PWHL'S FIRST SEASON OFF TO AN `EXTRAORDINARY' START
Innovative women's hockey league not afraid to try new things, says
The Professional Women's Hockey League halftime report was, not surprisingly, upbeat and positive.
How could it be any other way when attendance figures — averaging more than 5,000 fans a night across the league — and parity of play have both exceeded even the most optimistic expectations coming in?
PWHL vice-president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford and Stan Kasten, representing ownership, addressed the media via video conference call Wednesday to share their thoughts on the first half of the inaugural season and plans for the upcoming playoffs and draft.
“I knew we were on the right track,” Kasten said. “I knew we had the right people. I knew we had the right product, but the way it has been accepted by fans, by the marketplace has been extraordinary. Way beyond our expectations.”
ON THE PLANS AHEAD
Hefford confirmed the league playoff format, which will see the top 4 teams advance. The top-seeded team — and this is a twist the league is introducing in keeping with its penchant for being unafraid to try new things — will have the opportunity to choose between the third- and fourth-place finishers for its first-round opponent.
It may come down to favourable travel schedule or more favourable opponent or perhaps even something beyond that, but finishing first overall will have an added benefit in this league over others.
The league is also adopting the Gold Plan for the teams that don't make playoffs and are therefore in the running for the first overall selection in the draft.
The Gold Plan, named after innovator Adam Gold, will assign the first pick to the non-playoff team that accrues the most points following its elimination from playoff contention.
“It's also a way for fans to stay engaged,” Hefford said of the plan. “There will be a different type of race once their team gets eliminated. Every game from that point on means something and earns them points. It's still weighted obviously to the team that is eliminated first, but it is not simply a lottery system.”
Once a team is eliminated, it begins accumulating points based on the remaining games in the schedule, with three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win or shootout win and one for an overtime or shootout loss.
LOOKING AHEAD
Already the league is putting together next season's schedule, which all but eliminates any expansion for the second year, though that is very much on the front burner moving forward.
“It's incredible that two months into our inaugural season, I get questions almost weekly about expansion and I think that's just a really positive thing about the success we are seeing with this league and where we are at,” Hefford said. “As of now, nothing on the table but we are excited to bring our league and our players to many different markets outside our six markets.”
But change is coming in Year 2, most likely in the form of new venues in existing markets, though none of that is done just yet. Toronto, which outgrew Mattamy Athletic Centre the day they moved in, is a likely venue change for positive reasons. There may also be moves to different venues in the Boston market (currently in Lowell, Mass.) and New York (currently splitting time between Bridgeport, Conn. and UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y.) where attendance isn't quite as strong.
“We are reviewing everything on a daily basis,” Kasten said. “Everything we do, we are reviewing cities, reviewing buildings, all our other policies and in the off-season we will make decisions. We don't want to move too fast, we don't want to move too slow.
“We're not in control always with those things because different venues have other tenants with different availabilities, so it's a complicated matrix as we build our schedule to maximize the amount of fans that can access us,” Kasten added.
One thing the league is certain of is that there will be more games like the spectacle that was the Battle of Bay Street at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena against Montreal.
“Expect next year to be a lot more neutral-site games and a lot more games in NHL markets that we are not already in,” Kasten said. “That is a feature that has been a lot of fun for us this year, and we expect it to be a feature of next year's schedule only quite a bit more.”
The season will be longer, a minimum of at least 30 games and likely with an earlier start than the New Year's Day opener this year. The final details are still being worked out.
STILL PLENTY OF UNKNOWNS
Having started up as quickly as it did, the PWHL still has moving targets when it comes to certain areas of progress.
First among those is a farm system where draft picks and reserves can play before they are ready to join the parent club. The league is certainly aware of the need for this, but there are still so many things that have to come first.