Minnesota's Professional Women's Hockey League franchise officially knows where it will be playing their games in the PWHL's inaugural season. The team announced Tuesday that they will take the ice for all of their home games at the Xcel Energy Center starting with their home opener on January 6 against Montreal.
"The Xcel Energy Center is a premier venue and well known venue as far as amenities and an NHL building," said PWHL Minnesota General Manager, Natalie Darwitz. "We're going to have the luxury of the scoreboard at center ice that provides good media sponsorship capabilities and just in game experience. You know is it a lofty goal in year one? Absolutely. But we're going to do our best to fill the lower bowl, grow the sport of women's hockey, and put a great product on the ice."
The team is in the midst of training camp at Tria Rink and started with 28 players. They will need to trim the roster to 23 players, plus two reserve players, by December 10.
Darwitz, the former Gopher, Olympian, and coach, says the team is making great strides ahead of their opening game on January 3 against Boston.
"As a team everything we're doing here is building it from scratch," Darwitz said. "So it's not like we have veterans on this team. They're rookies and we're trying to establish a culture, create a great organization and environment for our athletes to have success here. Obviously the end goal of any sporting team is winning championship and so that's obviously the prize at the end of the tunnel and what we're trying to do."
The PWHL launched in June of this year with six teams. The league is backed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, with the support of tennis-great Billie Jean King.
In September, Minnesota drafted the 2022 women's college hockey player of the year, Taylor Heise, with the number one overall pick.
Heise played for the Golden Gophers and grew up in Minnesota.
"We have former Olympians, we have current Olympians, we have players who will probably be future Olympians. This is a league where there's not going to be one team or two teams at the bottom. Everyone from top to bottom has a solid roster that has Olympians on their team, whether they're Canadian American or Europeans," added Darwitz. "Everyone has depth, everyone has skill, and there's not going to be much wiggle room between one team to the other so it's going to be a competitive league. We're super excited about that the product on the ice is going to be great."
Players are paid to play in the PWHL with a league salary cap of $1.265 million, which will increase by 3 percent in year two.
Earlier this month Minnesota announced the team colors would be purple, black, and white. The team has yet to announce a nickname, but that will likely come in year two.
"For first year it sounds like we're just gonna be team Minnesota and our color is going to be a purple. In year two and moving on, we'll have our team color based on our team logo and name. Year one is kind of looked at as an inaugural season, inaugural jerseys you won't ever see these jerseys again."
Darwitz said fans and players are antsy to get a logo and name, but it's important to take the time to get it right.
"I think we're just kind of making sure we do that in the right process versus rushing something really quick."
As far as the league's potential success, Darwitz believes there's a solid foundation being built for the PWHL's longevity.
"Being in the state of hockey, we're in really good communication and talks with with several local sponsorships and partnership deals. We're just really excited. I think there's a good buzz and in the last few years female sports have really taken off from the WNBA to soccer. You even look at the Minnesota Aurora who plays at TCO in Eagan. I mean they had a a successful season. We're just trying to build woman's sports and build woman's hockey so that little girls can come to a game and in 10-15 years they can have aspirations and dreams to be a professional hockey player and make a living."