While Sunday's Takeover Tour event will be the first time the PWHL has played in Edmonton, it won't be the first time women's hockey has packed the house at the city's Rogers Place.
While Sunday's Takeover Tour event will be the first time the PWHL has played in Edmonton, it won't be the first time women's hockey has packed the house at the city's Rogers Place.
If you walk around Edmonton or log onto social media, it's hard not to notice what's coming to Rogers Place this weekend. The advertisements and promotions have gone into full force and events are being held this weekend before the first PWHL Takeover Tour game in the city Sunday when the Ottawa Charge take on the Toronto Sceptres.
While Toronto-Ottawa will be another showcase for top level women’s hockey at Rogers, it won’t be the first.
Before the PWHL’s arrival, the Rivalry Series made its first stop in Edmonton in December 2017 to conclude the series which saw its final game need an extra period.
While the 2017-18 series was long decided with Canada holding a 4-1 series lead coming into the sixth and final game in Alberta’s capital on Dec. 17, 2017, this game was anything but boring. Shannon Szabados and Maddie Rooney put on a goaltending clinic in net for Canada and the United States. Offensively, Marie-Phillip Poulin’s goal for Canada to open the scoring in the first was matched by Hilary Knight in the second, with a score that would hold until overtime was needed. After the first two games of the series that saw the USA win 5-1 and Canada 5-2, the final four would be determined by two goals or less.
In overtime, in what felt like a blink-and-you-missed-it moment, Natalie Spooner (who’ll be in action for Toronto) with a brilliant solo effort set up Jennifer Wakefield for the game winning goal for Canada just 26 seconds into the extra frame. For Edmonton’s own Shannon Szabados, the game was one of the best of her illustrious career as she stepped up with 34 saves in the victory, in what would serve as the final tune-up before the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.
From pre-game warmups until Wakefield’s goal to send the crowd home happy, the Rogers Place crowd let their presence be known. The announced attendance of 17,468 was one of the largest ever in Canada for international women’s hockey coming just shy of the then-record for a women’s hockey game set in Ottawa in 2013 of 18,023.
Sunday’s game this time won’t be a battle of border neighbours, but Ottawa and Toronto will be a further showing of how much the City of Edmonton values women’s hockey and has for a very long time. It will also be another look at how the Western region of North America craves more from the league.
After the games in Denver, Seattle, and Vancouver all topped 12,000 fans, and Edmonton is on pace to have over 18,000 in the building, expansion westward may not be a slam dunk for quite some time but as other games have shown, there’s an appetite to support it.