It’s official! The PWHL will play in San Jose next season. In a press conference this afternoon, officials from the Professional Women’s Hockey League were joined on stage by San Jose soccer legend Brandi Chastain and Bay Area skating legend Kristi Yamaguchi to make the announcement. While there are a lot of details to be ironed out before the season starts in December, there are some things that PWHL Executive Vice President of Business Operations Amy Scheer can promise.
“I think there’s a couple promises I can make standing here today,” Sheer told the crowd at SAP Center. “We are bringing you the highest level hockey in the world. We have over 60 Olympians taking the ice this season. There will be a bunch more next year. Each game is so competitive. Every shift matters; every point in the standings matters. The playoffs were not decided again for the third year in a row until the last day of the season. If you have been following the playoffs, I think almost every game has gone to overtime, and it’s nerve-wracking … The games are the highest level of competition, and you will love it.
“Off the ice, I think we’ve done a great job. I shouldn’t say we, I’m going to give the fans the credit. Every fan is welcome in our building, and every fan feels the love. There’s singing, there’s dancing, there’s creative signs,” continued Sheer. “After the games, you’ll see fans exchanging friendship places for pucks, cookies for sticks. There’s a whole sort of open market, flea market that happens on the ice after the game, and we cannot wait to see what the traditions are that will happen here in San Jose, and I promise you, it won’t be the PWHL doing it, it will be the fans of the club. I tell you, one game and you will be hooked.
“I challenge each of you to get here and get to a game. I think you’ll find that this league and our players will be great representatives in the Bay Area,” Sheer continued. “They are innovative, they’re forward thinking, they think they’re hip and they’re cool, but I’m too old to decide that. But most of all, they will be really proud to represent this community.”
How did the PWHL end up in San Jose?
If you want to know how the PWHL ended up in San Jose, you have Sharks Sports and Entertainment President Jonathan Becher to thank for that. He’s been watching the league since it launched and he’s been in talks with the league leaders for a while now.
“We’ve been hoping for this since before 2019, but 2019 was really, the sort of, we got to get this done. I mean, the league itself [has] only really been around for three years. They did the last expansion a year ago, where they only grew by two teams. We put our hat in the bucket then, didn’t quite work out,” said Becher. “This time, they said they might do two or four teams. Frankly, I was a little worried, if they only do two teams, they might not make it to California as well. When four, I was pretty confident. We’ve been hounding them for a long time, but they’ve been great to deal with.”
For Sheer, San Jose’s facilities, its practice rinks, SAP Center, and everything that goes with it, is what made the league excited to come to San Jose specifically.
“You look at the hockey community here, you look at what the Sharks have done, you look at the facilities, right?” said Sheer. “When we talk about where we want our players to play, we want them to have great infrastructure; we want them to have a great practice facility. We want them to have a first class arena, and San Jose has all those things. It’s a great place to live, the support of the fans, it has all the things we want for our league and for our players.”
The PWHL knows that SAP Center is going through some renovations, and it’s willing to weather the storm during the season because it wants to be in San Jose. There’s already an understanding that when the Sharks’ season is over, renovations will begin at SAP and the San Jose PWHL team will move to Tech CU Arena to complete the rest of its season.
What is the team name?
Of course, there are more pressing issues to deal with than the logistics of it all. Such as the team name. So far, there’s no official name for San Jose’s PWHL team, but there’s time to get one.
Becher told the media that he knows there’s a long list of names, but he’s not sure where the PWHL will land.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan suggested the San Jose Hammerheads in his speech, in part as a nod to former San Jose mayor Susan Hammer. Becher admitted the Hammerheads is one of the names on the long list, but would not say anything more.
Sheer isn’t revealing any other details.
“It’s something that we’ve been working on now for over a month. We’ve got a long list. We don’t really put ourselves on timelines. What we do is we try to spend the proper amount of time to get the name that we feel is right and the corresponding logo,” said Sheer. “We want to put the best work forward, not the fastest work forward. So when we feel we have the name and the logo ready, we’ll announce it, and if that’s December, it’s December. If it’s January, it’s January. When it’s ready, we’ll do it.”
What are the team’s colors?
The good news is, while we don’t have a name, we do have the colors.
According to the team’s news release, the color palette is “… orange, blue, and white, inspired by the San Jose flag and reflecting the Bay Area’s optimistic energy. Orange is also a nod to the Sharks and the region’s historic orange groves, while blue evokes the beauty of California’s ocean coastline and sky.”
In the merch posted on the PWHL site, the orange plays a large role in the first launch.
Where can we get tickets?
While single-game tickets to the PWHL games are not on sale yet, reservations are already starting for season tickets. The league is timestamping reservations, which means when you put your name in and your money down is when you get your opportunity to buy. The deposit is $50 per seat. As of the afternoon of May 19, the league had already received over 1,000 reservations for seats, well over what they expected in the first 24 hours.
