet, and all games are live-streamed on YouTube in an attempt to give fans easier access to the league. According to Hockey Canada, over 89,000 women and girls play hockey in Canada. Yet, before the PWHL’s establishment, there was no clear career in professional hockey for most women unless they found their way to Canada’s national team. Many players who are emerging as stars in the league say that it will encourage more young girls to play a mostly male-dominated game and give them a chance to succeed.

Some fans, however, are disappointed with the fact that none of the teams have an individual identity, no name and no logo, when it seems like those are the two most important things for any sports culture to organically develop around a new team. According to the league, the reason for this is that they were unable to secure legal rights to any proposed names and logos in time for the announced start date. Team identities have been promised for future seasons, but for now, we are stuck with the generic names and logos (PWHL Toronto, PWHL Boston, etc.) PWHL Montreal is currently the best team in the league, with a 6-3-3-2 record. Unlike the NHL which counts wins as two points in the standings, overtime losses as one point, and regulation losses as 0, the PWHL counts regulation wins as 3 points, overtime wins as 2, overtime losses as 1, and regulation losses as 0. This means PWHL Montreal has 27 points in the standings currently, but if they were in the NHL, they would have only 21. Also, if a team that has lost a player to the penalty box scores, the power play for the other team ends and the penalized player can come back on the ice. This is called the “jailbreak” rule, and many fans have expressed their opinion for it to be adopted into the NHL as well. It’s considered a reward for still being able to score even with one less person to pass the puck to. Even though the PWHL playoffs are still quite far away, dedicated fans continue to cheer on one of the most successful women’s sports leagues in history, even if their team names are stuck as acronyms.