Quebec City is ready for the Professional Women’s Hockey League, but the PWHL may not be ready for Quebec City.
A sold-out crowd of 18,239 took over Centre Vidéotron Sunday to watch the Montreal Victoire defeat the Ottawa Charge 2-1. The game was part of the PWHL Takeover Tour, a nine-stop schedule of games in neutral sites.
The support for these games will be one of the factors used to be determine which cities will be selected when the PWHL expands next season. While more than 20 cities have expressed an interest in a PWHL team, only two teams will be added to the current six-team lineup.
“We want to ensure that we have enough quality players so that we don’t dilute the talent pool,” Amy Scheer, the league’s senior vice-president of business development, said during the second intermission of the Quebec game.
Next season, there should be a bumper crop of players emerging from the NCAA ranks who took advantage of extra years of eligibility from the COVID crisis. There will also be more players from Europe, with Scheer saying there were 48 players from last season who couldn’t find a spot this season but may be interested in giving it another shot.
Expansion in the PWHL differs from other leagues because the effort is led by a well-heeled backer. All the teams in the PWHL are owned by a single entity — the Los Angeles-based Mark Walter Group — and expressions of interest come from a variety of sources.
It might be an NHL team or, in the case of Seattle, there is a non-profit lobbying group made up of fans. The Quebec effort is led by Mayor Bruno Marchand and municipal councillor Jackie Smith. They are hockey fans anxious to find another tenant for the city-owned Centre Vidéotron.
The arena, which would be among the best in the NHL if commissioner Gary Bettman weren’t intent on ignoring Quebec’s attempts to land a team, is a selling point. So is the fan base and an established hockey culture.
There are some small negatives. There are no non-stop flights to two of the current league cities — Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boston. And back when the Nordiques were in town, there were players who complained they were uncomfortable because they couldn’t communicate in French.
Smith, a bilingual anglophone from Hamilton, says that shouldn’t be a problem.
“We have a very diverse population and 40 per cent of the people in Quebec City are fluent in French and English,” Smith said.
She was backed up by Olympic gold medal goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens, who is from Saguenay. She said she had to go to the U.S. on a hockey scholarship — she won the Patty Kazmaier Award as the best women’s player in U.S. college hockey while earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Wisconsin — to learn English.
“Kids nowadays learn English way faster than we did,” Desbiens said. “People are so welcoming (here), and I know the population would go above and beyond to make everybody feel welcome.”
Quebec has a history of supporting teams like the Université Laval football machine, the QMJHL Remparts and the minor-league baseball Capitales. While the city would be the smallest in the PWHL, the economy is robust. What was once a sleepy government company town has been bolstered by investments in the insurance and tech industries.
But all the pluses may not be enough.
The smart money says the league would like to establish a beachhead in the west and Vancouver tops the league’s wish list. There was a sold-out crowd of 19,038 to see Montreal beat the Toronto Sceptres 4-2 at Rogers Arena earlier this month.
The PWHL would need another team in the west to facilitate travel and scheduling. Edmonton gets a Takeover Tour game next month and Calgary has a history of women’s hockey with a team in the defunct CWHL and serves as the training base for Canada’s national women’s team.
But it’s unlikely the PWHL would expand to two Canadian cities and a more likely stop would be Seattle, which would enjoy a natural geographic rivalry with Vancouver.
Quebec will probably have to wait for the next round of expansion, which could be as early as 2026 if league maintains its current momentum and the talent is available.
But there should be another path to a team. I would move the struggling New York team to Quebec. After playing in three arenas in three different states last season, New York has found a home at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. While the league feels it is important to have a presence in the largest U.S. city, it’s in danger of becoming what Arizona was to Gary Bettman — a disaster waiting to happen.
New York is averaging fewer than 3,000 fans with two weekday night crowds under 2,000. It’s probably a result of the location. While New Jersey native Scheer insists the area is safe, Newark has one of the highest crime rates in New Jersey and the perception is enough to turn off the team’s largely female fan base.
There are no attendance concerns in Montreal, where the Victoire is playing to sold-out crowds at Place Bell and the team has announced a second Duel at the Top with the Victoire returning to the Bell Centre for a game against the Boston Fleet, March 1 at 2 p.m.