PWHL Ottawa has turned TD Place Arena into a dream factory

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Nellie Green keeps a game-used Team Canada goalie stick displayed on her bedroom wall. It is signed by her favorite player and former owner of the stick, PWHL Ottawa goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer. Nellie, 13, used her own money, $250, to successfully bid for the stick as part of a fundraiser at a December tournament in Montreal organized by four-time Olympic gold medalist Caroline Ouellette . Nellie has participated in that tournament twice and for the past three years she has attended Ouellette and Marie-Philip Poulin’s summer hockey camp in Montreal.

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Like Maschmeyer, Nellie is also a goalkeeper, one of two goalkeepers on the Peewee AA Outaouais Dragons 1 men’s team. The team just returned from last weekend’s provincial championship in Trois-Rivières with silver medals.

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And although the Provincials prevented Nellie from attending Saturday’s PWHL Ottawa game against Minnesota, she will be at Wednesday’s game against Boston, just as she has been for a half-dozen other games at TD Place Arena this season.

As a young woman, Nellie watched women’s international hockey and imagined that, like her Team Canada models, Ouellette and Poulin, she could one day compete in the Olympics with a maple leaf on her sweater. But with the success of the nascent Professional Women’s Hockey League, she has added another goal to her bucket list: making a living playing professional hockey.

“I always wanted to play for Team Canada,” he says, “but now I also want to work playing hockey with the PWHL. Just going to the games and seeing all the fans made me want to play more. That would be great”.

I learned of Nellie’s love of the game after a column I wrote in December, on the eve of the PWHL Ottawa franchise and season opener. I was at one of the team’s practices and was impressed by the caliber of play, and recognized in the group the potential to inspire so many fans, especially (although not exclusively) the young girls, who for the first time for many were able to see some version future of themselves reflected in the ice.

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On Saturday I attended my first game to see how everything unfolded.

Turns out you can barely get a cat in there without hitting someone blind-eyed. It’s no exaggeration to say that when PWHL Ottawa players are on the ice, TD Place Arena transforms into a dream factory.

Like sisters Ryleigh and Abby Kennedy, ages 14 and 10, respectively, who brought signs to Saturday’s game promising bags of candy for their favorite players, Daryl Watts and Maschmeyer, in exchange for hockey sticks. (Abby’s bag of Lifesavers gummies earned her a Maschmeyer record.)

“I was so excited when they started a women’s league,” said Ryleigh, a ringette player. “I feel like there’s not enough girly stuff; There are many things about men.”

Abby, goalkeeper for the men’s A-level Ottawa West Sting, hopes to play professionally one day. “When I watch women play, I think maybe I can do it when I get older and get better.”

Also at Saturday’s game was 9-year-old Johanna Malton, one of the Stittsville Rockets players who scrimmaged on the ice during Saturday’s first intermission. With a poster claiming her to be Maschmeyer’s No. 1 fan, Johanna similarly said that watching women play professionally inspires her to believe that one day she can do the same.

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Meanwhile, another nine-year-old girl, Savannah Cosby, drove with her parents from St. Catharines just to attend Saturday’s game and cheer on her namesake, Ottawa defender Savannah Harmon. The pair, she explained, share the same name, hair color and date of birth, and both shoot left and play D: young Savannah with the Brock Badgers U11-A. “I really want to be a PWHL player when I grow up,” she said.

However, beyond simply inspiring youthful dreams, the PWHL clearly fills a need. It is, as Marie-Pier Thibault, a thirty-something fan and subscriber, said, “the best game in the city.”

If last Saturday’s game was any indication, it’s hard to argue with Thibault. The more than 8,000 fans who filled the arena brought a palpable enthusiasm and an intimate, organic sense of community to the game. It was fun to be there. Meanwhile, the hockey itself was fast-paced and exciting. It doesn’t hurt that the Ottawa team (could someone give the team a nickname?) has been playing extremely well lately and, with four games left in the regular season, is currently in the playoff mix.

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The PWHL ticks all the boxes and will hopefully be here for years to come, inspiring future generations to display the sticks used by Nellie Green, Abby Kennedy, Johanna Malton, Savannah Cosby and others in his bedroom walls.

Born in Fort William, Ontario, a city that no longer appears on maps, Bruce Deachman He has called Ottawa home for most of his life. As a columnist and reporter for the Citizen, he works to keep Ottawa on the map. You can contact him at [email protected].

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