Une Place Assurée

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On April 24, PWHL Montréal clinched a berth in the inaugural playoffs of the Professional Women’s Hockey League. They defeated PWHL New York 5-2 at Verdun Auditorium in front of a crowd of 3,232 overjoyed fans. 

Verdun Auditorium is a beautiful venue for a hockey game. The seating in the main rink is made up of wooden benches, connected like risers, that wrap around the ice on all four sides. The building was built in 1938 and it has seen hockey leagues and basketball leagues come and go, and the weight of that history can be felt in the bones of the recently refurbished building. It’s both old and new, full of echoes and full of hope. It was impossible to watch the game on Wednesday evening, to see the celebrations of the fans as their playoff dreams were realized, and not think about the long, long road to reach that point.

I went to Verdun Auditorium for the first time on November 26, 2022, to watch the Montréal Force of the Premier Hockey Federation play the first home game of their inaugural season. The new team defeated the Metropolitan Riveters, the PHF’s New York area team, by a score of 5-3. The captain of La Force, Ann-Sophie Bettez, had scored the team’s first goal in America; that evening she scored the team’s first goal in Canada. The game set a league attendance record, welcoming 3,200 fans.

On that Saturday evening, center ice was adorned with the name ‘Les Canadiennes’ for the Montréal Canadiennes, the four-time champions of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. The center ice logo was the stylized ‘C’ of Centre 21.02, itself inspired by the Canadiennes logo. Verdun Auditorium had been upgraded by Centre 21.02 as a permanent home and elite training facility for the Canadiennes for the 2019-2020 season. Verdun’s main rink seats just over 4,000 spectators, an upgrade for the team. In the 2018-19 season, Les Canadiennes played at Place Bell, splitting games between a 500-seat community rink and the 10,000-seat rink where the American Hockey League’s Laval Rocket play.

The team never got to call Verdun home. The CWHL folded in the summer of 2019. 

When the Force players came out onto the ice at Verdun for the first time, the boards that bore the name and logo of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association’s Secret Dream Gap Tour, the spiritual successor to the CWHL and the organizational precursor to the PWHL. The Auditorium had hosted a stop of the tour just over a month prior.

I asked multiple parties at the time why the Force could not play all of their home games at Verdun. It wasn’t a scheduling issue, or anything to do with Centre 21.02’s government funding, which had certain requirements for what kinds of athletes could use it. The concern was not about attracting fans; although the Force spent the season playing their ‘home’ games in different rinks across the province, their attendance was consistently among the best in the league.

Whatever the reasoning, that game on Nov. 26 was the first and final game the Force would play at Verdun. In the 2023-2024 season, they were to move to Place Bell. Perhaps they would have played their games on the 2,500-seat Olympic ice, or perhaps in the same 10,000-seat arena as the AHL’s Laval Rocket.

The team never got to call Place Bell home. The PHF was bought out in the summer of 2023. 

PWHL Montréal’s game on April 24 was their final game of the season at Verdun. Center ice still reads ‘Les Canadiennes,’ though the Secret Dream Gap Tour branding is gone, and the boards bore the PWHL logo.

The last captain of the Canadiennes and the first captain of PWHL Montréal, Marie-Philip Poulin, had an assist; Erin Ambrose, alternate captain of both teams, had two. Both players had scored for their teams at the Dream Gap Tour stop in Verdun, weeks before the Force played their one and only game at the venue. Melodie Daoust, the second alternate captain of the Canadiennes, had her third goal of the season; she was in the lineup in place of Ann-Sophie Bettez, third alternate of the Canadiennes and the first and last captain of the Force, who’d had a season-ending surgery a few weeks prior.

The win over New York was PWHL Montréal’s sixth game at Verdun. They also played four games at Place Bell, sharing the ice with the AHL’s Laval Rocket. The team’s home playoff games, of which they are guaranteed at least two, will take place at Place Bell. This will not be the first time the venue has hosted a professional women’s hockey playoff game, but it will be the first time the playoff games will take place in front of so many fans.

On March 8, 2019, Mélodie Daoust and Catherine Daoust each scored a goal to take Game 1 as Les Candiennes shut out the Markham Thunder. The Thunder fought back for the win in Game 2. In Game 3, Mélodie Daoust recorded two more goals to take the series for Montréal.

The championship game was played at the Coca-Cola Coliseum, where PWHL Toronto are hosting their playoff home games this year. In 2019, the team from Montréal lost the title in Toronto.

We’ll have to wait and see which echoes of the past will return this year.

Considering the numbers of fans that have been in attendance at PWHL Montréal games this season– averaging over 3,000 at Verdun and nearly 9,000 at Place Bell– it seems likely that they will try to play at Place Bell, or another arena with similar capacity, in the 2024-2025 season. But unlike Les Canadiennes, who played in the 500-seat rink, or La Force, who may have selected the 2,500-seat rink, PWHL Montréal will require the 10,000-seat arena.

But perhaps even that will not be enough in a year or two. Montréal has proven throughout the season that fans will come out for this team. And they have proven that they can sell out one of the largest hockey arenas in the world.

On April 20, a crowd of 21,105 fans were welcomed to the Bell Centre, the home of the National Hockey League’s Montréal Canadiens, to watch PWHL Montréal take on the top team in the league, PWHL Toronto. That number is not only a new league record in attendance, but a world record for the most spectators to attend a women’s hockey game.

Sarah Bujold, who scored a goal for the Metropolitan Riveters on November 26, 2022 at Verdun Auditorium, scored PWHL Montréal’s first goal of the game. Her goal was assisted by Claire Dalton, a rookie who had signed to play with the Riveters this season before the PHF was bought out. Montréal’s second goal of the game came from Ambrose, assisted by Poulin.

Their goals would not be enough, as Montréal went on to lose the game in overtime, earning one point in the standings. Their subsequent regulation win over PWHL New York at Verdun on Wednesday earned them three points and a playoff spot.

The overtime loss to PWHL Toronto was not the first elite women’s game to be played at the Bell Centre.

On Saturday, December 10, 2016, Les Canadiennes hosted the Calgary Inferno in a match between the two top teams in the CWHL. The game set a regular season record for attendance, welcoming a reported 5,938 fans. Marie-Philip Poulin scored the only goal for the 1-0 regulation victory, assisted by Ann-Sophie Bettez. Poulin called the afternoon a dream come true. 

The ice they skated on that day bore the logo of the Montréal Canadiens, which had inspired the logo they wore on their jerseys. The boards advertised NHL sponsors, without even the CWHL logo.

On April 20, eight years and three leagues later, Poulin took to the Bell Centre ice again. She skated over the Montréal Canadiens logo at center ice, and past the PWHL logo on the boards, and got to hear 21,105 fans screaming for her.

In the post-game media, Poulin was asked what the next step was. She said, “The next step is that it becomes the norm. That each game is like this.”

The Montréal Force never got to play in the playoffs. Plagued by one-goal losses, they were ruled out of playoff contention with a few games remaining in the season. They lost their final two games to the Metropolitan Riveters on March 5 and 6, 2023, once in overtime and once in regulation. Catherine Dubois, who now plays for PWHL Montréal, scored the team’s final two goals.

In the last three decades in North America, women’s hockey has seen a number of leagues come and go, and the weight of that history can be felt and seen everywhere you look. It’s worn in the stands, where fans wear the jerseys of their favorite teams in the PHF, the PWHPA, the CWHL, the original NWHL. It lives on in the rosters, as players draw experience from Europe and from leagues that have ceased play. It’s written on the boards, where logos announce the same sponsors that named PWHPA teams and headlined PHF campaigns. It’s woven throughout the text of an eight-year collective bargaining agreement created and ratified by players who wanted a guarantee that they would have a place to play more than anything else.

Some things will change. Players will come from new leagues and disperse to new teams. PWHL Montréal will get a new name, and they will outgrow Verdun Auditorium. Ann-Sophie Bettez will retire, as will Marie-Philip Poulin. Women’s hockey’s first CBA will end, and a new one will be drawn up, and at some point we will never have to ask the question of whether a professional hockey player can support herself on just her hockey salary. New stars will be drafted, and signed, and they’ll play their hearts out on ice that bears the same logo they wear on their jerseys.

Some things won’t change. Players will leave, and they will come back. There will be Fabs jerseys and Force jerseys in the stands. La Belle Province will show up, in record-breaking numbers, for its hockey teams. And however many leagues crumble, however many beloved teams and players have to say goodbye, they will always have a place in Montréal, echoing from her history and into her future.