PWHL brings Takeover Tour game to Vancouver as part of exploring expansion
Vancouver has to be considered in a race to get a team but it's bumper-to-bumper traffic in the bid to be one of two new clubs in the pro women's hockey loop.
Article content
The PWHL is looking at expansion and the pro women’s hockey circuit’s Takeover Tour stop at Rogers Arena is setting up as a big, bold check mark in Vancouver’s column.
The one-off game at Rogers between the Montreal Victoire and Toronto Sceptres was announced as a sellout shortly after tickets were released in November. Rogers lists capacity for hockey at 18,910. The single-game record for an announced crowd for the PWHL is 21,105, which came April 20 last season for a matchup between Toronto and Montreal at the Bell Centre.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
PWHL brings Takeover Tour game to Vancouver as part of exploring expansion Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
The Takeover Tour, which visits nine cities in both the U.S. and Canada, opened Sunday in Seattle and an announced crowd of 12,608 watched the Boston Fleet edge Montreal 3-2 in a shootout at Climate Pledge Arena, the usual home of the Seattle Kraken.
The PWHL is in its second year and it’s a six-team league currently based in the northeast. All the clubs are owned by Mark Walter, the American billionaire who is also the controlling owner of MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers and a co-owner of English Premier League club Chelsea.
PWHL brass said in October that they were considering adding two teams as early as next season. They’ve neatly spread out the Takeover Tour games geographically. They’re going as far east as Quebec City, as far south as Raleigh, N.C.
The Associated Press reported in October that the league “targeted more than 20 markets to be issued requests for proposals for expansion.” It’s easy to suggest that Vancouver has a chance at a new team, but it’s also clear that the race has bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“I think we’ve been pretty public about the fact we’re exploring right now,” said Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s senior vice-president of hockey operations. “We are trying to learn where the interest is. We’re looking at those markets, exploring if they could be a good fit for the PWHL. It’s certainly a really important time for us as we continue our trajectory and look to grow as a league.
“The good news is that there’s been a lot of interest and excitement from people to be a part of the league. It’s up to us to learn and understand what could be the right fit for us.”
Among the criteria the PWHL is considering is “potential partnerships with youth hockey and the growth of the game in those markets,” according to Hefford. Vancouver should score well in that regard.
North Vancouver defender Chloe Primerano, 18, is commonly considered this country’s best young female player. She made her senior national team debut in November in the Rivalry Series against the U.S., and notched the game winner in a shootout in a contest in West Valley City, Utah. She’s currently captaining the Canadian team at the Under-18 worlds in Vantaa, Finland.
Primerano played academy hockey at Rink Kelowna, and B.C.’s academy system has greatly bolstered the female game here. It was rare to see a player from this province on any sort of national team for years, but it’s commonplace now to have two or even more players on Canadian youth squads.
Defender Danica Maynard of Osoyoos is part of the squad at the Under-18s. Seven players from B.C. went to selection camp in August.
“It seems that the growth of the game is happening there,” Hefford concurred. “And there’s, of course, the reception we’re going to have there Wednesday at a sold-out venue. There’s a lot to be optimistic about in that market.”
Where a Vancouver PWHL team might play the majority of its games is what’s hard to decipher. As much as there’s NHL-sized crowds for some contests, the league announced last week that the average attendance for the 104 games played during the 2024 calendar year — spread over two PWHL seasons — was 5,844.
Over that time, the league played games at eight NHL rinks and eight other arenas, including the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto (listed capacity: 2,600); the Verdun Auditorium (4,114); and the Tsongas Center in Boston (6,496).
The Fleet are currently set to play 11 of their home games at Tsongas this season. Sunday’s game in Seattle and a March 29 Takeover game at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis count as home games, and the site for Boston’s two other home games are yet to be decided.
The PWHL has been careful to not to get too far ahead of itself, utilizing larger venues sparingly. Smaller crowds in NHL-sized buildings are bad for the fan experience and put a dent in the league’s financial bottom line at the same time.
Options for a Vancouver PWHL team could include the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre at the University of B.C. (7,000), although they would have to find a way to mesh their schedule with the various UBC teams. There’s Burnaby’s Bill Copeland Arena (3,500) as well.
A PWHL team in Vancouver could also have marketing synergy with the Vancouver Rise, the pro women’s soccer team that’s slated to debut this spring in the Northern Super League. That circuit is being headed up by the likes of Diana Matheson, and Matheson and Hefford were both longtime stalwarts with their national teams in their respective sports during their playing days.
“There’s an incredible amount of camaraderie across women’s sport in general,” said Hefford, who played 17 season for Team Canada and won four Olympic gold medals, including at Vancouver 2010. “We all look at it as the rising tide of one lifts everyone.
“Diana and I have known each other for a number of years. We’ve been very close over the last couple of years. I have a ton of respect and admiration for everything Diana has done and for her vision for women ’s professional soccer in Canada.
“We’ve taken incredible lessons from the WNBA and the NWSL and other leagues that have come before us. There’s really great partnership amongst women’s professional sport. We’re lucky to have people we can look to and we’re equally excited to help the ones that come after us.”
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.