Buffalo welcomes back women's hockey for PWHL Takeover Tour

If there was any doubt about Western New York’s appetite for women’s hockey, it washed away Sunday at KeyBank Center.

The Boston Fleet and New York Sirens matched up in Buffalo on the sixth stop of the PWHL Takeover Tour, which is bringing the six-team women’s league – in its second season – to new markets across North America. Boston earned a 3-2 shootout win that included a thrilling overtime period.

When the gates opened at 3 p.m., fans flooded into the concourses, waited in long lines for PWHL merchandise and filled the arena’s lower bowl. An energetic crowd featured PWHL, NHL, college, and national team jerseys.

Announced in November, Sunday’s event marked the return to Buffalo of professional women’s hockey and drew enthusiastic fans from around the northeastern United States and Ontario.

“I’ve been playing hockey for almost my entire life, and I really love to see the women’s game grow,” said Julia Mudryk, who played at Penn State University from 2021 to 2024. “I’m from Pennsylvania, and it’s cool to be able to drive to this.”

The league’s inaugural game took place Jan. 1, 2024. Some expected attendance numbers to drop as the novelty faded, but that hasn’t been the case so far in year two.

“It’s been unmatched,” said Claire Hryciw, in from Toronto and rooting for Boston, of the PWHL’s success to date. “It’s this reminder that it’s not going anywhere, and it’s sticking around. It’s exciting to see it grow, prosper and be supported by lots of men’s sports teams.”

The National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) began play in 2015, was renamed the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) in 2021 and folded in 2023. One of its teams, the Buffalo Beauts, played their games at LECOM Harborcenter and Amherst’s Northtown Center.

"A lot of us on our team that have played in past leagues have some good memories here," said Fleet forward Amanda Pelkey. "I think the Beauts' fanbase was one of the best in our league. I kept telling some teammates about them tonight, and it was a good showing – no surprises there."

As Hryciw alluded to, the PWHL has received an outpouring of support and promotion from established men’s leagues and franchises – including the Sabres in the leadup to Sunday’s game, which Buffalo’s Beck Malenstyn and Connor Clifton attended with their families.

“It's just so promising that the league continues to make money every year, that the team salary caps continue to go up every year,” said Mike Bridges, a local fan who brought his wife and seven-year-old daughter to KeyBank Center on Sunday. “So it’s here to stay. We couldn’t be more excited.”

Bridges and his wife help coach their daughter’s hockey team. For girls like her, a successful women’s league can be a beacon of opportunity.

“It’s everything to us – just the fact that this is an option now for any young female hockey player with dreams,” Bridges said. “That they can put the poster on the wall and know that, if they’re really determined and serious about it, it’s an option to become a professional hockey player. And to be paid to do what you love. It’s phenomenal. In the past, a female hockey player, their career was over at college – that was it.

“Our job (as coaches and parents) is really about exposing her to more and more parts of the game, and just ensuring that she has a lifelong love of it. Whether she goes on to play at a high level, professional level, or just plays for fun, it really doesn’t matter to us."

The Bridges family didn’t initially have a rooting interest, but when they attended Saturday’s practices at the Harborcenter, his daughter met and received signed pucks from a group of New York players, “so it’s Sirens all the way.”

Mudryk, meanwhile, made sure to post up at Boston’s end of the ice for warmups. From an early age, she’s admired Fleet forward Hilary Knight, who emerged from University of Wisconsin-Madison as the school’s all-time goals leader among men or women. Mudryk laments the absence of a PWHL-like league – and a professional, post-collegiate opportunity for stars like Knight – when she was growing up.

“This makes me really happy, as a woman in hockey,” Mudryk said. “There’s a lot of hardship that comes with it, so making it easier for younger girls to get into the sport is really cool.”

“When I was playing hockey, I was told by the boys at school that having a girl favorite hockey player didn’t count,” said Hryciw. “So it’s important to [young girls] – having an identity in a game that’s for them as much as it’s for everybody else.”

Indeed, the resounding success of leagues like the PWHL and WNBA – “exponential growth,” in Hryciw’s words – has made professional athlete a feasible career for any kid.

“But the equity versus equality of that matters, too,” Hryciw added. “The fact that we’re making sure people are getting proper benefits, proper salaries and stuff like that, is really important as well.”

The game

A back-and-forth first period saw New York’s Sarah Fillier open the scoring just two minutes in, Loren Gabel tie it for Boston and Jessie Eldridge put the Sirens back up 2-1 with 50 seconds remaining.

Boston got a last-minute goal of its own in the second period, as Amanda Pelkey tied it 2-2 with 37 seconds left.

The game remained tied through regulation, which ended with a last-second net-front scramble that New York couldn’t capitalize on.

Both goaltenders – Boston’s Aerin Frankel and New York’s Kayle Osborne – dazzled in the 3-on-3 period. Neither budged, sending it to a shootout. Susanna Tapani scored the shootout’s only goal in the second round for Boston, and Frankel made four more saves to secure a 3-2 win for the Fleet.

"It's so nice to be able to play in front of a different crowd and spread our game across the globe," said Fleet coach Courtney Kessel. "I think this league has done tremendous things for not only women's ice hockey, but women in sport in general."

"It was awesome to see people just invested in our league and our team, going out and buying jerseys," Eldridge said. "Hopefully, among those people, we're able to gain some fans."