Venues and men's teams will tout their support for women and women's hockey each March, but the rest of the year they wipe the slate, and in the PWHL's case, the ice clear. The time is long overdue for every PWHL venue to put team logos on the ice.
The ice at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver has a feature no other venue in the PWHL has. Sitting squarely at centre ice, the Vancouver Goldeneyes' logo is prominently displayed. No one could walk into the Coliseum and question whether or not a professional women's hockey team plays at the venue.
It's unique to the PWHL, as no other venue has their PWHL franchise's logo at center ice. In fact, Ottawa is the only other location where a logo appears at all with Charge logos just inside the bluelines, but by now we all know how the Ontario Sports & Entertainment Group and City of Ottawa, who own and operate the Charge's home rink, TD Place, feels about supporting women's hockey and the Charge, and it's not favourable.
The Charge are drawing and average of 7,254 fans this season, while the team with their logo at center ice, a junior men's team, the Ottawa 67s, is seeing only the rink's lower bowl sparsely populated averaging 3,936 fans. It's clear who Ottawa's team at TD Place Arena is, but still, women are placed secondary, and the future plans for the site are based solely on support men, a decision which has the Ottawa Charge searching for a new home despite the fact they're the most popular draw by a landslide at the venue.
Across the rest of the league however, if you stepped in the Xcel Energy Center, Climate Pledge Arena, Prudential Center, Tsongas Center, Place Bell, or Coca-Cola Coliseum and looked out at the ice, you'd have no idea that the PWHL existed. There is no sign of the league or the teams who are filling those venues on the ice.
Still this month, those venues, and the men's teams who also play there will tout their support for women during Women's History Month, and on International Women's Day. Those marketing ploys feel insincere when those facilities and teams are unwilling to share space on the ice.
In Montreal (Laval), Boston (Lowell), and Toronto, they aren't even NHL teams, they are AHL and NCAA programs. Meanwhile Olympians and athletes at the pinnacle of their sport are being told they're on men's ice.
Obviously there are lease agreements that come with stipulations for logos at center ice, but are those organizations willing to tell every other member of the hockey community, girls and women, that they are the gatekeepers of the game, and women's athletes whose achievements in many cases have far exceeded those of men, are welcomed only as temporary guests on the ice?
When the Arizona Coyotes shared Mullett Arena for two seasons with Arizona State University, their logos shared the center ice circle. Obviously the NHL did not mind, unless that is, they only made the concession because the ice was being shared with another men's hockey team.
Each year PWHL teams get a glimpse of those logos in time for players, but only if the men's teams who occupy those spaces are eliminated from the playoffs. The PWHL and the best women's athletes in the world are beyond feasting on scraps.
The game of hockey is not owned by men. And the PWHL and the world class players in this league, along with new generations of hockey fans, and hockey fans who have been hurt or excluded by men's hockey, deserve to see their place in the game as well.
It's bad business for these venues and teams to keep women in the game invisible and erased, especially when it's those women and their fans who are now helping these venues turn a profit, and grow the game not only for the PWHL, but for the AHL, NCAA, and NHL as well.
The time has come and gone. It's long overdue. The six PWHL venues without a logo on the ice representing their team are on the clock. As women's sports and the PWHL continue to boom, the entire world is watching. No more empty platitudes in the month of March. Women's hockey has always been here, and now it's here to stay.