The Skilled Girls’s Hockey League will increase to Vancouver and start play subsequent season, the league introduced on Wednesday.
The choice to increase to Vancouver had been rumoured for weeks, and was lastly confirmed at a press convention in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday morning.
The official announcement was made by gamers from a neighborhood women’ under-11 hockey workforce, who crowded the rostrum, waving indicators saying they need a PWHL workforce of their metropolis.
“You’ve got proven a exceptional dedication to rising the sport of hockey,” Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s govt vp of enterprise operations, advised the group gathered in Vancouver on Wednesday.
“I believe the final stat I noticed from BC Hockey was the women’ and boys’ registration is nearly 50-50. That is big, and BC Hockey’s efforts have been big in rising the sport. We wish to assist construct and proceed that momentum that you’ve got already began.”
WATCH | Vancouver introduced as seventh PWHL franchise:
The PWHL introduced that Vancouver will develop into the seventh franchise within the league. They may start play within the 2025/2026 season and can name the historic Pacific Coliseum dwelling.
Vancouver was chosen because the seventh PWHL franchise after an eight-month course of that noticed growth bids from teams in additional than 20 cities.
And it will not be the one workforce becoming a member of the league for subsequent season. The PWHL is in negotiations to probably add a second growth workforce, which might deliver the variety of groups to eight.
Scheer mentioned including Vancouver is the first step in a multi-year plan to proceed to develop the league.
The Vancouver workforce will play out of Pacific Coliseum, an area on the positioning of the Pacific Nationwide Exhibition grounds and the previous dwelling of the Vancouver Canucks. It could seat greater than 16,000 followers and the PWHL workforce would be the anchor tenant.
When evaluating the growth bids, a bunch inside the league checked out a number of standards, starting from geography and financial alternative to youth hockey and infrastructure.
Vancouver checked off quite a few bins.
A January PWHL sport between the Montreal Victoire and Toronto Sceptres drew more than 19,000 fans to a sold-out Rogers Arena, dwelling to the Vancouver Canucks. That made it the most effective attended of the 9 video games on the PWHL Takeover Tour, which visited cities throughout North America this season.
“Seventy-plus per cent of the folks that went to the Takeover Tour sport had not been to that venue earlier than, so we all know that we now have a extremely distinctive viewers on the market that is participating with us,” Scheer mentioned.
The locker rooms and coaching services will endure what the league described as “complete upgrades” earlier than the workforce begins play ice subsequent season.
“We’ll be capable of model and construct an area that is designed very well for them and for girls, which does not occur in all of our markets,” Jayna Hefford, the league’s govt vp of hockey operations, mentioned in an interview.
The PWHL launched in 2023 with six groups, primarily within the east: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, the New York space, Boston and Minnesota. Like the primary six groups, the Vancouver franchise will even be owned and operated by Mark and Kimbra Walter and the Walter Group.
WATCH | PWHL Gamers Affiliation head on growth:
A month into the job, Malaika Underwood has been attending to know gamers and listening to their considerations.
Employees have already been modelling find out how to navigate the additional journey, particularly when groups fly commercially. The Takeover Tour can be again subsequent 12 months, and the league might plan different video games within the west.
“I believe between the followers telling us it is time and possession wanting to speculate and develop this league, and the whole lot that we have seen, it is time [for expansion],” Scheer mentioned. “It is time to get previous simply being a regional league.”
Inside hours of the announcement, Scheer mentioned Vancouver already offered out of premium season ticket deposits. Vancouver’s premium founding membership program contains seating within the centre sections, entry to a non-public lounge and extra advantages.
The second growth franchise is also within the west, which might permit groups from the east to go to two cities in a single street journey.
Seattle, which drew greater than 12,000 followers to a PWHL Takeover Tour sport this 12 months, could be a pure neighbour to a Vancouver workforce, and has profitable groups competing within the NWSL and WNBA.
A rising ladies’s hockey scene
The brand new workforce can be recognized briefly as PWHL Vancouver whereas the league develops workforce branding, together with a brand and title. The workforce’s colors, Pacific blue and cream, have been additionally unveiled on Wednesday.
It marks the return of elite ladies’s hockey to Vancouver, town the place the Canadian ladies’s nationwide workforce, together with Hefford, captured a gold medal on the 2010 Olympics.
Almost a century earlier than that milestone, the Vancouver Amazons ladies’s hockey workforce performed out of Denman Area. Hefford acknowledged that workforce at Wednesday’s press convention, alluding to town’s deep ladies’s hockey historical past and the way far the sport has come since then.
“The sport has by no means been sooner, extra bodily or extra expert,” she mentioned on Wednesday.
Years later, there was the Vancouver Griffins, led by stars like Cammi Granato and Nancy Drolet. That workforce was a part of the Nationwide Girls’s Hockey League from 2000 to 2003.
The final time the province was dwelling to knowledgeable ladies’s hockey workforce was when the B.C. Breakers performed out of Langley. The Breakers performed within the Western Girls’s Hockey League (WWHL), which folded in 2009.
Loads has modified in the women’s hockey scene in British Columbia since these groups left city.
“We see now quite a few younger gamers, each on the ladies’s and males’s aspect of the sport which might be popping out of that space,” Hefford mentioned in an interview.
Seven gamers from B.C. competed on the Canadian ladies’s growth workforce this 12 months, whereas three made the senior nationwide workforce that simply earned silver on the world championship within the Czech Republic. A fourth participant from British Columbia, Hannah Miller, was named to the preliminary roster however dominated ineligible to compete for Canada after beforehand enjoying for China.
The largest title is perhaps Chloe Primerano, the defender who captained Canada to gold on the under-18 ladies’s world championship earlier this 12 months, and who has an opportunity to make Canada’s Olympic workforce subsequent 12 months.
Primerano is Canada’s defender of the longer term, a smooth-skating risk with a powerful hockey IQ. She performed towards boys on the Burnaby Winter Membership earlier than happening to play elite women hockey RINK Hockey Academy in Kelowna. Primerano graduated highschool a 12 months early and now performs on the College of Minnesota.
And now, there’s a world the place she might make her PWHL debut in entrance of a hometown crowd in Vancouver.
Particulars on growth draft to come back
The subsequent step is to start out hiring workers, together with the overall supervisor who can be tasked with constructing a roster from scratch.
The league will maintain an growth draft to assist fill out PWHL Vancouver’s roster, together with a probable second growth workforce.
“We have been working for a while now on what that might seem like, understanding the precedence for us goes to be parity throughout the league and competitiveness,” Hefford mentioned. “The expectation is that any new groups that enter the league could be aggressive in 12 months one. That is the precedence as we have a look at how we might disperse gamers.”
The draft can be held earlier than the league’s entry draft, which is scheduled to be held on June 24 in Ottawa, however the date and particulars on how an growth draft will work are nonetheless to come back — particulars gamers have been eagerly awaiting.
The growth announcement might additionally entice extra gamers to declare for this 12 months’s entry draft, with as many as 46 further roster spots out there within the league. Each groups would even have a clear salary-cap slate.
“There’s simply a lot depth around the globe,” Hefford mentioned. “To have the ability to open extra spots to these gamers I believe is one thing that is actually nice for the sport.”
WATCH | Full replay of PWHL’s Vancouver growth announcement:
Watch the Skilled Girls’s Hockey League growth announcement, as they add Vancouver as their latest franchise.
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