It is one thing to control the pace of playing on the ice, and completely another to control the speed and direction of sports.
However, executives at the head of the professional hockey league know that the future of the game depends on their ability to do so.
The risks are clear.
The past includes a cemetery of shortcuts – WWHL, NWHL, CWHL, PWHPA, PHF, Women's League Championships in North America that came and went, grown very quickly or very slow, with reckless or even worse, not at all.
The future lies in PWHL- in the ability of collective decision makers to trade with momentum and crowd chants when the time is right, to take what is served when the ice opens.
Even before the picker is dropped, the know -how was placed on the test.
On October 26, 2023, slightly more than two months before the start of the Pwhl opening season, the names of the original six privileges were leaked in the league online. The results, which were discovered by searching for the American brand database, were first published by detroathkey.net and quickly picked up the traction online.
Names such as “Ottawa Alert” praised the history of the women's game, but still, the fans were less than fit. Boston Al -Sherir and New York Sound acquired a special anger from social media fans, and in general, he agreed to the media.
Yahoo SPORTS collected an amazing set of social media criticism and published under the title, “Brand Lists in Reverse Response”. Hockey news agreed that “you should return to the drawing panel for the names of PWHL”.
The name of the leakage was one of the first main stories of the league that was broken since its foundation was announced six months ago. Given that the league has not yet played his first match, and he had no place or authority in the minds of fans and the media besides what is it He said This was the case, threatening the leakage by undermining the tannah that was built to this point.
But while the league itself was young and green, the executives behind the institution were not.
“I did not feel that it was from the brand and story perspective, we were ready to put any names in the universe [at that time]”Whether they are lines or other things that we planned,” said Amy Sher CEO of Commercial Operations.
The leak will not force the rash, nor will it change the league schedule.
There were countless decisions that were hurried during the six -month period in the first season, but the names of the teams and slogans were the executive brand who hoped that they would set their original teams for upcoming decades. There will be no second chances.
In addition, there were a lot of other logistics services to settle. If the PWHL will achieve its declared goal of dropping the scepter on January 1, 2024, the squares, timelines, front elevators of the team and indispensable menus.
The names of the difference and slogans were not. Fighting leakage – the world can wait.
Name game
The world, though, was less than happy.
On the whole, the fans' reaction to the league's announcement was that the team's identities would come in the next season, before the second year, with ridicule and disappointment.
The idea that the full season will be played with “New York” only, “Minnesota” or “Ottawa” planned through players ’boxes. It was not with the narration that PWHL would be the most professional league in the history of women's hockey. While European football fans used the effort to represent a country or city instead of a team, this phenomenon was foreign in the league championships in North America.
However, if the PWHL will remain in the long run, if the league would outperform the countless obstacles that show the end of all the championships that preceded it, these are the types of risks that Execs will need to tolerate.
The dictation of the pace of play means moving a million miles per hour so that the league is not able to not tolerate it, and that will be a balanced act in the foreseeable future. Although these names and slogans were absent from the mark, there was a real anxiety that may be short.
Kanan Bhatha Shah. Pwhl Vice President of the brand and marketing joined the front office in November 2023, almost the same as the leakage, and made him the first order of her work to scan suggestions. There was a lot.
She said that the names of the teams were known for the moment when the league was formed. In the six months between then and Puck Drop, all throughout the first season, new ideas continued to fly from players and executives of the team and fans – whether in the arena or on social media.
Her office tracked these suggestions and sentenced the best horizons through a set of criteria: the names of the fans should have been left behind and those that the league could. As much as anything else, Bhath Shah says that PWHL has sought identities “that would represent the spirit of the market and the spirit of the team.”
The names slowly began to turn into visual identities with the help of agency, Flowerhop. The color teams that were playing with them in the first year added new wrinkles.
“It was really important to maintain the same basic colors,” Baht Shah said. “Our fans embraced these colors, and we wanted to make sure they continue at home.”
Although the names and designs of Jersey have not been disclosed until November 2024, PWHL needs to provide the equipment partner, Power, nearly six months of advanced production deadline.
Bhatt-Shah's office started to increase the deadline in May. This enemy, of course, was not without precedent in the history of fast -paced PWHL.
“It is not the first, not the last,” she said.
Fast launch, measured for growth
(Re) came to the two indigenous PWHL on November 7, 2024, and the response of fans and players alike was largely positive.
According to the spokesperson for the league, the PWHL has set the highest new sales level in today's shirts and an updated request and expansion of additional goods has already been set.
It seems that the decision to delay the names and blouses has been justified, not different from the way in which the race was to get the league on this bold timetable for six months.
During the first season, the global record for attending women's hockey game was broken on the second day of the league, on January 2, at the opening of Ottawa's house. It was resets four days later in Minnesota, and was resettled again in Boston in February, and resettled again in Montreal in April.
“[Going into year one]”We didn't really know what to expect … We have done the best work, as quickly as possible, to open the season,” says Sher. “We liked, the way they appeared, exceeded our expectations.”
Indeed, there was a gossip that PWHL should look forward to expanding new markets, but Scheer – an ancient industry warrior with more than thirty years in organizations including nets, freedom, Connecticut Sun, NYCFC, Red Bulls and NFL – Hell Given care first.
PWHL can add up to two teams early in the next season, but if the expansion and how it depends, it depends, from other measures, on how the second repetition of the “acquisition” tour is revealed.
Based on the project that started in the first year and showed neutral games in two American cities, PWHL expanded the “acquisition round” in 2024-25 to include stops in nine different locations across the United States and Canada.
The fans came out in large numbers during the first three stations of the tour, including in Denver Paul Arena, where 14018 fans (a new American attendance record of the hockey for professional women) made their ideas known as “We want a team!” acclaim.
Pressing new cities and involving a larger cross section of the continent's fans is only one piece of the logical basis behind the expansion. In contrast to the former professional women's hockey repetition in North America, the launch of the PWHL with six teams that reduce the large number of locations available. As a result, a number of players who have high ability abroad or early retirement have been forced.
PWHL successes in the first year did not exceed the demand for the demand among young women from NCAA or international patrols. But with only six teams, only 42 can be chosen in the latest PWHL draft in July 2024.
As of December, the league was still receiving requests for proposals from interested markets and was not yet ready to determine the final candidates for expansion – not to mention the new team joining the league.
“like [PWHL advisory board member and Dodgers CEO] “Every time we play a game, we learn something new,” says Sher. “And we do – and we learn … what the players want and what the fans want, we will continue to talk about expansion.”
When executive officials in the league decide that the time is appropriate to expand – a decision, such as names and slogans, they will not make the schedule of anyone but they will do this without reservation, and much less fear of relieving the ice product.
“The game, I am less worried,” says Sher.
