Women's ice hockey finds winning formula in pro league

At the end of the play-offs, one team will walk away being the first to have won the inaugural Walter Cup championship trophy - but for the Professional Women's Hockey League, their inaugural season was already a victory.

By the time the buzzer rang at Montreal's Bell Centre, sports history had been made: a record 21,105 people had attended a professional women's ice hockey game.

The April game - between Montreal and Toronto - marked the crowning achievement of the six-team Professional Women's Hockey League's (PWHL) inaugural season.

The initial success of the league, which spans both the US and Canada, comes as interest in women's sports soars - and after previous attempts to establish a professional women's league sputtered and ultimately failed, due to low attendance and financial woes.

In total, nearly 393,000 fans attended the league's regular season games at venues in Boston, New York, Minnesota, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

"This season has been a series of firsts, with a number of records broken," Jayna Hefford, the league's senior VP of hockey operations, told the BBC. "We continue to be excited and surprised."

Ms Hefford, a Hall of Fame former professional player and five-time Olympian, credited the league's initial success, in part, to a dedicated and diverse fanbase that in many cases were often not previously exposed to women's hockey.

"It's a welcoming environment," she said. "We're also finding an older generation of women that never had this opportunity to do something like this and are now becoming big fans of the league."

Among those who say they have discovered a new-found love of hockey through the PWHL is Treena Grevatt, a native of Gloucestershire in England who emigrated to Canada in 2000.

Speaking to the BBC from her home in Ottawa, Ms Grevatt said that hockey and the men's National Hockey League, or NHL, "never really resonated with her".

"I'd go to be social, if I got a free ticket," she said.

That all changed, she recalls, when a friend told her that a PWHL team was headed to Canada's capital.

"I want to support pro women's sports... this is really the first opportunity I had to put my money where my mouth is," she said.

Choking back tears, Ms Grevatt said that her first game was "ridiculously emotional" and that she felt moved by her peers in the audience, who ranged from former athletes to young children, boys and girls alike.

"There were a lot of former women athletes who never had this chance, and there were little kids holding signs like 'thank you for giving me something to dream for'," she added. "The atmosphere was phenomenal. It's hard to keep your composure, I'd put it that way."

Unlike previous attempts at establishing a professional women's league, the PWHL enjoys considerable financial backing, with the league and all six teams owned by the Mark Walter Group, headed by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and part owner of Chelsea Football Club.

The league is also backed by tennis icon and activist Billie Jean King and has enjoyed statements of support from US lawmakers.

Unlike previous women's hockey leagues - in which players sometimes had to take second jobs to compensate for low salaries - an agreement between the PWHL and its union means that players receive wages of between $35,000 (£28,000) and $80,000, excluding bonuses. The figure will go up 3% annually for the duration of the eight-year agreement.

While the figures, and the league's salary cap of $1.26m, are low compared to the multi-million dollar contracts frequent in the NHL, they have proven a notable draw for fans of the league who feel strongly about equality in the game.

"It sends a signal to the rest of the hockey community," said Heidi Van Regan, a Montreal-based PWHL season ticket holder. "It's breaking the glass ceiling. It's not just players either - it's also women who want to be broadcasters, or have a blog, or podcast to talk about hockey all day."

"Of course, we're not at equality yet," Ms Van Regan added. "But when you're at games and watching the broadcast, you see that there's a big effort to get women in many different roles. Players are sort of leading the way."

The league, however, is not without its challenges.

In some markets - particularly Boston and New York in the US - the PWHL has met a more muted response and must compete with a range of other professional teams in crowded markets.

"It's either going to grow or it's going to flop," said Jim DeLise, a lifelong hockey fan from New York.

Using New York as an example, Mr DeLise said that the league "has got to work a little bit more" to attract attention in some sports markets.

"They [the PWHL] didn't get the proper exposure that they needed at the beginning. Nobody even really knew there was a team in New York. I think they dropped the ball with that," he said. "Where's the advertisement? I don't see any."

For now, the league is rapidly approaching the end of its inaugural season, with the start of the play-offs.

The two teams that emerge victorious from the play-offs - currently between Montreal, Toronto, Boston and Minnesota - will vie for the PWHL final and the Walter Cup later this month.

Given the success of the inaugural season, the PWHL is bullish on the future, leaving the door open to an expanded league and, they hope, a larger fan base in the US, Canada and potentially further afield.

"In the next five or 10 years, I hope that we are consistently filling buildings, not just as something that comes up as a special event," Ms Hefford said, referencing the April game in Montreal.

"The demand is already there. But we're going to be thoughtful and strategic about it."

But like many of the fans, Ms Hefford said that she believes that the message the PWHL is sending perhaps outweighs any ticket sales or sponsorship deals.

"The generation playing in this league now likely grew up never seeing women's hockey and dreamed of playing in the NHL to win the Stanley Cup. Or saw the Olympics every four years," she said.

"But now we're seeing it on television, almost every night of the week," she added. "That's what young girls are seeing - a realistic career path. Inspiring them to play the game is a driving force of what we're doing."