When the Montreal Victoire and Ottawa Cost skate out to a packed Videotron Centre in Quebec Metropolis on Sunday, will probably be the end result of greater than a 12 months’s value of labor to carry skilled girls’s hockey to the town.
For the individuals who’ve labored to promote Quebec Metropolis to the PWHL, they hope it is the primary recreation of many.
Because the league considers whether or not to develop by as many as two groups as early as subsequent season, Quebec Metropolis has made a pitch to be thought of.
The town would appear to verify a number of bins on the league’s guidelines, together with geography, a robust fan base, and an enviornment constructed with the concept knowledgeable staff may sometime be the anchor tenant.
“I can solely say that we’re in that means of exchanging data,” Martin Tremblay, the president of Gestev, the corporate that manages and operates the city-owned Videotron Centre, stated about enlargement discussions with the PWHL. “They’ve their necessities. We have now, I might say, a superb relationship with them.”
As of Tuesday, there have been fewer than 1,000 tickets accessible for Sunday’s recreation, in accordance with Tremblay. Videotron Centre seats greater than 18,000 for hockey.
Quebec Metropolis is one in every of 9 stops on the PWHL’s Takeover Tour, which is visiting cities throughout North America this season.
Thus far, the league has performed video games inside NHL arenas in Seattle, Vancouver and Denver, drawing greater than 45,600 individuals mixed.
Area ready for professional staff
The push to carry a staff to Quebec Metropolis started round Christmas 2023, earlier than the PWHL had performed even a single recreation.
Quebec Metropolis councillor Jackie Smith had heard concerning the new hockey league from her assistant. He is from Beauce, the small neighborhood between Quebec Metropolis and Maine the place Marie-Philip Poulin grew up, and he is adopted the Victoire captain’s profession “religiously.”
“He is perhaps her greatest fan,” Smith stated.
She was satisfied shortly that Quebec Metropolis could be an ideal match for the PWHL.
“We’re a hockey city,” stated Smith, who represents the Limoilou district in Quebec Metropolis, which incorporates Videotron Centre.
“I do know there’s lots of people who say that, however we had the Nordiques and individuals are nonetheless devastated by [the team relocating]. We have now the sector. It is sitting right here ready for knowledgeable hockey staff.”
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A Quebec Metropolis PWHL staff would not need to compete with different groups and leagues taking part in all through the winter. They might doubtless share the Videotron Centre with the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. The staff is drawing greater than 9,400 followers on common, per attendance figures compiled by HockeyDB, which leads the QMJHL.
The league can also be financial alternative, and Smith feels her metropolis checks that field too.
“Economically, Quebec Metropolis is a little bit of a tiger,” Smith stated. “It is recession-proof as a result of there’s numerous authorities jobs, there’s numerous insurance coverage, there’s lots of white-collar jobs. There’s additionally a superb entrepreneurial sector. So we’ve a extremely good economic system that may actually help knowledgeable hockey staff.”
The return of ladies’s hockey
Quebec has an extended historical past of ladies’s hockey, nevertheless it’s been greater than 15 years since Quebec Metropolis was house to a girls’s skilled staff. That was the Quebec Phenix, a staff that performed one season within the Canadian Ladies’s Hockey League earlier than folding in 2008.
The Phenix’s roster that season did not come near boasting the identical star energy because the rival Montreal staff. Montreal has all the time been a hub for elite gamers, even some with no connection to the town.
A Quebec Metropolis PWHL staff ought to have a extra even taking part in discipline than the Phenix did with regards to sources and roster constructing, given that every one PWHL groups are owned by the identical entity.
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Laurence Beaulieu has watched women’ and girls’s hockey develop within the space over the previous few years, in comparison with when the 33-year-old began her hockey profession. Beaulieu went on to play on the College of Montreal and professionally with the Montreal staff within the CWHL, which folded in 2019.
“There is a large enhance in girls’s hockey round right here,” Beaulieu, who’s the director of ladies’s hockey in Quebec Metropolis, advised CBC Montreal’s Jay Turnbull.
She pointed to applications geared toward introducing extra Quebec Metropolis-area women to the sport.
“I feel we’ve the [biggest] enhance in women taking part in within the province. We’re fairly happy with what we’re doing round right here.”
Past Quebec, a PWHL staff may additionally appeal to followers from close by New Brunswick and Maine, although maybe on the expense of the Victoire and Boston Fleet.
That could possibly be the largest downside to increasing to Quebec Metropolis, together with the truth that it could be the smallest market within the league by far.
League visited enviornment in August
Tremblay reached out to the Victoire final 12 months. He met with employees from the staff in March to debate doubtlessly internet hosting a recreation.
That led to conferences with the league, and a website go to at Videotron Centre in August. The neutral-site recreation was introduced in October.
“Quebec Metropolis is a incredible hockey market,” Victoire goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens stated on that day. She’s from Clermont, about an hour and a half away from the town.
“The presence of women’ hockey groups on the Worldwide Pee-Wee Match proves that folks right here have been supporting girls’s hockey for fairly a while now, and we stay up for taking part in our greatest hockey in entrance of them.”
There is not any timeline for the league to announce extra particulars on whether or not it plans to develop subsequent season. Earlier this month, senior vice-president of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford, advised CBC Sports activities that the league continues to be gathering data.
“We’re nonetheless in actually nice conversations with a lot of individuals to determine if there is a proper transfer for us,” Hefford stated.
The Takeover Tour continues in Edmonton at Rogers Place on Feb. 16, adopted by stops in Buffalo, Raleigh, N.C., Detroit and St. Louis.
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