Walter Cup championship caps record-breaking 1st PWHL season — and years of work by players

Joy flooded Minnesota captain Kendall Coyne Schofield’s face as she lifted the 35-pound Walter Cup above her head on Thursday night, after her team defeated Boston 3-0 to win the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s first championship.

It was the culmination of not just a season of hockey, but years of work to create a sustainable league where women would be treated as professionals.

It was Coyne Schofield who led a group of players in negotiating a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the PWHL’s owners last summer, securing benefits like maternity leave and a housing stipend.

She was one of the leaders who rallied players together five years ago to push for more. With the help of sporting icons Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss, they found investors in Mark and Kimbra Walter, who own the six-team league.

“The only reason this [league] happened from a player’s sense is Kendall,” Minnesota’s Kelly Pannek said, after watching her captain be the first to hoist the new trophy.

WATCH | Recapping the Walter Cup playoffs on Hockey North:

In between the labour agreement and the crowning of the first Walter Cup champion, the PWHL broke attendance records, sold merchandise faster than they could keep it in stock and racked up a long list of corporate sponsors.

Each team competed in a 24-game regular season and for the teams that went the distance, two best-of-five playoff series. Many games were physical and more than half were decided by one goal.

“I know the effort that every single player in this league put forth because it was a grind,” Boston head coach Courtney Kessel said after her team’s loss on Wednesday. “It’s something no one’s used to.”

A historic first goal

It all started on New Year’s Day when New York defender Ella Shelton fired a puck past Toronto goaltender Kristen Campbell to score the first goal in PWHL history.

That was the league’s first game, played in front of the first of 11 sell-out crowds of more than 2,400 at Mattamy Athletic Centre in downtown Toronto.

But bigger crowds kept showing up to watch the PWHL.

More than 8,300 people filled TD Place in Ottawa a day later, setting a North American record for the largest crowd to watch a professional women’s hockey league game.

The record didn’t stand long. More than 13,000 people showed up for Minnesota’s home opener on Jan. 6 at the Xcel Energy Center.

That night in Minnesota was a game-changing moment for league advisory board member Stan Kasten.

“The 13,000 really convinced us we were going to make this work,” Kasten said last week. “But even then, I couldn’t have imagined how the year would play out, how we would set attendance records and sponsorship records and viewing records.”

Seeing demand for tickets, the league moved a game to Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena in February, dubbing the match against Montreal as the “Battle on Bay Street.”

That game sold out, too, with the 19,285 fans in attendance setting a world record — one that would be smashed on April 20 when 21,105 people watched a Toronto-Montreal rematch inside the Bell Centre.

The demand seemed to catch the PWHL by surprise. Even though teams don’t have logos or names yet, merchandise frequently sold out in arenas and online.

The PWHL struggled to draw fans in the New York area, where games rotated between arenas in three states, and on some nights inside the Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass., where the Boston team plays an hour outside the city.

“We learn from every ticket we sell and we learn from every ticket we don’t sell,” Kasten said. “Whatever the lessons are in any given market that on certain nights we didn’t do what we wanted, we’re going to sit down and try to understand what we need to do better.”

An even field

On the final day of the regular season, PWHL Minnesota players didn’t know whether they’d be practising the next day or packing for the off-season.

The team ended the season on a five-game slide and squeaked into the playoffs by virtue of an Ottawa loss.

While Minnesota went into the playoffs as the lowest-ranked team, the gap between PWHL teams has been razor-thin all season. That continued in the playoffs, where players struggled to solve stellar goaltending.

It was one of the biggest surprises of the inaugural season for Minnesota head coach Ken Klee, who said he didn’t realize how competitive every game would be.

Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s senior vice president of hockey operations, said parity was a goal that guided how the league distributed players across the six teams.

“I don’t think we could have wrote the script any better, the way it played out and came down to the last game of the regular season to decide who was in the playoffs,” Hefford said last week.

Jailbreak goals and picking playoff opponents

Toronto selected Minnesota, a decision that ended up being bulletin board material for a team that felt underestimated. Minnesota won the series 3-2 before going on to claim the championship.

“We wanted to find ways to improve the game, to make it more engaging for fans, to make it fun,” Hefford said last week. “We didn’t want to change hockey and the traditionalism of hockey, but we wanted to do things a little bit differently.”

WATCH | Minnesota beats Boston in Game 5 to claim Walter Cup:

Walter Cup hoisted for 1st time as PWHL Minnesota celebrates historic victory

Minnesota captain Kendall Coyne Schofield receives the Walter Cup then celebrates with her teammates after becoming the first-ever Professional Women’s Hockey League champion.

One thing the rule changes didn’t do is generate a ton of scoring, as players faced solid goaltending and navigated the way more physicality changed the game. While the PWHL kept the International Ice Hockey Federation’s rules around body checking, the league sent a message to officials to call the rules by the book and allow more physical play along the boards.

“You have to see the ice differently,” Boston captain Hilary Knight, who didn’t register a point during the playoffs, said about the physicality. “You have to be able to absorb hits, read coverages and put yourself in the centre of the ice a little bit more than playing on the outskirts and on the boards.”

Knight said she’d like to see the league work on more consistency around what is and isn’t body checking in year two.

Adjusting to life in a new league 

In Minnesota, Klee remembers talking to one of his players about practising with more intensity, only to discover that player hadn’t practised regularly in the two years since college.

For players who missed playing in a league for several years, this PWHL’s schedule was a welcome change. Even if it was something players wanted, the travel, length and physicality still required adjustment.

“The physicality of letting them play full contact is different for all of them,” Klee said. “It’s trying to teach a 30-year-old how to take a check, how to give a check, and go night after night.”

Even a veteran like Boston forward Jamie Lee Rattray, who’s been playing professionally for a decade, found she had to adjust to a more physical game.

“Now that we know how it’s going to be, I think it’s easier to prepare as next season comes along,” she said.

The next step toward season two of the PWHL will take place on June 10, when a seven-round entry draft will be held in Minnesota.