PWHL teams ready to drop the puck

New professional league has hopes of staying power.

No longer a far-fetched notion, the Professional Women’s Hockey League is approaching reality and Sarah Nurse can’t help but pinch herself.

Today, the 28-year-old Canadian national team forward will be on the ice in Toronto when her yetto-be nicknamed team faces off against New York to open the new year and the PWHL’S inaugural 72-game season.

“It means so much to me. It’s something that I had dreamed of and envisioned all those years ago, but I didn’t know it would actually come to fruition,” Nurse said. “It’s hard when you think of all the places that we’ve been over the last four years. And to be able to get here, with my Toronto team, has blown my expectations out of the water.”

It wasn’t easy. It took time and patience for the moment to arrive after past start-up leagues lurched from one crisis to another before ultimately folding because they lacked money, vision and foundational support.

Finally, the world’s best players have one place to showcase their talents outside the four-year Olympic cycle and enjoying what it’s like to have their voices heard. “Seen and heard,” Minnesota GM and former U.S. national team captain Natalie Darwitz said.

Not lost on this generation of players is crediting those who preceded them, such as Darwitz and PWHL executive Jayna Hefford, never mind the help of one of women’s sports most influential gender-breakers in former tennis star Billie Jean King, a PWHL board member.

“It’s a long time in coming, and we’re standing on the shoulders of players from past generations,” Ottawa’s Brianne Jenner said.

Ultimately, the PWHL would not have been possible without King’s influence and connections, and the deep pockets of Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and his wife, Kimbra. The Walters, who remain strictly behind the scenes, have committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to finance a centralized league that has a collective bargaining agreement with its players in place through 2031. And there’s the heavy lifting that’s already been done in six short months in which six markets have been established: Boston, New York/connecticut, St. Paul, Minnesota, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.