A homecoming weekend in Michigan
While expansion isn’t in the immediate future for the PWHL as it hits the backstretch of its inaugural season, the league is beginning to plant seeds for potential markets with events like this weekend’s “PWHL Takeover Weekend” in Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Front-runners Montreal and Toronto will face off at PPG Paints Arena, home of the Penguins, on Sunday. But first, Boston and Ottawa will drop the puck at Little Caesars Arena, home of the Red Wings, on Saturday.
That’s a particularly exciting prospect for a trio of Michigan natives — Taylor Girard, Shiann Darkangelo, and Megan
Keller — who will suit up for Boston.
“Just super excited to be able to play in my hometown,” Girard said. “I’ve got a lot of friends and family that have never been able to see me play, and this is their chance. I have some family flying in, so it’ll be cool.
“Growing up, my dad would always take me to the Red Wings games, so it’s going to be cool. Different rink now, but it’ll still be cool to be in that building and be in my hometown.”
The PWHL has made it pretty clear that expansion isn’t on the table for next season, but the league continues to expand its footprint — and potentially test future markets — with events like this.
“It’s an exciting time,” said Boston coach Courtney Kessel. “I think it’s great that we can get to an outreach game that doesn’t have a PWHL team currently, and it’s great to see some of our players that grew up playing in Michigan having a chance to play on home soil, and get those little girls in the [stands] and have them watch us live.”
Michigan has long been one of the country’s hockey hotbeds. USA Hockey’s registration reports from 2021-22 had just over 5,000 girls signed up to play hockey in Michigan, fourth-most behind Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York. Those are the four states with significant enough hockey participation that USA Hockey classifies them with their own district.
“Excited to bring the PWHL to Detroit,” Keller said. “It’s called Hockeytown for a reason, and there’s so much youth girls’ hockey in the state of Michigan and it’ll be super exciting for the fans to get to watch women’s professional hockey.”
One thing the state has lacked is elite women’s hockey above the youth and high school levels; Michigan has been without a Division 1 college team since Wayne State cut its program in 2011.
That meant top talent like Keller (Boston College), Girard (Lindenwood and Quinnipiac), and Darkangelo (Syracuse) had to go elsewhere to play NCAA hockey.
“I think it’s something that we’ve always wanted,” Darkangelo said, “and it’s been talked about, from Michigan State to the University of Michigan, obviously Wayne State had a program as well — but I think it would be huge to have a professional team there.
“I think it would push people to get the involvement at the University of Michigan to have a Division 1 team. I know they have a club team and there’s people working in that direction, but it’d be super exciting to see that.”
OT is unkind to Ottawa
One of the wrinkles of the upstart league is its 3-2-1 points format: Regulation wins are worth 3 points in the standings, overtime wins earn 2, and overtime losers settle for 1.
One team that would like to stay out of overtime is Ottawa, which has been unable to find a way to turn 1 point into 2.
The start of the season was brutal for Ottawa, which went to overtime four times in its first seven games and lost all four. The most frustrating of those came on Feb. 4, when Ottawa let a 3-0 lead slip at home to New York, before losing — in overtime — on a goal by New York’s Alex Carpenter.
The team managed to stay out of the extra period for a month — between that loss to New York and March 5, when Ottawa went to a shootout with Minnesota and made it 0-5 in overtime.
That has led to Ottawa sitting just one place off the bottom of the standings, having lost 11 of its 16 contests despite a goal differential of only minus-4, a product of eight losses by a single goal.
“The league is competitive,” Ottawa coach Carla MacLeod said. “Lots of games are going to overtime. Generating points in those opportunities is an important thing; every game you try to get points out of a game, and certainly we’ve been able to do that. That next step is, obviously, finding the W on that side of it.
“I thought our last overtime was actually a really good overtime and had some great chances, so for us, it’s just continuing to push and grow that side of our game, but certainly know we’re in these games to win them and have every opportunity to do so.”