LOWELL — When Megan Keller scored on a Boston power play with 2:40 left to cut Minnesota’s lead to 3-2 in both team’s Professional Women’s Hockey League inaugural game Wednesday at the Tsongas Center, the history of the night became secondary.
This was simply two good teams who really wanted to win a hockey game. The crowd came to life, oohing and ahhing each good shot and big save as Boston hammered away. The tying goal remained elusive and Boston came up short on the scoreboard and in the standings. But they won some hearts. Anyone who wasn’t sure what to expect from the quality of the PWHL product had to be swayed by the final minutes. The intensity of an urgent team trying to tie the game with the goalie pulled is why people love hockey to begin with.
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Maybe someday — five years, 10 years, 25 years from now — there will be a plaque outside Tsongas Center commemorating the history that happened on Wednesday night.
Or maybe the still-unnamed PWHL Boston team will follow the Boston Lobsters, the New England Whalers, the Boston Breakers and New England Blazers onto the scrap heap of start-up leagues with big dreams who never gained a foothold.
But as Boston took the ice against Minnesota, there were reasons for optimism that this league’s still blurry dreams can eventually sharpen into reality. For starters, while the league might be new there are veteran sports executives involved and money behind it. Stan Kasten, a longtime baseball executive is part of the advisory board and the teams are owned by Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who just committed $1 billion in contracts to Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He’s not going to have to refinance his house if the league doesn’t turn a profit right away. There’s some time to prove viability.
Viability and the appearance of viability are often the same thing. A league needs sponsors to be viable but needs to at least appear viable to get and keep them long-term. The chicken and egg both need to come first.
They’ve made some smart moves and some risky ones.
The players and management helped design the league’s structure together, making them partners and allies at least at the launch. They chose mostly smaller venues to start with, which allows the games to have atmosphere as their fan bases grow. Better to create ticket interest in 6,000-10,000 seat arenas than being forced to cover the upper decks with curtains at bigger ones.
But as Kasten admitted, the league’s launch was rushed. Instead of taking at least a year to dot all the I’s and cross the T’s, the PWHL dropped the puck with the ink still wet on many of its contracts.
In an ideal scenario, the league would have started after a Winter Olympics when its best players would have had enhanced name recognition in the United States and Canada. But since 2026 is too far away, the next best time likely would have been this November giving the league an extra year to negotiate deals with sponsors and venues while ironing out details that they’re not addressing on the fly.
But many of the league’s best players have been sitting out for over a year because of a labor dispute with the two now-defunct leagues that the PWHL is replacing. Getting on the ice was a priority for the players and management was willing to back-burner some things to prioritize an earlier debut.
That meant taking the ice without team names or logos in Year 1. That’s a negative to begin with because American professional sports teams have names. But better to start with no names than bad ones. Picking smart ones and unveiling them strategically could make it a long-term positive if they make good choices.
Long-term positives are the ultimate goal, but a strong beginning opens doors and the league has had some. The major sports networks in Canada all carry games and the regional sports networks in the United States markets are broadcasting their local teams. That means during every Bruins broadcast on NESN, there’ll be ads for PWHL games.
A connection with the NHL and perhaps eventually full affiliation would go a long way. The WNBA and NBA share some resources and talented marketing and promotional minds. The PWHL would benefit from a similar partnership. It would open doors for things like having a women’s Winter Classic and other connected events that would add to the image of viability.
But future success will be influenced by forces the league has limited control over. Women’s hockey needs more girls to play as they grow up. The WNBA and NWSL had much larger groups of kids playing their games long before they debuted.
The sport needs more girls youth hockey organizations, more high school teams and more college programs. In Massachusetts, a hockey state, there are still more than twice as many boys high school programs than their female counterparts. Hopefully, a successful women’s pro league would inspire young girls to play and the increased participation would eventually help the pro league.
Growth in the investment in women’s hockey in European nations, especially those who already support the men’s game is critical too.
For now, building an initial fan base is top of the priority list. Despite Patrice Bergeron dropping the ceremonial puck and big-game anthem artist Michelle Brooks-Thompson handling the Star Spangled Banner, Boston played to quite a few empty seats in its opener at the 6,500-seat Tsongas Center.
It’s going to be a challenge to get people to drive to Lowell on weeknights. Debuting on a cold weeknight, days after the end of school vacation presents a challenge for families, who are certainly a target demographic. It’ll be interesting to see how they draw on weekends or from UMass-Lowell students when the second semester starts.
The 4,012 who showed up will be able to say they saw Taylor Heise’s first professional goal. The puck snapped off her stick into the goal and is now en route to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. The former University of Minnesota star was the No. 1 overall pick and last year’s NCAA Division I Player of the Year. The 23-year-old will likely be a pillar of Team USA for several Olympics to come and perhaps the face of the league in the future.
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Fans who came to witness some history on Wednesday will come back to see Heise and others like her and to experience what the arena felt like in the last 2:40.
“The more fans watch these games, the more they’re going to buy into us being Boston,” coach Courtney Kessel said. “When we were within one, you could really feel the energy in the building, the energy on the bench it was great.”
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
