On year 3 of the PWHL in Detroit, the impact, and importance of enjoying a game as a fan
On Saturday night we went to the PWHL game, it was a blast. Here are some thoughts.
I first shared this story a couple weeks back, in a 20/20 after the Detroit Red Wings beat the Dallas Stars in overtime on Dec. 23, about how my daughter struggled with the news that her favorite player, Abby Roque, had been traded in the offseason from the New York Sirens to the Montreal Victoire.
There were tears and my daughter told me she really hoped New York regretted making the trade. We have since ordered her an Abby Roque Montreal jersey, which I’m looking forward to surprising her with.
I’m sharing this story, because I think it’s pretty darn cool we live in a world where PWHL trades are causing that kind of emotional distress on a young fan. I’m not saying I want my daughter to be disappointed or in tears, but from a league perspective, things are certainly moving in the right direction when the trades or signings can move the needle in an emotional sense.
It was also fresh in my mind because for the third year I bought tickets for the PWHL Takeover Tour in Detroit.
This year they’ll be two games, one this past Saturday that featured the Vancouver Goldeneyes against the Boston Fleet, and one in March between New York and Montreal.
So my daughter will still get to see her favorite player in March, in fact she’ll get to see her play against her old team, which will be a fun twist.
OK, back to the game on Saturday, which had a reported attendance of 9,624. That’s a sharp decrease from the 13,736 in 2024 and the 14,288 in 2025, which were both American records for attendance at the time.
Unlike the past two seasons where the upper bowl was open, no tickets were sold outside of the lower bowl for this game.
While I’m sure that can feel like a disappointment for those involved, I think it’s important to talk realistically about attendance. Selling a one-off game, like the PWHL did in 2024 and 2025, is easier from both a marketing and business perspective. You put all your efforts into one game and bring some scarcity to the market. Introducing a second game in Detroit was always going to hurt attendance, and putting it on the calendar on January 3, the last Saturday before kids go back to school from winter break, has it’s own challenges.
I would also expect a better attendance in March, considering that would fit the yearly cadence of the games in 2024 and 2025, both were in March, and women’s hockey will be potentially building off an Olympic hockey moment in the United States.
All that being said, getting close to 10,000 people into the building on January 3 feels like a pretty good achievement in my view. From a business perspective, it shows that even a lull in attendance is a pretty strong showing.
It also starts to paint a better picture for what a potential venue would have to look like for an expansion team in Detroit, which I hope happens in the not-to-distant future.
But those are business things for others to figure out. I want to close out this piece talking about my experience, as a dad, with two young kids at a PWHL game.
My daughter likes hockey, but loves to skate. She is happiest when she’s skating, particularly figure skating, but also dabbles playing hockey and she and I went to a stick-and-pucks session this past weekend. She’s also started to collect PWHL cards, I bought her a box of cards two years ago, and got her another one this year for Hanukkah. Hockey won’t be her main thing, I’m well aware of that, but it’s something that she’s been able to enjoy in her own way and it’s been a fun way for me to connect with her.
It’s also important for my son, who’s now asked us to take him to more hockey games — I think I’ll bring him to an NTDP game in a couple weeks. He’s a little bit younger, but he was more locked into the play on the ice and asked questions about why certain things happened. For me, it’s kind of cool for him to grow up in a world where hockey is hockey, and something that’s accessible to both him and his sister.
It’s funny, I was hoping to break the game down a bit more, to give you more of a feel for why or how Vancouver won an exciting game 4-3. But in the rare times I sit in an arena as a fan, I realize how difficult it is to actually watch the hockey game. You end up talking to people around you, explaining something to your kid, and getting caught in the moment puck-watching. You lose track of players and systems, an already messy game becomes even more muddled, for me at least, when you sit and watch it in a leisurely fashion.
But maybe, just maybe, that’s the point, right? Sports are supposed to be fun, a shared experience and moment to escape and find excitement or human drama through a different lens. For me, it was a needed step back to enjoy the sport in a way I rarely do, to sit back and enjoy it without a pen or paper, without any required writing. Take a moment to be a fan with my kids, because that’s why most of us connected with this sport in the first place.