PWHL - Professional Women's Hockey League

[PenguinHunter]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/arti...ss-conference/

A new Professional Women's Hockey League.

I would have loved if they went Original Six with the same Original Six Cities as the NHL.
That could have been a marketing teams dream situation.

This is great news for women in hockey!

[PenguinHunter]

Here are my predictions for Team Names:

Boston Beauts
Minnesota Magnum
Toronto Trailblazers
Ottawa Aces
New York Nighthawks
Montreal Masters

[Eskimo Brother]

I doubt they take Buffalo's NWHL/PHF name and give it to Boston haha. Would make sense to stick with the "Pride" there for the branding. I could see Minnesota also keeping the Whitecaps as well, as those two have some longer history with those names. Maybe something that keeps the Riveters for the NY area team too.
The Canadian teams I think there is some more flexibility with, though I do think the Toronto team doesn't go back to "Six".

All-in-all excited for the new league here. Not super confident that they're making the right calls on everything from what I have seen so far, but if they can continue to grow it then that's what really matters.

[Pengwin7]

Hopefully this league has some legs.
Not sure about logistics... but it would be great if the league had some major outside funding (maybe from NHL) to give it some stability.

[Eskimo Brother]

Apparently they are having discussions with the NHL about that (and the NHL had said that they would help when there was one unified league). Hopefully they get a few private owners invested too with some deep pockets.

[2014olympicgold]

In all honesty I rather the NHL invest more into their own league than use the major teams revenues to run Arizona, Anaheim and a women's league.

They don't have enough money have a high enough cap to have players in the same stratosphere as other sports. Willy Nylander's career earnings over 571gp is pretty much less than the contract the top 3 picks in the NFL will get in their first contracts.

William Nylander - 9yrs, $37,999,427 (8NHL seasons, his 1st yr would have gotten him a signing bonus, but no salary)
Bryce Young - 4yr, $37,955,071
CJ Stroud - 4yr, $36,279,243
Will Anderson Jr - 4yr, $35,212,827

[Eskimo Brother]

I think the amount that they are using on the women's league will be paltry in comparison to the TV deals and how much is being funneled into the Coyotes. It's marketing, stars, and TV deals, in addition to the size of the share that the owners have. That's the bigger issue with the money discrepancy.

[2014olympicgold]

WNBA got around $15m/yr in 2022. ESPN pays the WNBA about $25m/yr for TV rights, and they make around $20m in ticket revenue and merch sales yearly.

It will be interesting how much ESPN/SN will offer for the TV rights, and how much higher will the PWHL operating costs will be.

[PenguinHunter]

Their inaugural draft is today!

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.tsn.ca/live?id=394542

[butch]

whenever I see this thread pop up with a new post I think PH is starting a new fantasy league

[PenguinHunter]

whenever I see this thread pop up with a new post I think PH is starting a new fantasy league

there - I fixed it so you won't fix that any more.

[PenguinHunter]

watching the draft and Brian Burke is at one of the tables.

Us he part of one of the management teams for one of the teams?

[pmorrow]

He's one of the execs of the league I think.

[PenguinHunter]

First Round Results

1. Minnesota - Taylor Heise
2. Toronto - Jocelyne Laroque
3. Boston - Alina Mueller
4. New York - Ella Shleton
5. Ottawa - Savannah Harmon
6. Montreal - Erin Ambrose

[Eskimo Brother]

Missed the first round because I assumed this started I. The evening. Watching this for a bit with my daughter right now, so that's fun ��