Hockey is meant to be fun. For fans, the game is meant to be entertaining. At each stop of the PWHL Takeover Tour, both of those statements stand true, but the most obvious sentiment present in each market the Tour visits is something more powerful: joy.
In the concourse of Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, the energy is high. No matter what direction you look, there are excited voices pointing at the food, clambering for photos, and hustling from point to point as if any delay would result in a missed opportunity to experience the day. Yes, the primary source of this enthusiasm is typically in the form of young girls, donning their minor hockey jerseys, or wearing glittery shirts that look freshly unwrapped from holiday boxes.
They aren't alone, however. Mixed into the bustling crowd are groups of young women, some with green or blue hair styled with undercuts or bluntly cut bangs. The older generation is there too, proudly wearing a vintage USA or Canada jersey, the earliest options for them to show their support for women's hockey, blue jeans underneath, and a sense of satisfaction, a realization that what they once thought impossible was finally happening washed across their faces.
There are men and boys too. Many look relieved. Relieved to have found a place in hockey fandom devoid of the anger, violence, and hyper-masculinity. A place where they can enjoy the skill and speed of the sport, intermingled with a diverse crowd of people who are there for the same reason.
On a night where videos circulated of fans at men's hockey games in fist fights and screaming profanities at one another, in Detroit, fans ran to each other to embrace, they paused to apologize for bumping into one another before striking up a conversation. They exchanged friendship bracelets.
The fans aren't there to prove their dominance, or to claim superiority over another fan base; in fact, there's almost no pack of fans moving though the arena wearing a singular team jersey. You'll see fans in Toronto Sceptres jerseys holding hands with those in Montreal Victoire jerseys. At a table in the bar attached to the Detroit venue, there are fans in Boston Fleet jerseys dining with those in Ottawa Charge sweaters. At restaurants before the game, complete strangers welcome each other to sit communally before striking up conversations that leave participants feeling bonded as humans, not simply as hockey fans. It's a mix of people with more in common than the team they cheer for.
This is the basis of the PWHL Takeover Tour. And at the heart of the league's highly successful tour, which this season will visit 11 different cities across the United States and Canada, is a singular ingredient that makes each stop special.
That ingredient is joy.
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As PWHL teams take the ice, whether it be in Detroit, Dallas, Hamilton, Edmonton, Halifax, or any of the nine markets that hosted Takeover Tour games last season, fans line the glass with homemade signs. You can almost smell the scented markers used to thank the players for inspiring a young fan, calling for a team to come to whatever city the tour is visiting, or celebrating a favorite athlete. If you collected the signs, they come in such abundance that you could wallpaper every dressing room in the league. The signs, in general, are not against a team or player, they're for the sport, for the love that's been fostered by the emergence of professional women's hockey, and for the hope that women and girls can now feel.
The signs, however, are just the announcement of a celebration to come. When the puck drops, the sound at PWHL games is unlike anything you've heard at men's hockey games. Certainly there can be booing, as the fans are every bit as knowledgeable and invested in the game, and sometimes much more than their men's hockey counterparts. When the crowd disagrees with a call, they will let the officials know. But the ambiance is more accurately described as one of revelry.
During the play, the frequency of the crowd is higher. The pitch is void of the low grumble, or ominous sound range that is common at men's hockey games. Instead the excited discussion, cheers, and gleeful screams climb well above an NHL game, somewhere toward the upper reaches of 250 Hz. It's a happy sound, like walking by a playground at recess, or the jubilation a crowd exudes when their favorite band steps back onto the stage for an encore.
When the play has stopped, the in-arena cameras sweep the crowd landing on fans of all backgrounds. Almost without exception, the faces you'll see are stretched wide with toothy grins that cannot be fabricated. As the arena DJ spins their playlist, a significant portion of the crowd rises to their feet, stoppage after stoppage. Not to stretch their legs, although it's certainly a byproduct, but to dance.
When the music stops, the singing rarely does. The DJs in PWHL venues have figured out playlists that work...a little less Metallica, a little more Taylor Swift. It fits thematically...a little less anger, a little more joy. In some ways, the PWHL Takeover Tour is the Eras Tour for hockey fans.
It's not that these elements don't exist in the eight permanent PWHL venues, because they certainly do. But on the PWHL Takeover Tour, they're magnified by the number of fans, particularly women and girls, or long-jaded men's hockey fans, who are witnessing professional women's hockey live and in person for the first time.
The PWHL's tour is novel in professional sport. Many leagues have played neutral-site games, but not with the frequency and regularity of the PWHL. For the league, the tour serves an important role of testing new markets, selling tickets and merchandise, and growing their fan base, but no conversation among players or league officials about these topics skips over the more foundational purpose.
The tour provides an avenue for representation. For girls and women to see their hopes and dreams, whether they are in the future, or unfulfilled and previously impossible aspirations of the past played out in reality. The tour provides a welcoming and inclusive space, one that affirms LGBTQ+ fans, and others who have felt ostracized by the sport. It's within this fulfillment, within this affirmation, that joy emerges at PWHL games.
And when you attend a game on the PWHL Takeover Tour, it's hard to ignore that feeling. It's hard to suppress a smile as you walk the concourse, hurry to the glass in warm-ups for a closer look at the players on the ice, as the camera scans the crowd during stoppages, or as the cacophony of the crowd reaches a fever pitch in a tense moment of play.
Like any professional sporting league, the PWHL is a business, and they make decisions based on good business. But unlike many professional sporting leagues, the PWHL has engaged their fans in guiding those decisions, and in building an off-ice culture that parallels the culture being built by the players. At the point of intersection between each of these goals is the PWHL Takeover Tour where good business meets good culture. Where growth for each is exponential in a helix that has the league spinning toward success, while never veering far from these principles.
With future expansion on the horizon, more markets from this year's Takeover Tour will soon join the league's permanent repertoire. But as the league adds more teams, it will also expand the opportunities and exploration of other markets for the Takeover Tour.
Wherever the PWHL Takeover Tour goes this season and into the future, whether it's smaller or farther-reaching markets in North America, or perhaps into Europe and Asia, it will bring with it the excitement to see the best women's hockey players in the world, the possibility of dreams realized for new generations, and the Tour's key ingredient that permeates into fans that fill the seats, joy.