Vancouver’s newest sports team set to be announced

What happened: Even though the Canucks missed out on the spring playoff dance, there’s great news in the Vancouver hockey world today. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is expected to announce Vancouver as the league’s seventh franchise at a downtown press conference later today. 

• The news was first reported last week by Patrick Johnston of Postmedia, who cited confirmation from an unnamed source. 

On Monday, the PWHL’s official online store temporarily – and seemingly inadvertently – posted a Vancouver crest and a note that read “PWHL expands to Vancouver. Join the excitement and grab your new team gear!” according to BIV.

Finding an arena: Nothing is set in stone, but multiple media reports and other clues suggest that Vancouver’s newest sports franchise may have its home in East Van. 

The Pacific Coliseum at the PNE – built in 1968 as part of a successful attempt to attract an NHL franchise to the city – was the home of the Canucks for 25 years, from 1970 to 1995.  

• The WHL’s Vancouver Giants also played there from 2001 to 2016, but the stadium doesn’t currently have a consistent hockey tenant. 

The Pacific Coliseum and the PNE are owned and governed by the City of Vancouver, and the city will have representatives participating in Wednesday’s news conference. 

• The news conference was announced by Laura Ballance Media Group, which counts the PNE as one their clients. 

What we heard: “I didn't think it would happen this soon,” Erica Olson said of Vancouver getting its own team. 

Olson is a former professional hockey player who played at Cornell University, in Sweden, and for four seasons with the Ottawa Raiders in the first iteration of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) in the early 2000s.  

• Olson moved to Vancouver in 2006 to study marine ecology while playing a final season of pro hockey for the WWHL’s Minnesota Whitecaps.  

“I had to kind of decide if I was gonna continue playing serious hockey or do my graduate studies,” Olson told Vancity Lookout. 

Playing for the love of the game was a common situation for many women’s hockey players until very recently. A player in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League recalls she wasn’t paid at all when she played in the early aughts, even shelling out her own money for gas and meals during road trips. Even in 2019, the second iteration of the NWHL was paying its top players a league maximum of $15,000 per season. 

“Playing in the NWHL we had some things provided to us, like living expenses. But it wasn't really the kind of thing that you could make a lot of money at…  so most of us had to supplement our income in other ways,” Olson described. 

A job that pays: “That has been a huge change, I think, because now it's a big focus of the PWHL to make sure people don't have to do that. Players are hockey players, and they're not having to have other jobs… that can raise the level of play so much. You can see how that's happening with the PWHL now,” Olson said, adding that this league is the culmination of a lot of effort and advocacy by players in the women’s game. 

• “In the last 10 to 15 years, all of these players have worked really hard to give voice to the need for that kind of [financial] support and that kind of shift in the game. And I think also seeing that more broadly in women's sports has been helpful too,” Olson said. 

“It’s been emotional, in such a great way, to see how this league has formed, the success of it, and to see the quality of play that can happen when you really get that type of financial and fan support.”

“So many people who have been a part of this sport for so long are kind of in awe, to see this really coming to fruition,” Olson shared. 

The league: Vancouver is poised to join Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Boston, Minnesota, and New York, the cities that host the PWHL’s original six franchises. 

The league and all its teams are owned by Mark and Kimbra Walter. Mark is also the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The league doesn’t have any plans to change their single-entity ownership model, a board member told the Athletic back in November. 

• While most sports leagues have individual team owners, there is a precedent for this sort of single-entity arrangement in North American sports with Major League Soccer.  

The PWHL is reportedly considering adding a second expansion franchise in addition to Vancouver – likely on the West Coast, given the eastward locations of the other clubs. Specifically, Seattle is being considered, but further expansion announcements are on hold for now, according to CBC. 

• The league received more than 20 proposals from interested parties trying to bring a team to their city, according to Canucks Army.

The criteria for selecting a franchise include considerations of city population, youth hockey participation, women’s hockey history, and – importantly – existing professional infrastructure, according to the Athletic.

Checking boxes: Vancouver hits the mark in a lot of those categories. Over 19,000 fans packed Rogers Arena in January for a one-off PWHL game between Toronto and Montréal. 

The sell-out attendance that night – which exceeded any Canucks game this year – is likely far higher than a permanent Vancouver team could expect on a regular basis. Still, it does demonstrate the appetite for a women’s team in the city. 

• As of late March, the PWHL was averaging about 7,360 fans per game, which was up 35 per cent compared to the league’s first year in operation. Average NHL attendance, including special events, was 17,541 this year. 

Olson, who was one of those thousands, said it was emotional to experience that degree of public recognition. “It was an unbelievable, speechless sort of feeling,” Olson said. 

“It made me feel so happy for those players, that they get to have this [recognition], and that all of those young players watching also have the opportunity to potentially have that,” Olson said.  

• Anecdotally, there seemed to be a large number of girls' hockey teams attending the game in January. 

A look back: In terms of history, the Vancouver Griffins—a short-lived professional women’s hockey team—played in New West from 2000 until 2003. Star Olympians like Cammi Granato, Shelley Looney, and Nancy Drolet played for the Griffins. 

• Granato is currently an assistant general manager with the Canucks. 

Home ice advantage: The Coliseum gives Vancouver a solid existing arena, with a capacity of 15,000. Meanwhile, Eight Rinks in Burnaby (now the bank-branded Barn) and Trout Lake Community Centre are some nearby options for practice rinks. 

“I'm just really excited to be able to go in-person and watch hockey,” Olson said, saying she watches far more women’s hockey than men’s hockey on TV (which itself is a fairly recent opportunity). 

“I'm not a person who goes out and watches a ton of Canucks games, but I definitely will with this team,” Olson said of Vancouver’s new PWHL team. 

• Olson’s biggest concern with the news is whether she’ll be able to get good tickets, she said. 

Important questions: Who will operate the team? Where will they get players from? How will the newly-formed team do facing more established rivals? How much fan and community support will they get? 

There’s a slew of questions yet to be answered, all of them interesting to the hockey nerds among us (guilty 🙋🏻) – but the most scrutinized, hotly-debated, and fun question is about the team’s name. 

We’ve provided a few options in our highly scientific, well-researched, legally-binding (of course) poll. Let us know which one you like best – or better yet, write in your own idea and we’ll feature our favourites in a future newsletter!

• For reference, the current team names are Fleet, Frost, Victoire, Sirens, Charge, and Sceptres.