Plenty of uncertainty remains for PWHL as inaugural season rapidly approaches

Starting a league from scratch is not easy. Starting a professional hockey league from scratch in four months is formidable. That was the goal of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), and with training camps opening this week, the league is speeding toward their January launch at break-neck speed.

With the large scope of the endeavor the PWHL has gone through several rough patches, and still has an unfathomable amount of work to complete considering players are already on the ice, and the season is set to open in under two months.

"It feels like we've been at this for ten years, but it's just been four months," said PWHL advisory board member Stan Kasten while addressing the media on the eve of training camps opening.

On Tuesday, Kasten and PWHL senior vice president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford spent an hour talking to media, and on the same day the league announced training camp schedules and revealed jerseys for the six franchises for their inaugural season. Just a day earlier, the league announced a five-day preseason event to be held in Utica, New York in early December. Kasten also announced that the league now has more than 120 employees, not including players.

While the PWHL put out more information in the past 48 hours than they had in months, Kasten acknowledged there is still much to do, particularly after the league started with a “black sheet of paper.” As Kasten said, the league “did have to make some concessions, especially on the long lead items,” and when asked for more details on team names and logos, a league schedule, venues, and broadcasting rights, Kasten didn’t have specifics, or a timeline.

“I don’t have a date for any of those things…I think we are close on all of them, but I don’t have any more information for you today, but soon, very soon,” said Kasten. “We need to start business, we need to start getting online and selling tickets and setting up promotions, so it’s very very important we get this out there as soon as possible.”

To start that business, as many have stated, the league needs to finalize schedule and venues. The PWHL has been collecting $50 deposits from fans for tickets, but have yet to announce an official schedule. Some of the items holding up that process are the league’s special events and neutral-site games, but with players stepping on the ice this week, the PWHL has yet to formally secure venues for their inaugural season.

“We don’t have all the paperwork signed,” said Kasten when asked about venues. “That’s just where we are. I think our schedule is 98% done, I think basically all of the home schedules are done, and the holes that remain in our schedule are specialty events or neutral-site events.”

While not all venues have been finalized, some like Ottawa’s TD Place are locked in, and construction is underway on new facilities for Ottawa’s franchise.

For fans not located near one of the six PWHL markets, the ability to watch games on television and online is a point that's been lacking in past iterations of women’s hockey leagues. Kasten is confident the vast majority of PWHL games will be broadcast on linear television networks, and that all games will be available to be streamed online.

“We had a goal to have every single one of our 72 games being broadcast on linear TV as well as streaming,” said Kasten. “I don’t know that we’re going to quite make that goal, but we’re going to have an awful lot, if not all…on linear TV in their markets or on a network, and that’s one of the more exciting developments.”

Hefford specified that unlike the CWHL, NWHL and PHF, the PWHL will play games every night of the week throughout the season, moving professional women’s hockey from a weekend-only league to an every-night offering for fans, which Hefford called “something our sport hasn’t seen.”

Similar to the venues, Kasten said those deals aren’t finalized yet, but are close. Yet another piece to the puzzle many fans have spoken out about, particularly following the leak of six potential names that were trademarked, is team branding in the form of names and logos. Kasten explained that as soon as markets were finalized in August, the league ordered jerseys. Needing the lead time for production, it didn’t allow time for the league to wait for names and logos.

Kasten acknowledged the importance of branding in the grand scheme of marketing the league, but said the names, including those that were leaked, are currently being reviewed and will be ready when they’re ready. He was unsure if those items would be complete in time for puck drop.

“The building blocks of any league or business are the same, for us it’s your product, it’s your customer, it’s your brand,” he said. “In our league’s formulation, it’s our team on the ice, it’s our stadium or arena experience, and it’s our connection with the community, to community relations. We’re focused on all of those, we’re not 100% deployed yet or will be by day one. A lot of that has to do with the short time frame that we had to get this done, but we’re working on it every day, we’re not going to stop working on it the first day of the season.”

That said, Kasten said players are pleased with the jerseys the league will use in their inaugural season.

“We opted to go at that time with kind of this vintage look, which we thought was pretty cool,” he said. “Our players' reactions have been great.”

While there are many question marks, the one thing Kasten feels comfortable with is the product on the ice. He repeatedly expressed to media his confidence in the high caliber entertainment and competition involving highly-skilled players, in markets ready to embrace professional women’s hockey.

“The stuff that’s important, getting the best players, getting them on teams, getting them in places where fans are going to really enjoy them, that we got right.”