The Skilled Girls’s Hockey League will add a franchise in Seattle forward of subsequent season.
Seattle joins Vancouver because the PWHL’s first two enlargement groups, bringing the rising league to eight groups now spanning west to east throughout North America. The opposite groups are positioned in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, the New York Space and Minnesota.
The long-rumoured enlargement to Seattle was confirmed on Wednesday morning.
Jayna Hefford, the league’s govt vice chairman of hockey operations, pointed to Seattle’s wealthy historical past of supporting girls’s sports activities, a rising youth hockey group and entry to prime services as just a few explanation why town was interesting.
“Seattle has been unbelievable in supporting girls’s hockey, whether or not that be on the worldwide stage with the Rivalry Sequence, after which after all our (Takeover Tour) sport,” Hefford advised CBC Sports activities in an interview.
“I believe Seattle has actually stood up for girls’s sports activities. We won’t wait to be a part of that girls’s sports activities group right here.”
The PWHL will add its eighth franchise in Seattle. The workforce will start play subsequent season. (PWHL)
Greater than 12,600 individuals attended a PWHL sport between the Montreal Victoire and Boston Fleet inside Local weather Pledge Area, the house of the NHL’s Kraken, on Jan. 5 as a part of the league’s Takeover Tour.
Earlier than that, in November 2022, greater than 14,500 followers watched a Rivalry Sequence sport between Canada and the USA on the identical location.
The PWHL workforce will be part of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm and NWSL’s Seattle Reign FC as main girls’s skilled groups primarily based within the metropolis.
“The chance to start out a brand new chapter of ladies’s hockey within the Pacific Northwest, mixed with calling the world-class Local weather Pledge Area dwelling has a lot which means for our league,” Amy Scheer, the league’s govt vice chairman of enterprise operations, stated.
“The Kraken have already got been unbelievably supportive, and it is a pleasure to have PWHL Seattle be part of the WNBA’s Storm and the NWSL’s Reign, who’re skyscrapers within the metropolis’s towering sports activities panorama.”
Crew to play in NHL area
Like Vancouver, the Seattle workforce will initially be known as PWHL Seattle whereas the league develops a brand new identify and emblem. The workforce’s colors shall be emerald inexperienced and cream.
The workforce will play at Local weather Pledge Area and practice on the Kraken Neighborhood Iceplex. Local weather Pledge Area can be dwelling to the WNBA’s Storm.
Whereas the Seattle franchise shall be owned by Mark and Kimbra Walter, together with the opposite seven PWHL groups, the bid for a Seattle franchise was led by the Kraken and the Oak View Group that developed and operates Local weather Pledge Area.
The PWHL Seattle workforce will play out of the Kraken’s Local weather Pledge Area and practice out of the Kraken Neighborhood Iceplex. (PWHL)
“We frequently need to elevate the bar for our athletes and be certain that the expertise that they’ve on this league is skilled and it is of the very best requirements,” Hefford stated.
“When we now have the flexibility to enter a constructing that has the house they want, that has the capability for our fanbase, that has the flexibility to broadcast in an expert method, there’s simply so many components to being in a constructing like Local weather Pledge.”
The league has renovations to do at its services in Vancouver. However the nearly-brand new Local weather Pledge Area and Iceplex will not require a lot, except for including PWHL branding within the coaching services.
When the league introduced the primary piece of its west coast footprint final week in Vancouver, Scheer stated a number of instances that the PWHL would not need to be a regional league.
Having two groups on the west coast will definitely make it simpler for the league to pitch that reality to potential U.S. broadcast companions, because the league searches for a nationwide U.S. TV deal.
“I believe that is only one test within the field that we lined a geographic footprint with this west coast enlargement,” Hefford stated. “However that could not be the one purpose we did it. It needed to test the entire different containers.”
Solely a brief drive throughout the border from each other, Seattle and Vancouver ought to have a pure rivalry from day one within the PWHL. Girls’s groups from the 2 cities have performed one another as early as 1921, based on the league, and that is the subsequent chapter.
Enlargement, entry draft to return
With the league’s first spherical of enlargement now introduced, consideration turns to the low season and all the things that should occur to get two new franchises up and working forward of a brand new season subsequent fall.
The league must finalize guidelines for an enlargement draft that may assist fill out the rosters of each new groups. Hefford stated that is within the “ultimate phases.”
Seattle Kraken assistant coach Jessica Campbell, centre, drops the puck throughout a sport in Seattle between the Montreal Victoire and Boston Fleet. (PWHL)Whereas it is not clear precisely what number of gamers every workforce may lose, Hefford has stated the purpose is to have the 2 new groups be aggressive in yr one. There will even be a course of for current groups to guard a sure variety of gamers from being chosen. A date for the enlargement draft hasn’t been introduced but.
Additionally to return is an announcement on the place the brand new groups may decide within the entry draft, which is about to be held in Ottawa on June 24. The league has already stated the primary decide will go to the prevailing workforce that is gathered probably the most Gold Factors, which a workforce earns by profitable video games after being eradicated from playoff competition.
Behind the scenes, each groups want hockey operations and enterprise workers, together with common managers, who will ideally should be in place earlier than the enlargement and entry drafts.
Playoff format more likely to keep, regardless of enlargement
The league can be piecing collectively the puzzle of scheduling subsequent season. The collective bargaining settlement requires a 30- to 32-game season for every workforce, and the PWHL will now must schedule eight groups round worldwide breaks, together with one for the Olympics in February and one for the world championship in April.
“A lot of work to do however the excellent news is we have performed this earlier than,” Hefford stated. “We have performed this with extra groups. I believe we’re effectively positioned to make sure these groups are profitable on day one.”
Hefford expects the league to match or surpass the 167 gamers who declared for final yr’s entry draft in Minnesota, with a minimum of 26 extra full-time contracts obtainable through enlargement.
Followers at a PWHL Takeover Tour sport in Seattle in January wave indicators saying they need a franchise of their metropolis. (David Conger/PWHL)
High gamers who’ve declared up to now embody Wisconsin ahead Casey O’Brien, who received the Patty Kazmaier Award for the highest feminine NCAA hockey participant this season, Canadian defender Nicole Gosling and Haley Winn, who simply received a world championship with the People.
A number of high-profile gamers from Europe have additionally declared, together with the Czech Republic’s Natálie Mlýnková and Kristýna Kaltounková, in addition to Finnish veteran Michelle Karvinen. Gamers have till Might 8 to declare.
4 video games stay on the PWHL’s regular-season calendar earlier than the Walter Cup playoffs start subsequent week.
4 groups will make the lower for the playoffs, a format that might proceed into subsequent season, even because the league expands from six to eight.
“At this cut-off date, we’re not in search of a change in format,” Hefford stated.
“However once more, there’s loads to nonetheless work by means of as we have a look at constructing availability and scheduling, and the worldwide occasions schedule.”
