At the half of its inaugural season, the PHWL can hardly believe the level of success

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The PWHL halftime report was, not surprisingly, upbeat and positive.

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How could it be any other way when attendance figures — averaging more than 5,000 fans a night across the league — and parity of play have both exceeded even the most optimistic expectations coming in?

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PWHL vice-president of hockey operations Jayna Hefford and Stan Kasten, representing ownership, addressed the media via video conference call on Wednesday to share their thoughts on the first half of the inaugural season and share plans for the upcoming playoffs and draft.

“I knew we were on the right track,” Kasten said. “I knew we had the right people. I knew we had the right product, but the way it has been accepted by fans, by the marketplace has been extraordinary. Way beyond our expectations.”

ON THE PLANS AHEAD

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Hefford confirmed that the league playoff format will see the top four teams advance. The top-seeded team — and this is a twist the league is introducing in keeping with its penchant for being unafraid to try new things — will have the opportunity to choose between the third- and fourth-place finishers for its first-round opponent.

It may come down to an easier travel schedule or more favourable opponent, or perhaps even something beyond that, but finishing first overall will have an added benefit in this league over others.

The league is also adopting the ‘Gold Plan’ for the teams that finish out of the playoffs and therefore are in the running for the first overall selection in the 2024 draft.

The ‘Gold Plan’ named after innovator Adam Gold, will assign the first pick to the non-playoff team that accrues the most points following its elimination from playoff contention during the regular season.

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“It’s also a way for fans to stay engaged,” Hefford said of the ‘Gold Plan.’ “There will be a different type of race once their team gets eliminated. Every game from that point on means something and earns them points. It’s still weighted obviously to the team that is eliminated first, but it is not simply a lottery system.”

Once a team is eliminated they begin accumulating points based on the remaining games in the schedule with three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime win or shootout win and one for an overtime or shootout loss.

LOOKING AHEAD TO YEAR 2

Already the league is putting together next year’s schedule, which all but eliminates any expansion for the second year, though that is very much on the front burner moving forward.

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“It’s incredible that two months into our inaugural season, I get questions almost weekly about expansion and I think that’s just a really positive thing about the success we are seeing with this league and where we are at,” Hefford said. “As of now, nothing is on the table, but we are excited to bring our league and our players to many different markets outside of our six markets.”

But change is coming in Year 2, most likely in the form of new venues in existing markets, though none of that has been finalized, just yet. Toronto, which outgrew the Mattamy Athletic Centre the day it moved in, is a likely venue change for positive reasons. There may also be moves to different venues in the Boston market (currently in Lowell) and New York (currently splitting time between Bridgeport, Conn., and UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y.) where attendance isn’t quite as strong.

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“We are reviewing everything on a daily basis,” Kasten said. “Everything we do, we are reviewing cities, reviewing buildings, all our other policies and in the off-season we will make decisions. We don’t want to move too fast. We don’t want to move too slow.

“We’re not in control always with those things because different venues have other tenants with different availabilities so it’s a complicated matrix as we build our schedule to maximize the amount of fans that can access us,” Kasten said.

One thing the league is certain of is that there will be more games such as the spectacle that was the Battle of Bay Street at Scotiabank Arena earlier in February.

“Expect next year see a lot more neutral site games and a lot more games in NHL markets that we are not already in,” Kasten said. “That is a feature that has been a lot of fun for us this year and we expect it to be a feature of next year’s schedule only quite a bit more.”

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The season will be longer, a minimum of at least 30 games and likely with an earlier start than the New Year’s Day opener that kicked things off this year. The final details are still being worked out.

STILL PLENTY OF UNKNOWN

Having started up as quickly as it did, there are still moving targets when it comes to certain areas of progress in the league.

First among those is a farm system where draft picks and reserves can play before they are ready to join the parent club.

The league is certainly aware of the need for this, but there are still so many things that have to come first.

QUICK POINTS

For the playoffs teams reserve players, even if they have already used up their two 10-day contracts during the regular season, will have the opportunity to join the active roster for one more 10-day period … Overtime in the playoffs will be five-on-five sudden death periods until a winner is determined. No shootout, no three-on-three … Still no name or design for the championship trophy but that too is coming … Another work in progress is team names and logos and they are coming, perhaps as early as the playoffs.

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