Women's hockey league heads to UBS Arena as New York hosts Montreal in PWHL game
Toronto goaltender Kristen Campbell stops a shot by New York's Alex Carpenter during the third period of a PWHL game on Jan. 5, 2024, in Bridgeport, Conn. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
A new venture in pro sports is coming to Long Island ice for the first time.
After going 1-1 in its first two games in this debut season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, New York will play its UBS Arena opener at 7 p.m. Wednesday against Montreal (1-1).
“It’s like building a plane while flying,” New York GM Pascal Daoust said about these early days during last Friday night’s telecast on MSG Networks of the team’s other home opener.
New York is actually more like New York/Connecticut. It’s splitting its 12-game home schedule between UBS Arena, which has a capacity of 17,255 for hockey, and 10,000-seat Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
“For the women’s game, it’s great,” said Islanders center Brock Nelson, whose wife, Karley Sylvester, is a former Ms. Hockey winner for the state of Minnesota and played collegiately at Wisconsin. “I think they’ve been working on it for quite some time now to grow the league and we’ve ended up at this point now. They’ve had a couple of different leagues to try and help them with the sport. For the women that play hockey and all the little girls that look up to them, it’s huge.”
New York, coached by Howie Draper, played the first game in league history, opening on New Year’s Day with a 4-0 win in front of a sellout crowd of 2,537 in Toronto.
Ella Shelton scored the first goal in league history, and Corinne Schroeder made 29 saves en route to the first shutout.
Then New York opened its Connecticut schedule with a 3-2 loss in a rematch against Toronto, with 2,152 in the stands.
Alex Carpenter, a 29-year-old center who’s a member of the U.S. national team and the daughter of former Rangers and Devils center Bobby Carpenter, scored her second goal in two games for New York to tie it at 2-2 in the second period.
It seemed like New York had taken the lead early in the third, but the goal was waved off. Then Toronto’s Emma Maltais won it on a rebound, beating Abbey Levy, who’s from Rockland County and is the lone Metro-area native on the team.
Carpenter was named the six-team league’s Second Star for its first week, and Schroeder was named the Third Star.
With Andrew Gross
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