PWHL has made a name for itself – and a place in the sports landscape

It was about pushing and pushing it all toward the inaugural Walter Cup championship series, a best-of-five battle that brought Boston to Minnesota over this Memorial Day weekend, where Games 3 and 4 were held at the Xcel Energy Center. One, maybe two games left now, after Minnesota pushed Boston to the brink of elimination with Friday night’s 4-1 victory for a 2-1 series lead . Whatever way the final chapter plays out, it’s been a thrilling postseason book.
For the PWHL, most of this inaugural season has been about the push, about getting a new league off the ground in mere months, about putting together six team rosters in time to train for a 24-game regular season that began on New Year’s Day, about building front offices and hiring medical trainers, choosing broadcast teams, and adding support staff. It was about building a partnership between players and management rooted in professionalism and high hockey standards.
ST. PAUL, Minn. — There is wisdom in knowing when to wait, and wisdom in knowing when to push.
Two semifinal upsets, one by third-place Boston, three thrilling overtime wins to topple second-place Montreal, the other by Minnesota, chosen as an opponent by regular-season champ Toronto only to pull off the reverse sweep, erasing an 0-2 deficit with three straight wins. More parity in the final, with Boston winning the opener at home and Minnesota still perfect at home in the playoffs.
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No doubt, the push paid off with a successful debut season, one just recently honored at the 17th annual Sports Business Awards as Breakthrough of the Year,
But of all the measures — statistical, anecdotal, or otherwise — that prove the wisdom of the all-out push, this league is far from some fly-by-night, throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks operation. They also knew when to wait — and one look at the six team jerseys is quite the reminder of that wisdom within.
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Each city name, stitched diagonally across every sweater, same font, different colors. Say them all — PWHL Boston, PWHL Minnesota, PWHL Toronto, PWHL Montreal, PWHL Ottawa, PWHL New York. No nicknames, not yet anyway. With so much happening so quickly, it was decided not to rush the choice of permanent monikers in favor of each team being identified by its home city instead. Just cities, and PWHL.
Over and over again, the PWHL.
“And that has had an amazing unintended consequence,” PWHL advisory board member Stan Kasten said Friday, meeting with reporters before Game 3.
“Every time anyone has talked about any of our teams all year, you had to say PWHL. Our league has gotten more exposure in the first few years than any league in history, because they get repeated by name. Again, we didn’t plan it that way. It just worked out that way. And it was about midseason when I started hearing from fans and players saying, ‘You know, we kind of like the name the way it is.’ We are still going to have new names [perhaps as early as this summer], and I invite people to adopt those names, too. But you can feel free to continue to call it what you always call it and we will be selling merchandise with both of those names.”
Of the new and different hurdles to be cleared in Year 2, Kasten actually put merchandise high on the list, as in having enough of it so it doesn’t sell out the minute it hits arenas or online stores. That is but the tip of the debriefing iceberg, however, an offseason autopsy that VP of hockey operations Jayna Hefford said Friday would include everything from upping roster competition with an influx of college and European draft-eligible players, redoubling efforts to find the best home arenas, analyzing the officiating for more consistency, or looking for more creative tweaks like the jailbreak rule or pick-your-playoff-opponent that added juice to this season.
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But after a season in which she barely had a moment to breathe, the four-time Olympic gold medalist with Canada deserves a moment to reflect.
“Sometimes it’s hard in the intensity of what we’ve been doing, to appreciate and look back and think about all the great things that have happened because we’re continually looking at the next thing we need to do,” Hefford said. “But I will say, [Thursday night], when we were all in New York for the Sports Business Journal Award, it was one of the most special moments for all of us. I said to some friends and family, I’d never been a part of something like that. I’ve been part of championships where you’re on the ice and you’re trying to win, but to care so much about something that you’re not out on the ice trying to win, it was a really special moment for a lot of us.
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“And I think that gave us an opportunity to reflect back on everything that has happened this year and how significant an impact we’ve had.”
An impact for women’s sports, an impact for all sports, a story of arrival, of growth, of expanded opportunity, of hope of progress, of investment, of outreach. The young girls packed among the 9,000-plus at Friday’s game, so many wearing their own hockey jerseys. The young adults, too, men and women alike. The older couples, who’d waited so long for nights like these.
“I think it comes full circle for me, going to Wild games as a kid of kind of wanting that and knowing that wasn’t a possibility at the time,” said Minnesota’s Taylor Heise, the league’s top overall pick whose goal in Friday’s first minute sent the building into delirium and set her hometown team up for victory. “Knowing now it’s such an electric atmosphere and that it’s playoff hockey is something that holds a special place in my heart.”
And earned a legitimate place in our sports conversation.
It was just after 5:30 p.m. local time when the two lines of skaters burst through Xcel Center’s rinkside doors and onto the ice, the sound of their swishing skates mixing with the music blaring overhead. That the soundtrack was Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 iconic hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was just too good, a past-as-prologue reminder of the decades and decades that women have been demanding equality. Sports, and specifically the PWHL, continues to do its part.
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“There’s no question that the time is right now,” Kasten said. “This is not a short-term thing. It’s not a long-term thing. It’s a permanent thing.”
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.