Boardroom breaks down how 61 league players competing in Milan could drive momentum for women’s professional hockey at a crucial moment.
The women’s Olympic hockey tournament begins with preliminary round matches on Thursday from Milan, an event Aerin Frankel has been working toward her entire life.
The 26-year-old native of the New York City suburb of Briarcliff Manor is the starting goaltender for a US team looking to reclaim the gold medal it won in 2018. After a standout, award-winning career at Northeastern University in Boston, earning her nickname “green monster” after the city’s iconic Fenway Park wall, Frankel was one of the first three signings made by the Boston Fleet of the PWHL prior to its inaugural season in 2023. Now in its third season, the PWHL has quickly become the most prestigious and competitive women’s hockey league in the world, with eight teams spread evenly across the US and Canada.
Of the 184 players competing in the PWHL this season, 61 of them, roughly a third, are headed to Italy to compete for their home countries in the Olympic Games, the league said. Of the 23 women on the US team, including Frankel, 16 of them compete in the PWHL.
“With the PWHL, we’re able to play with and against the best players in the world each and every day,” Frankel told Boardroom. “Our league is so competitive, which makes it so fun not only for us, but also for the fans.”
As millions across the US and Canada tune in to the Olympics over the next couple of weeks, the PWHL hopes it can build momentum toward league attendance and viewership when it begins the second half of the regular season and beyond. Heading into the Olympic break, the league’s average attendance of 8,650 is a 17% year-over-year increase, per the league, as it’s enjoyed strong attendance in Seattle and Vancouver, two markets it expanded to in the fall. In addition to home market games in Boston, New York, Minnesota, Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, the PWHL has also played one-off neutral site matches in other cities as part of its Takeover Tour. On Jan. 18, a match in Washington, DC’s Capital One Arena between New York and Montreal drew a crowd of 17,228, the US record for an in-arena women’s hockey game.
Frankel’s Boston Fleet teammate and housemate Alina Müller is also in Milan, as an assistant captain for the Swiss team and one of the most decorated Swiss women’s hockey players of all time. The 27-year-old forward is competing in her fourth Olympic Games, scoring a goal and helping Switzerland to a bronze medal in the 2014 Olympics at age 15. She became the first European player selected in the inaugural PWHL draft and has grown her game along with the league.
“It’s pretty easy this year just to prepare for the Olympics because the league is at such a high level,” Müller told Boardroom. “The games and practices challenge you every day. Since I’m able to play with some of the best in the world, I realize they’re as human as we are and I can bring that experience into our Swiss team and work hard and be courages and we can catch them.”
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Team Switzerland and every other country competing in Milan are looking to get on the level of the US and Canada. In the seven Olympics since the women’s hockey competition launched in Nagano in 1998, the Canadians have won five gold and two silver medals.
“Every time you’re heading to an event, especially hockey in Canada, the expectation is that you come home with gold,” Renata Fast, a defender for Team Canada and the Toronto Sceptres, told Boardroom. “It’s a lot of pressure, but at the same time, pressure is privilege and it’s something we’re used to because there’s always that level of expectation for hockey in Canada.”
All 23 members of the Canadian Olympic roster play in the PWHL, with six of them competing for the Sceptres. Fast said that the amount of Olympic Sceptres helped build the buzz for the competition in their home Toronto market. There were a lot of Olympic advertisements in the city as she’s driven around the city or watched TVs.
“That’s crazy I’m gong to be a part of that,” she said. “This is the best setup we’ve ever had. The league has given us a platform to prepare for the Games, and I truly believe it’ll be the best hockey that’s ever been played at these Olympics and there will be the most eyes that have ever been on our sport.”
There’s always a bump in attention on women’s hockey in an Olympic year, and Fast believes the PWHL is equipped to capitalize on that interest and support like no other women’s hockey league has before.
“You think of the incredible fan bases that we’ve been able to build in just three short years across eight markets,” she continued, “and there’s fans that have never seen women’s hockey that are going to watch it for the first time. Just with the sheer exposure that you get in Olympic games and knowing that they’ll become more educated on our sport and hopefully that will in turn bring in more fans to the PWHL.”
Frankel is hopeful that people who aren’t yet into hockey catch the puck bug and follow the players’ careers over in the PWHL after the Olympics conclude.
“We still have half our season remaining when we get back from Milan,” she said, “so it’ll be a good way to build more traction into the second half.”
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