Can the PWHL succeed in New York after years of struggles on and off the ice?
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Saturday’s Torrent-New York Sirens game couldn’t have been more different. Madison Square Garden welcomed 18,006 fans, a U.S. women’s hockey attendance record. Torrent forward Alex Carpenter called the atmosphere electric; Sirens star Sarah Fillier had goosebumps as she heard her team’s fans screaming mid-national anthem. Knight took a moment to look at the bicycle wheel ceiling and soak in where she was.
Five years after her game in the fanless arena, she was thrilled with the support in a city she called “central to sports.” But she wasn’t surprised.
“It’s a testament to the caliber of player that we have, our fan base, the product that we put together, the work that we do when the lights aren’t bright,” she said. “To finally have this moment — and I hope it’s not (one) moment; I hope we’re back here — was truly incredible.”
The game was a massive success, one that marked another milestone for the PWHL’s post-Olympic boom and also represented a major step for a market in which the league is trying to gain more of a foothold. Over three seasons, since the PWHL’s inception in January 2024, the Sirens have had the league’s lowest average attendance.
“I’m hoping it will bring more engagement and more attendance next season at more of their regular home games, too,” Sirens fan Alex Gaeta said.
The crowd — which included tennis legend Billie Jean King, LSU basketball star Flau’jae Johnson, TV host Robin Roberts and New York Rangers captain J.T. Miller, who said the game was “like the Super Bowl” for his 7-year-old daughter, Scottlyn — got to see a dramatic show. The team’s signature “wee-woo, wee-woo” chants filled the building throughout the game, and Fillier tied the game with 3:35 remaining to force overtime. The game went to a shootout, and goalie Kayle Osborne made the game-sealing save in the fifth round. She kneed the air and roared with excitement as her teammates left the bench to mob her. The crowd delivered a worthy pop.
“You see how engaged the fan base was tonight, how excited they were about women’s hockey here,” Sirens coach Greg Fargo said. “For our group to be able to experience what they experienced tonight and also come up with the result that we wanted, I don’t think this night could’ve gone much better.”
Ahead of the PWHL’s first season in January 2024, Stan Kasten was emphatic that the league needed to have a presence in New York.
Kasten, the veteran sports executive and president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was vital in the launch of the PWHL and serves as an advisor to Mark Walter, the billionaire owner of the Dodgers and the PWHL.
“We obviously want to be in New York,” Kasten, who sits on the PWHL advisory board, said at the start of the inaugural season. “If you’re a league at all you have to be in New York.”
The PWHL’s inaugural season — which featured teams in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Minnesota and New York — was largely heralded as a success. Millions of viewers tuned in for games, attendance records were repeatedly set and broken, and demand for tickets in some markets was so high that teams had to move to bigger venues for Year 2.
The league’s New York franchise, however, fell short of expectations.
The team played in three arenas in three different states — UBS Arena in Elmont, New York; Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport, Conn.; and Prudential Center in Newark, N.J — and struggled to consistently draw fans, finishing with the worst attendance in the league. One game in Bridgeport had only 728 fans, the PWHL’s only game ever with fewer than 1,000 in attendance. The arena situation, Kasten later said, “wasn’t ideal.”
Despite having a roster with elite talent, including Olympic gold medalists such as American forward Alex Carpenter and Canadian defender Ella Shelton, New York struggled on the ice as well. At one point during the 2024 season, New York went over two months without a regulation win.
An April 2024 story in The New York Times shed some light on the fractured dynamics of the team. According to the story, during that losing streak, general manager Pascal Daoust addressed the team following a practice, saying that “while the players were all great friends and good people, they were not always being great teammates.”
Madison Packer, a veteran player who was among the leading scorers in the history of the now-defunct Premier Hockey Federation, a precursor to the PWHL, had a more scathing criticism after a loss, saying the players could not complain about attendance if they continued to lose.
“The finger-pointing, the blaming, what we are doing right now is just the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and over again,” she said. “Coaches should coach and players should play and players shouldn’t have coaching abilities. In any professional league I’ve ever been a part of, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
At the end of the season, New York and its head coach Howie Draper mutually agreed to part ways. Heading into Year 2, the team hired Fargo — who turned the Colgate women’s hockey team into a contender in the NCAA — and selected Fillier with the No. 1 pick in the PWHL Draft. The franchise also moved full-time to the Prudential Center, the home of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and a 30-minute commute from Manhattan, and unveiled its official New York Sirens name and branding after playing their inaugural season with only geographic monikers.
Chants of “wee-woo” became a signature goal celebration for the Sirens faithful. Attendance increased slightly too, but the team once again struggled on the ice and was awarded a second straight No. 1 pick in the 2025 PWHL Draft. The Sirens selected Czech star Kristýna Kaltounková — who did not play on Saturday due to injury — and 2025 Patty Kazmaier Award winner Casey O’Brien third overall.
According to Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations, the real work in attracting new fans to the Sirens franchise began ahead of the 2025-26 season. The inaugural year for New York, Scheer said, was really like “year zero,” as the team juggled playing in three different venues. Last season was spent establishing a foundation and getting a broader understanding of being in New Jersey.
“This area is really tough, there’s so much to do, there’s much competition, there is so much noise,” Scheer said. “We learned a lot in year two. And in year three, we put forth a lot more effort.”
The strategy has been pretty simple: increase visibility for the team and players in New York and New Jersey to hopefully build the audience.
This season, the league has leveraged the Sirens’ now star-laden roster, putting Fillier, Kaltounková and O’Brien on various billboards around New Jersey, advertisements in subway and train stations, and even on subway trains themselves. “We’ve got a wonderful lineup of really young players in this market and wanted to put them out there,” Scheer explained.
My train home feels particularly fitting tonight. #PWHL#NYSirenspic.twitter.com/QtkwmeKyRW
— Jess (@JessAmatoWrites) April 2, 2026
The team has built a partnership with Gotham FC, the NWSL franchise that also plays in New Jersey, and other community organizations. The league has hired more staff in New York to sell tickets and, with more experience since the PWHL’s launch in January 2024, have simply “done a better job running the team,” Scheer said.
And they’re seeing results.
Beyond Saturday’s monumental sell-out at the Garden, over 41,000 fans have attended a Sirens game at their primary home venue this season, more than each of the team’s previous two seasons in fewer home games to date (11). The team also played in front of their largest home crowd ever, with 8,264 fans at Prudential on March 8, and, according to Scheer, have seen a 36 percent increase in ticket sales year-over-year.
It’s the kind of positive progress the league is looking for in New York — but it’s not yet a finished project. The New York metropolitan area is a highly competitive sports market with nine big four professional sports franchises, as well as MLS, WNBA and NWSL teams. Growing a consistent fan base can be a challenge. Scheer, who spent 10 years with the WNBA’s New York Liberty, knows that well.
In May, the Liberty franchise was valued at a record $450 million. But first, the team bounced around the Metro area playing at Madison Square Garden, the Prudential Center and a few dark years at a community center in White Plains before being purchased by Clara Wu Tsai and her husband, Joe Tsai, finding a home at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
“When you’re new here, you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Scheer said. “New York is the best place on earth and we will make it work here.”
Ninety minutes before Saturday’s puck drop, around 50 reporters, camera operators and league employees crammed into the Madison Square Garden media room for Kasten and tennis legend Billie Jean King’s pregame press conference. The room grew so crowded that staffers had to bring in additional chairs.
Wearing a black hoodie with a purple PWHL logo, King offered overarching thoughts on the league — “(the players) want to do it for the future generations” — as well as a tangent about how she wanted to play her famous match against Bobby Riggs at Madison Square Garden.
She also gave an honest assessment of where the PWHL stands in regards to its biggest city.
“We have to be in New York,” she said, echoing Kasten’s previous 2024 statement. “Does it take longer in New York? Absolutely.”
Players and fans have both experienced that. The Madison Square Garden game represented a step, but it also juxtaposed typical Sirens games at the Prudential Center.
“So recently we were at games in Prudential and they didn’t have all the concessions open,” said Sirens fan Anna Lunder, who watched from the upper level Saturday. “It is very cool to have all the levels (full) here.”
Added Osborne: “For us to have one of the lowest (attendance) fan bases at Pru and play in front of those fans all year, then come here and have them sell out for us is something so special.”
A potential future face of the league watched it all play out. The league invited Caroline Harvey — the presumed No. 1 pick in the PWHL Draft and fresh off an Olympic gold, NCAA championship and Patty Kazmaier Award win — to the game, and she told reporters she “wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She wasn’t on the ice as a player, but she got chills looking around the sold-out crowd.
“I feel like I caught myself tearing up,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, I dreamed of these moments as a little girl.’”
Asked after the game to name a venue he’d want his team to play in next, Fargo said, “I’d love to play as many games right back here as possible.”
“Retweet!” chimed in Osborne, who was sitting next to him.
Kasten said Madison Square Garden is the only suitable building in the New York City limits for the league, but “it’s booked all the time” for the Rangers (NHL), New York Knicks (NBA), concerts and other events. Scheer told The Athletic that “everything is on the table” in terms of where the team plays next season. A full-time move to Madison Square Garden seems unlikely, but perhaps there’s room for more nights like Saturday.
Gaeta called the night significant.
“Being able to point to ‘the PWHL sold out Madison Square Garden’ hopefully is going to make people realize that women’s sports are financially viable,” she said. “People are excited about it. People want to get engaged with it.”
“I think you have to take it in and enjoy the moment,” Fillier added. “It’s bigger than the game happening.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
New York Sirens, NHL, Sports Business, Women's Hockey
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