NEW YORK: On Saturday, the new North American women’s ice hockey league saw Minnesota defeat Montreal in front of a world record crowd of over 13,000 spectators. 13,316 fans jammed the XCel Energy Center in Saint Paul to see Minnesota’s 3-0 triumph, making it the biggest attendance for a professional women’s ice hockey game in history worldwide. The previous record of 8,318 that was achieved on Tuesday when Ottawa hosted Montreal was easily surpassed by the turnout. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) concluded a successful first week of play on Saturday with its attendance numbers. The PWHL debuted on Monday.
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“We demonstrated this week that women’s hockey is effective,” Stan Kasten, a founding board member of the PWHL, stated on Saturday. The most recent attempt to introduce professional women’s ice hockey in North America is the six-franchise league that includes clubs from Boston, Minnesota, Ottawa, Montreal, New York, and Toronto. The National Women’s Hockey League, which debuted in 2015 and was the first professional women’s league to pay players, has been replaced by the PWHL. In front of an enthusiastic crowd on Saturday in Saint Paul, Grace Zumwinkle scored the first hat-trick in PWHL history, adding another chapter to the league’s history.
