13,316 watched the battle between Minnesota and Montreal, a new attendance record for women’s professional hockey.
Playing in the new women’s professional ice hockey league PWHL Susanna Tapani recorded his opening point of the season as Minnesota defeated Montreal 3-0 late Saturday Finnish time.
Grace Zumwinkle hit the league’s first hat trick in the match and Tapani scored two hits. The match was the second of the season for Tapani and Minnesota.
The head coach of HIFK’s women’s league team Saara Niemi estimates that the Finnish star who played ringette last season will do well in the new puck series with his strength, i.e. skating.
– When Susanna gets games under her belt, she is able to fight even better and score points and goals as well. He keeps up with the tempo very well and has got a good role in the team, says Niemi.
Niemi has watched a couple of PWHL matches. He describes the hockey played in the series as fast-paced, physical and straightforward.
– A bit like the United States and Canada were playing against each other.
According to Niemi, the game will develop even more when the players get up to speed properly. The series started at the beginning of January.
Records are breaking
The match in Minnesota was watched by 13,316 spectators, which is a new attendance record in women’s professional hockey. The spectator capacity of the arena, which is also the home hall of the NHL team Minnesota, is around 18,000.
In Finland, the number of spectators in question would have barely fit only in the Nokia Areena in Ilves and Tampere, which has a capacity of 13,330.
– Since we are in a hockey state, I knew that our supporters would come. Today, however, we took it to a new level, Minnesota’s GM and former US national team star player Natalie Darwitz said.
– I have experienced several great puck nights in Minnesota, and experiencing tonight and the record crowd was an emotional moment that will be at the top of my list.
The previous record, 8,318 spectators, was also from the PWHL. Before the PWHL, the attendance record for the SDHL match between Brynäs and Luluja was 7,765 spectators in Sweden from 2022.
Prior to the PWHL, the North American record attendance for a women’s professional hockey regular season was 5,938 from the CWHL in 2016.
According to Saara Nieme, the new professional series is a big deal for women’s hockey worldwide.
– After all, this has been expected. Now everything is under the same organization and is a genuine, real, professional league where every player earns a good amount of money. There is something to aim for besides a university career or playing in Finland or Sweden.
– At this stage, the most important thing is to find an audience in the hall and that the games have been watched a lot on TV.
More than in the SM league
So the PWHL era is off to a promising start. On the other hand, only five matches have been played in the series, so far-reaching conclusions about popularity and audience numbers cannot be made yet.
The PWHL’s average audience is currently 6,067. The lowest audience has been 2,151 viewers.
For comparison, the domestic men’s SM league has an audience average of 4,448. Tappara (6,764), Ilves (6,147) and HIFK (6,032) reach an average of more than 6,000 spectators per SM league match (both home and away matches).
The average of the biggest hockey league, the NHL, has been 17,311 spectators this season.
According to Niemi, in terms of the number of women’s hockey fans, it is important that young girls see the matches of the women’s tough professional series and thus get role models.
– I hope that in Finland they will also start to be shown elsewhere than on YouTube.
League leader Minnesota next faces Toronto early on Saturday Finnish time.