Kids banged on the glass, cheered at every practice and dunked on the pro players at Scotiabank Center, hoping to get a player's attention and maybe even catch a puck.
The Toronto Sceptres and Montreal Victoire opened their practices to the public in Halifax on Tuesday, to the delight of children who had to skip school to watch their favorite players. One of them waved a sign saying they had skipped the school Christmas concert for this opportunity.
A couple hours later, Victoire players coached young players at a clinic on the ice at the Scotiabank Center, where Victoire and Scepter will play the first game of the 16-stop Takeover Tour on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
It's all part of Halifax's push to become the next city to receive a PWHL franchise as the league anticipates rapid expansion.
Twelve is the magic number the eight-team league is aiming to reach, and it could happen as soon as next season. The PWHL has teams in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Boston, Minnesota, Seattle and the New York area.
The Takeover Tour, which brings the league to cities across North America to showcase PWHL play, is a “starting point” for considering city expansion, league executive vice-president of business operations Amy Scheer told a crowd of community and business leaders at the Halifax Convention Center Wednesday morning.
The PWHL is taking over Halifax with several events planned for the next few days. It all culminates with the game at Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday night. CBC correspondent Josh Hoffman reported this story.
Next comes the infrastructure, including the arena where the players will compete and the facilities where they will train.
But there are many other factors, including travel, business opportunities and community involvement.
If the takeover tour is the starting point, Halifax has hit the right tone for now. Tickets for Wednesday's game and another game in Halifax on Jan. 11 between the Boston Fleet and Ottawa Charge were sold out.
“We actually had to delay the pre-sale of tickets so that the tickets would go on sale to the public the next day,” Scheer told the crowd in Halifax.
Signs of the league's emergence were visible throughout downtown, including players' faces on lampposts on the streets around the skating rink.
The quickly selling out didn't surprise Jayna Hefford, the league's executive vice president of hockey operations. She won gold with Team Canada in Halifax during the 2004 World Championships.
“This is a market that we have marked on the calendar as something that will be a huge success,” Hefford said.
“They are looking for a market that will emerge.”
Events East, which operates Scotiabank Centre, has been planning these games for months. In addition to the open training and clinic in Halifax, the group also set up a coaching council and pop-up clinic in Pictou County, where Scepter captain Blair Turnbull grew up.
“I think we know they're looking for a market that will emerge and a fan base and a community that will welcome them,” Suzanne Fougere, executive vice president of Events East, said in an interview.
“Our task is to make sure that [Wednesday night] we put on a great hockey game, we show them how proud this community is, and then ultimately the decision about where they go in the future is really up to them.”
With a capacity of about 10,500 for hockey, the Scotiabank Center is about the size the PWHL is looking for in a home arena. It is also home to the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL and the Halifax Thunderbirds of the National Lacrosse League.
Creating a training facility could also be a possibility if Halifax were to consider a team, Fougere said.
“I think as we work more fully on the team and these negotiations move forward, it will certainly require the right infrastructure,” she said. “For us, it's the Scotiabank Center as our home arena, and then we're definitely looking at opportunities for practice facilities. We know there's support for that at various levels of government.”
Travel could be more difficult if there were no direct flights to some PWHL markets. The league will get an idea of how it works later this week when Victoire travels from Halifax straight to Vancouver to play the Goldeneyes on Saturday.
The tour continues in Chicago on Sunday with a game between the Ottawa Charge and Minnesota Frost.
The PWHL will visit 11 different locations on the Takeover Tour this season, and Halifax is one of five cities that will host more than one game. Chicago, Detroit, Edmonton and Denver will also receive two visits.
In the case of some of these cities, this gives the league an idea of how weekend and weekday attendance may differ.
“To some extent it’s an indication of our interest in the city,” Scheer said of the locations that make two stops on the tour. “We think this is also a place where we could do well. Takeover Tours are a huge plus for us on the business side.”
No decisions have been made yet. Last year's expansion markets, Seattle and Vancouver, were announced in April ahead of the November launch after the league ran a simulation of all the cities in question.
“We don't really give ourselves false deadlines or deadlines that we create,” Scheer told CBC Sports. “The sooner we can make decisions, the better for everyone. But I don't think we'll change the schedule to make an uninformed decision. When we have all the information, when we feel that we are satisfied with all the data and we look at the financial indicators, then we will make a decision.”
Returning home
In addition to auditioning to one day host a PWHL team, the first stop on the tour will be the homecoming of a number of Victoire and Sceptres players and staff.
Victoire head coach Corey Cheverie grew up in New Glasgow and was excited to show her world to friends and family.
Hosts Carissa Donkin and The Athletic's Hayley Salvian give their predictions for what Canada's women's hockey roster could look like at the upcoming Winter Olympics.
“My family is very proud of us, they love our team, they want to participate and they want our team to feel at home,” she said.
On the other bench, Skiptres head coach Troy Ryan, originally from Spryfield, North Carolina, played his first collegiate hockey game for the University of New Brunswick at what is now the Scotiabank Centre. Before that, he watched games of AHL teams there.
When his team arrived on Monday and were greeted by fans at the airport, it felt like coming home for Ryan and he mentioned how strange it was to be staying in a hotel in his hometown.
“I can’t think of a better place for a PWHL team than Halifax,” Ryan said. “I know there is support. The growth of women's and women's hockey through Hockey Nova Scotia is leading the way across the country. This would be a great place.”
Scepter defenseman Ellie Munroe was one of four girls who played hockey growing up in Yarmouth, North Carolina.
She never dreamed of playing a professional hockey game in her home province.
“It's still surreal for me,” Munroe said. “My dream is to become a professional hockey player and make a living. Just being at home, having all the support, I feel that in Toronto. Throughout my career I have had amazing support from the province, especially from my hometown of Yarmouth.”
It's a similar story for Turnbull, who didn't have the opportunity to play with girls growing up in Stellarton, North Carolina.
Now the summer camp she runs with fellow Nova Scotian Jill Saulnier is selling out in minutes. Last summer they trained about 300 girls.
This will be Turnbull's second game in Halifax in a calendar year after the Canadian national team played a Rivalry Series game against the United States at Scotiabank Arena last winter. Turnbull scored a big goal in front of her fans to level the score.
Creating another big moment at home for the PWHL team she leads would be something else entirely.
“I think [Wednesday] we can expect a ton of kids in the stands, a lot of little girls who know a lot about the PWHL,” Turnbull said.
“They have teams they follow, players they follow. For Montreal and Toronto to be the first two teams to play each other here in Halifax, I think it's something you can't put into words. It's going to be amazing.”
