PWHL Snap Shots: Minnesota leads the way after a week of historic achievement

And we’re off, sports fans.

The first five games of the inaugural PWHL season are in the books. History was made, records set. A record set last Tuesday was broken four days later. There were sell-out crowds. Road teams spoiled home openers. The No. 1 draft pick scored her team’s first-ever goal. Two goalies earned shutouts.

So much has happened, and we’ve only just begun.

Leading the PWHL in these very early goings is Minnesota, undefeated at 2-0, and also boasting the league’s top scorer, Grace Zumwinkle. Meanwhile, Boston is the lone pointless team in the standings, though they’ve played just one game owing to a Jan. 8 matchup with Ottawa getting postponed after weather spoiled Ottawa’s travel plans.

But by now, we’ve seen all six teams and based on the action so far, here are your weekly PWHL Snap Shots.

New jailbreak rule

Toronto earned its first win of the season against New York, and did so in the most exciting possible fashion.

Toronto forward Emma Maltais scored the eventual game-winner while Toronto was shorthanded. In doing so, she ended Toronto’s two-minute minor. It’s a new rule the PWHL brought in for Year 1: Score while you’re on the PK, and your PK is over. Jailbreak!

“We’re going to pride ourselves on being innovative and creative. And we’re not going to change the game in any real significant way, but we’re not going to be afraid to try new things,” said the PWHL’s SVP of hockey operations, Jayna Hefford. “And so we set out with a few different rule changes that we wanted to test out.”

The jailbreak PK rule is a banger. Here’s hoping it stays forever.

Boo, Pou!

Ottawa fans aren’t messing around. At the team’s opener on Jan. 2, visiting Montreal captain Marie-Philip Poulin was awarded a penalty shot in the second period after she was hauled down on a partial breakaway. As Poulin got set to shoot, fans loudly booed No. 29, showing no love for Poulin, who scored the game-winning goal for Canada in three Olympic gold medal games.

“What a funny thing to hear,” said Toronto defender, Renata Fast, who was watching the game and wondered, at first, whether she was hearing yells of ‘Pou!’ “The nation’s capital, your Team Canada captain that they all adore for sure. But that’s exactly what it should be like. You’re cheered for by your city, and it doesn’t matter who the opponent is.”

Even if it’s the most clutch performer in Canadian hockey history, as it turns out.

Ottawa goalie Emerance Maschmeyer shut down Poulin on that breakaway attempt. And the Ottawa crowd went berserk yet again.

Standing room only

The same night the Pou Boos rang out at Ottawa’s TD Place Arena, a worldwide attendance record was set for the most fans at a pro women’s hockey game, with 8,318 at the sell-out tilt.

The previous world record was 7,765, at a game in Sweden’s SDHL, while the North American record was 5,938, for a CWHL game in Montreal in December 2016. The CWHL all-star game a year later in Toronto drew 8,122 fans.

But Ottawa’s record lasted fewer than five days. On Jan. 6, Minnesota drew a crowd of 13,316 to Xcel Energy Center for the home opener against Montreal. Minnesota is known as the State of Hockey for a reason.

Another couple of notes on viewership: Through the first five games, the PWHL’s attendance is 30,335. That averages out to more than 6,000 fans per game.

The very first game in PWHL history aired on Sportsnet, CBC and TSN, and reached 2.9 million Canadian viewers on New Year’s Day. It was the No. 1 sports or entertainment program of the day on all three networks.

“I don’t even think we saw the rule book”

Historical significance was talking point No. 1 after the first-ever game in Toronto, but a close second was the physicality of play.

The rule book, circulated to media earlier in the day, had set the tone, but Toronto forward Jesse Compher said she hadn’t seen it before stepping onto the ice and “had no idea” about the body-checking rules.

“Even in the first period, we all kinda looked at each other on the bench and we were like, ‘Okay, the refs are letting us play. Let’s keep it up,’” Compher said.

The Olympic silver medallist has since read the rules, and she likes what she sees. “I’m excited for it. Obviously it’ll draw out some more compete in our games, and it’ll also be a lot of fun for the people who are watching,” she said. “After our game on Monday, social media was just loving every single one of those clips [featuring big hits]. We obviously don’t want to draw attention to our game just from the hitting — or body checking, I should say — but it’s fun because it’ll for sure get us some more fans.”

Maltais crunched a New York defender against the boards in the third when Toronto was down 4-0, and Compher says it got the team going: “We love that kind of stuff,” she said.

Fast, the Toronto blueliner, said she hadn’t personally seen the rulebook either ahead of Game 1, but she knew the rules. “The talk of the town coming out of Utica [where teams had pre-season games] was, like, these refs are going to let us play,” Fast said. “So I knew heading in that we could play a physical game. Obviously you have to see how the refs are, but yeah, a couple hits go and you’re like, ‘All right, here we go: Let’s play physical.’”

The Team Canada veteran figures there will be an adjustment period for players to get used to that style. “National team games have always been quite physical, but it’s going to take a little bit for all players to, kind of, get used to things like expecting contact along the boards,” Fast said. “But I think it’s going to be really great for our game, for fan entertainment, and for the flow of the game and not having uncertainty with penalties being called. So, there’s just a lot of positives with them letting us play the game.”

First hat trick in the books

Minnesota was the first (and still only) team to win at home, and it certainly didn’t hurt that Grace Zumwinkle potted the first hattrick in PWHL history in that home opener.

Zumwinkle is from Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota last year. PWHL Minnesota picked her 13^th overall in last September’s draft. That’s a hat trick of Minnesota biographical details. No. 13’s on-ice hat trick included a quick shot after a beauty pass in front, a zinger through traffic from just inside the blueline, and the cherry-on-top empty-netter.

That gave her team a 3-0 win over Montreal in front of the biggest-ever crowd for a pro women’s hockey game.

Zumwinkle also scored in her team’s opener, and her four goals and points pace the PWHL. New York’s Alex Carpenter and Chloe Aurard are close behind with three points apiece in two games.

Hefford puts PWHL at the top of the list

Jayna Hefford played in the first Olympics to host women’s hockey, in 1998. She helped Canada win four straight Olympic gold medals, from 2002-2014, and scored the game-winner in 2002. She was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.

But asked whether her role in building and advocating for this league was the most important thing she’d ever done in hockey, Hefford said: “I think so.”

“I’ve obviously had the honour of representing Canada many times, and I don’t take that lightly. And the opportunity to win Olympic gold medals, I’m very proud of,” Hefford said. “But when I think of how meaningful this is, and how long-standing this is, I think this is one of the most important things I’ve done in my career.”

Hefford said she wished she was playing in this league, but the 46-year-old — once one of the fastest and best in the women’s game — isn’t playing at all lately. She’s busy with the PWHL, and her three kids, who all play the game themselves. Hefford’s wife, Kathleen Kauth, and their kids were all at Game 1 in Toronto. Kids (not just her own) are yet another reason Hefford holds the PWHL in such high regard.

“For my daughters, they know the struggle that has been in the past. They know the opportunities that haven’t existed in the past,” Hefford said, at the league’s opener. “They’re not going to know a world without professional women’s hockey after today. And that’s something that’s incredibly special.

“And for the young boys — my son, he looks up to these women the same way he does to male hockey players. He understands the importance of strong women and leadership qualities. And he’s going to be a young man someday that walks into a boardroom and he’s going to expect that there’s a number of women in that room as well. So, this is so much bigger than hockey. What we’re doing, this is societal change that we’re creating as well.”

But… not so fast

Stan Kasten is among the league’s advisory board members, and ahead of the season opener he called it “marginally insane” to get the PWHL up and running in four to six months — a mission the league accomplished.

“It’s crazy — never try it again would be my advice,” he said, laughing. Kasten also pointed out that Year 1 is a learning year. There will be mistakes. And they will get ironed out.

“We’re going to learn from every ticket we sell, and we’re going to learn from every ticket we don’t sell, what we’re going to need to do to get all the people to fill our buildings,” he said. “But we’re going to get that done.”

Teams don’t have nicknames or logos yet. Kasten says they’re working on those details, too, though there are no set timelines or release dates yet. Still, the executive says the PWHL is already a success. “We have 150-plus of the best players in the world playing with players from other countries who were signed up before we announced [the league was operating],” he said. “We have the funding that we need, and as long as the product is what I know it to be, we’re a success already.” 

“I’m like a fan girl”

Toronto’s Fast was emotional ahead of Game 1, but says watching Game 2 on TV between Ottawa and Montreal got her eyes watering. “Seeing it from the other perspective was like, ‘Oh my god, this was so cool.’ I got a little bit emotional,” she said. “I was almost being a spectator, just being removed from the game a little bit and thinking, ‘Oh my god, we’re part of this.’”

Fast says she’ll watch every team’s home opener. And she’s actually cheering. “It was funny, literally one second I’d be like, ‘Go Bellsy!’ for [Ottawa defender] Ashton Bell. And then I’d be like, ‘Go Pou!’ [for Poulin]. I have friends on every team. I’m rooting for people, and I want everyone to do well. It’s funny because I can’t be like this for long — I’ll be playing against them. But watching them now I’m like a fan girl.”

Fast doesn’t plan to watch every game all season-long, because she’ll be focused on Toronto. “But for now it’s fun to celebrate our sport and how far it’s come, and to watch my friends experience these amazing moments,” she said.

Historic hometown heroines

Minnesota’s own Taylor Heise — the No. 1 draft pick — scored the first goal for Minnesota. And Toronto’s own Natalie Spooner scored the first for Toronto. That’s beautiful poetry.

Both of those pucks (and every other team’s first-goal pucks) will be donated to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Upcoming games in the PWHL (all times ET):

Wednesday, Jan 10: Montreal at New York, 7 pm; Toronto at Minnesota, 8 p.m.

Saturday, Jan 13: Ottawa at Toronto, 1 pm. Boston at Montreal 3:30 pm.

Sunday, Jan 14: New York at Minnesota, 4 pm. (on Sportsnet)