The PWHL needs to make sure its success doesn’t kill what makes it special

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On Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before the puck dropped in its first playoff game, the PWHL announced Scotiabank had signed on as the league’s official bank. The move aligns with the company’s inclusively oriented marketing campaign that “hockey is for all,” which can be a tough claim to swallow during, say, Maple Leafs games at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, where the overall impression of the corporate crowd that dominates that scene brings to mind a twist on one of the bank’s other marketing tag lines: Those ticket holders are richer than you think.

After decades of stuttering progress, women’s pro sports in North America are finally arriving at centre stage. Valuations of NWSL teams are soaring, the WNBA is expecting to double the value of its media rights in the next deal it signs and now the PWHL has proved that fans will turn out for a best-on-best women’s hockey league.

Sponsors have scrambled aboard the women’s sports bandwagon, at first gradually and then suddenly. But while the leagues need the corporate cash to survive and thrive, the development presents something of a challenge. On Monday, the Internet mocked Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner for telling reporters that he and his teammates are treated “like gods,” but he wasn’t wrong. One of the things that makes the PWHL such a treat is that its players are more like demi-gods. At once extraordinary and also human, accessible. The league will need to step carefully to ensure it doesn’t crush that quality and become a victim of its own success.

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Back in January, when the PWHL kicked off its inaugural season with a game between Toronto and New York at Toronto’s Mattamy Arena, under the historic roof of what used to be Maple Leaf Gardens, one of the fans held up a sign that said something like, ‘I don’t care who wins, I’m just happy to be here.’

For the playoffs, Toronto has relocated to Coca-Cola Coliseum, where capacity is almost 8,500, a nice boost from Mattamy’s 2,500 or so. As fans flooded in for the team’s first playoff match against Minnesota, they were more partisan, but a buoyant generosity rippled through the crowd: They, too, were just happy to be there. Thousands wore the PWHL Toronto jersey, though more than a few sported Leafs gear, like refugees looking for a new land that might welcome them in and not judge them for their past.

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Fans in their 30s pounded back Smirnoff Ices while the younger ones gobbled Haagen-Dazs and cheap popcorn. One little girl wore a homemade paper crown adorned with about a dozen upright spoons, with the name of her hero – Toronto’s hotshot scoring queen Natalie Spooner – scrawled across the front. Other little ones – girls and boys, but mostly girls – danced in their seats, wearing hockey jerseys so big they looked like dresses.

One woman in her early thirties who grew up in Halifax said the scene reminded her of the Cole Harbour arena, where she used to watch a preteen Sidney Crosby skate circles around the older kids. It had the air of a festival, a community celebrating the best of itself.

All of which is wonderful, though it’s widely believed the league is losing buckets of money, so you have to wonder how long that feeling will last. The league’s backers – Mark Walter, a businessman and philanthropist worth about US$6-billion, and his wife, Kimbra – are apparently in no rush to turn a profit. Still, things will change as sponsors pile in. Players will earn more than just a living wage – a fantastic and very welcome bit of progress. But they will almost certainly become less accessible, as corporate demands on their time increase. Ticket prices will creep up.

As the final minutes on the game ticked down, I chatted with Rachel Roper, a teacher and a mother of four kids under 16 years old who had just dropped by the merch table to pick up a few of the purple PWHL toques – a striped number that was so popular it sold out shortly after the season began but was now back in stock. Like many fans, Roper hadn’t been able to buy tickets to any of the Toronto team’s home games – they’d sold out in minutes – so she and her family had taken a road trip to see the team in Montreal instead. But when Coca-Cola Coliseum playoff tickets went on sale last week, her 13-year-old daughter found a presale code and the family nabbed four seats, at $40 each.

“To see a professional sport, for $40? It’s unheard of. And it makes this stuff affordable,” she said, holding up the toques, which were retailing for $35. “I’m a phys-ed teacher in inner-city Hamilton. I can go back with this on, and show my female students what’s possible.”

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She seemed to be choking up a little as she spoke. I’ll admit, so was I.

“There is so much more to this than hockey,” she said. I suggested that that’s what the snarky commenters – the ones who constantly carp about how the game isn’t as good as the NHL – don’t understand.

She nodded. “The fact that I can sit there with my daughter and say, Did you see how [a player] went behind the net there, and did that pass? The NHL’s too fast. The puck moves faster than any of our kids can actually play, at the level that they play. So, as a physical educator, I want my kids – my children, my students – to be lifelong movers. This is way better hockey, for me to teach a lesson.”

After the game wound down and the arena emptied out, I hopped on a late streetcar. Breann Badiuk sat with her sister-in-law, Sawyer, near the back with a stroller and a suitcase; her daughter, Cora, sprawled sleepily across her lap. Breann and Cora had flown in from Thunder Bay that afternoon. They’d been watching the games on TV since the season kicked off, and with the higher capacity at Coca-Cola Coliseum, Sawyer had finally been able to score tickets.

A few months ago, Breann said, she’d asked her daughter, who turns three in July, what she wanted to be when she grew up. Cora replied: “I want to play hockey on TV.”