Ideas for a new arena for the Boston women's hockey team?

R

ritchiew

Active Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2023
Messages
385
Reaction score
1,273
For those not following, the PWHL recently finished its first season, and it's been by far the best attempt at starting a professional women's hockey league. Boston made it to the finals, but lost in Game 5 (in a best of five series). Everything about the season was a lot of fun, and looked like a big success for the league.

A problem for Boston is they were playing at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell. That arena is great, but far from Boston. I went for one regular season game and the ~6000 seats were probably more than half full. Some regular season games sold out. During the playoffs they were all sold out. That Game 5 sold out in something like 15 minutes, and tickets were being resold for thousands. The other original six teams played at a weird mix of urban/suburban professional/minor league arenas. Minnesota was the only team to just use the local NHL arena and I think they were pretty regularly selling out those 20,000 seats.

With all that in mind, any ideas 1) Why they ended up playing in Lowell? 2) What requirements they might have (I'm guessing >5000 seats and modern TV production facilities are key)? and 3) What other facilities might fit those requirements so they could play closer to the city? I was kind of surprised they couldn't work it out to play at BU, BC, Harvard, or NEU. I'm not sure what else might be in the area that could potentially host this.

One day they'll be playing at the Garden. Until then, I'm just hoping they're closer to rapid transit.
 
This is just a guess, but I suspect they didn't have time to secure a spot in the schedule of the size appropriate arenas in Boston. The four Beanpot schools are probably the best option, and given the proof of concept plus advance scheduling timeline, they can probably get at least some combination of those skating surfaces, if not a single "home" arena to work with. BU also has Walter Brown Arena, which is smaller than Agannis but might provide some additional scheduling flexibility. One thing is certain, which is that for the team to thrive, they need to be much closer to Boston, like no further away than Newton.
 
The only reason I heard about PWHL this year is because they got some notoriety in the younger crowd in Lowell, which I still have 1 or 2 connections with. I'm sure if it was closer to Boston it'd be a lot more popular..

This might have some slight bias as I grew up next to Lowell and then lived in Lowell for undergrad, but the Tsongas Center feels like much more of a community asset for Lowell and the surrounding towns in addition to an asset for UMass, likely drawing in more diverse attendance, than say the Agganis for example, which feels more specific to BU (even though plenty of concerts and public events are held there).

It's a shame the New Balance/Warriors Arena only seats 500.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Based on what I'm told repeatedly on this board, architecturally preserving an ugly-ass supertall smokestack or GTFO.
Click to expand...
Yes, it was that conversation that reminded me that Boston has another sports team playing far outside the city limits. Fortunately for everyone here, I can't think of a way women's hockey could be blocked by smokestack preservation. Crisis averted.

stefal said:
It's a shame the New Balance/Warriors Arena only seats 500.
Click to expand...
For sure. The last women's hockey team from the now defunct PHF played there. It was close, so I went to more games, but way too small. It was a lot more fun watching hockey with a few thousand screaming fans in Tsongas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top