ST. PAUL, MINN. -- The Penguins will be hosting Toronto and Montreal of the Professional Women's Hockey League for a game at PPG Paints Arena on March 17.
Penguins management and Fenway Sports Group are hoping that it'll be a step toward getting a team of their own.
The PWHL is in its inaugural season, with teams in Minnesota, Boston, New York, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. The Penguins had hoped to have Pittsburgh be one of those founding cities, but as Penguins president of business operations Kevin Acklin told me in September after the initial cities were announced, they "didn't have an opportunity to be part of that conversation for the inaugural six teams."
The Penguins are making sure that they get into the discussion whenever the PWHL does expand. Even before the league began play in January, the Penguins spoke with leaders from the NHL and PWHL and immediately expressed interest in hosting a neutral-site game like the one happening in March, and finalized those plans in the last six weeks.
"It's consistent with our long-standing efforts to grow the game of hockey," Acklin told me this week. "We think Pittsburgh is ripe and ready to have more professional women's hockey here. And ultimately, if there's an opportunity to do an expansion, that's something we'd like to do here in Pittsburgh. In the meantime, we're going to spend a lot of time and effort toward making this game on March 17 a success."
A major hiccup in bringing a team to Pittsburgh is that there just isn't a great place for them to play yet. The league is averaging just about 5,000 fans per game, with some teams limited by small home rinks -- Toronto, for instance, only sits around 2,500 fans at their usual Mattamy Athletic Centre, but have already sold out the 18,800-seat Scotiabank Arena for a single game there later this month. A good setup would perhaps be something like what Boston has, playing in the 6,500-seat college rink of UMass Lowell. But there just isn't anything like that in the Pittsburgh area.
The current best option would be the main rink at the Lemieux Complex. But with a seating capacity of only 1,500, that's just not sufficient for the PWHL, given the numbers the rest of the league draws.
That's why the Penguins are looking to expand the Lemieux Complex, whether PWHL expansion is imminent or not. They want to be ready for when the time comes.
"I have drawings and plans for potential expansion in Cranberry," Acklin said. "We've had conversations with everybody from the governor's office down to the authorities in Cranberry about a potential expansion, building out a third sheet of ice with sufficient stands."
The Penguins think that even without a women's team, that extra sheet of ice could benefit the NHL club, as well as serve as another home for the various other events and games hosted in Cranberry throughout the year. They're working on the application process to build out that building and aren't waiting on the PWHL to move ahead.
Acklin also acknowledged the likelihood of a potential PWHL team playing some games at PPG Paints Arena, as other teams in the league already are doing with the NHL arenas in their cities from time to time.
The Penguins are also already investing money in the people needed to make a future PWHL team a success. They've been working with Caroline Fitzgerald and GOALS, a marketing and sponsorship consultancy group that is dedicated to growing women's sports. Acklin also built up an internal working group that focuses on women's hockey. It's led by Shannon Webster, who was hired as the Penguins' senior director of youth hockey but played the game herself in college and is an advocate for growing the women's game. Then there's Amanda Kessel, whose main role is as a special assistant to Kyle Dubas but is involved in the women's hockey effort as well (and hasn't officially retired as a player yet, either).
"What we can control is what we're doing," Acklin said. "That is getting ready for that opportunity, investing in infrastructure, proving out the business case for it. We think it is a good business model as well. Ratings, the fan bases in the cities has been positive. When and if there's an expansion opportunity, we'd like to be at the table."
Beyond just the business aspect of bringing a team to Pittsburgh, the Penguins just think that growing the game is the right thing to do. Fenway Sports Group is a huge driver behind that, with creating equity being the main goal.
"You know, the men's league has had 100 years of a head start," Acklin said. "If you think about it in terms of privilege, we're in effect lending our privilege that we have as a professional men's sport to support the women."
MORE ON THE PENGUINS
• Sidney Crosby hasn't had any discussions with the team yet regarding his future after his current contract expires in 2025. Not much to read into there other than there being more imminent and therefore higher priorities. Expect those discussions to happen this summer at the earliest.
• A lot of Penguins players were aware of Frank Seravalli's rant ripping Crosby for skipping the All-Star draft and media day. A couple players brought it up when I was speaking with them about the break, all with the same mix of bewilderment and annoyance. "That's the guy he goes after? He's nicer to the media than most guys," one said.
• Dubas has personally made trips to see Wilkes-Barre/Scranton play very often this season, often unreported because many of the trips have been on the road. He's been particularly impressed with the play of goaltender Joel Blomqvist, calling his exceptional rookie season "huge for us."
• Former Penguin Ryan Poehling seems to have settled into the Flyers' bottom six nicely and earned himself a two-year extension that pays him $1.9 million a year. Maybe he would have been a fit in the current bottom six, but there was some concern over his health. His "nagging upper-body injury" from last season wasn't so much an injury at all, but a chronic respiratory issue that didn't get properly diagnosed until late in the season. He did get a concussion in the midst of dealing with all that, one that was exacerbated by his brain not getting all the oxygen it should have. He seems to have gotten the issue under control.
• On that note ... there seems to be a notion among fans that the Penguins offer specifics on an injury when it's a concussion, and if they simply say "upper-body," then it must not be a concussion. That's not true, and Poehling's concussion last season is an example. They're under no obligation to specify when a player has a concussion, and it's not policy to always do so. John Ludvig's concussion earlier in the year was labeled one because he got knocked out on the ice from the hit and everyone saw it, and Brenden Dillon's hit to Noel Acciari's head this week didn't require much guessing, either.
• As we near the March 8 trade deadline, it's about to be peak time for over-analyzing which scouts are at which games. A reminder that a scout once told me that you really can't read into that too often, given that they usually get their schedules around a month in advance. Now, if a general manager or assistant general manager is the "scout" there, that's a little different. That's something to keep an eye on.
• A lot of guys who came up through Wilkes-Barre with Valtteri Puustinen learned a few words of Finnish ... not from Puustinen, but rather coach J.D. Forrest, who spent five years of his playing career in Finland. Forrest would take advantage of his limited Finnish when Puustinen was just really learning English. One player told me that when he'd go over the boards for overtime, Forrest would tell him to tell Puustinen, "mies on mies!" "Mies" is the word for "man" -- not quite how you'd say "man on man" in Finnish, but I'm sure Puustinen got the idea. It's a nice asset for a coach to have to make those players feel just a little more comfortable in a new country.
• Cool note for the upcoming Jaromir Jagr jersey retirement ceremony on Feb. 18: The Penguins will be welcoming members of Jagr's billet family from his early years in Pittsburgh for the game. Also in attendance will be family of the late Michel Briere, whose No. 21 is the only other jersey currently in the rafters along with Mario Lemieux's No. 66.
• The Penguins have already heard from a lot of from Jagr's teammates from throughout his time in Pittsburgh who will attend, including some prominent members from the 1991 and 1992 Stanley Cup teams. Should be a good group.
