SEATTLE — Six months of planning paid off in 40 seconds.
That’s all it took for Savannah Harmon to give a crowd of 14,551 at Climate Pledge Arena — the biggest crowd that has ever attended a national women’s hockey game in the United States — what they came to see.
“The crowd and everybody coming out of their seats 40 seconds into the game was a script that you can’t really draw up,” said Team USA head coach John Wroblewski.
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“I’ve never played in front of such a big crowd,” added U.S. netminder Nicole Hensley. “I was excited, our whole team was excited — you could tell with the way we came out.”
It was a record-breaking night that gave everybody what they wanted — right away.
The goal — and the 4-2 hockey game, a win by the Americans over the rival Canadians — gave the fans something to cheer for. Players got to experience a massive crowd in an NHL facility, a reminder of how things could be. And the Kraken organization got the best possible start to an event that took months of work.
“The goal was always to hit 14,000,” said Katelyn Parker, a member of the Kraken’s player development staff, who was involved in the planning of the event. “It’s one of the things you can’t fully describe. I think now that we did it, it’s a huge relief in some ways, but it’s also just fantastic that there is this momentum around hockey in general and around the women’s game. It’s incredible.”
Team Canada and Team USA stand for their respective national anthems before the Rivalry Series game at Climate Pledge Arena. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)We often talk about inflection points in women’s sports and growth within women’s hockey. A game with a record crowd — an increase from the previous mark of 13,320 in Anaheim in 2019-20 — in a non-traditional hockey market is yet another example of the growing momentum in the women’s game.
So, how did they do it?
The planning around hosting a Rivalry Series game in Seattle began in earnest in June and included help from the organization’s ticketing, marketing, public relations, social media, game day operations and development staff, among other people across various departments.
“There were a lot of incredible human beings who worked to pull this off,” said Parker. “I’m just very thankful that we have such an incredible team to be able to do this because 14,000 people is a lot of people in the stands.”
There was an emphasis on promoting the event on the Kraken’s social media channels, and creating original content with the Team USA athletes when they were in town for a pre-event training camp (Nov. 9-11). According to Parker, the team being around for a training camp the week before also “really helped” expose fans to the team and show them what was going to be happening in the city. The practices at the Kraken Community Iceplex, which were open to the public, were “packed,” said U.S. defender Lee Stecklein in an interview with The Athletic, and gave the players on Team USA an early indication at how successful an event in Seattle could be.
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“I’m not surprised,” said Stecklein. “We were hoping to break that record, and leave it to Seattle to do it.”
Promoting the event at Kraken home games, whether it was on the in-game video boards or on the local Roots Sports broadcasts, was also a priority. Seattle is averaging over 17,000 fans (full capacity) for its home games again this season, according to Hockey Reference, which is a massive audience to sell the idea of a women’s hockey game to.
On Saturday night, Kendall Coyne Schofield, Hilary Knight and Marie-Philip Poulin dropped the puck ahead of the Kraken’s game against the L.A. Kings, yet another way to get the women in front of a big audience and an opportunity to expose Kraken fans to the game. The name of the game for the crew putting on the event was awareness.
Ahead of tomorrow’s Women’s Hockey Rivalry Game, pres. by @Symetra, we had a couple legends drop the puck before tonight’s game.
Special thanks to Team USA’s @KendallCoyne & @HilaryKnight as well as Team Canada’s @pou29 for stopping by! pic.twitter.com/ZzQXYC6mog
— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) November 20, 2022
“The in-arena stuff was great,” said Parker. “It was constantly being shown in the weeks leading into the game. People who were just coming to watch the Kraken who might not have known about the event, all of a sudden see it on the Jumbotron … I think that really made people more aware of what was gonna be happening in their backyard.”
It also helps that the Kraken, in Year 2 of its existence, look much improved this season with a 10-5-3 start. And that Seattle, while not a traditional hockey market, is a passionate sports city.
And it wasn’t just local turnout, either. There were hundreds of Canadian fans, which isn’t a shock given Seattle’s proximity to British Columbia. But also, fans from Alaska, some 2,000 miles away. During an autograph session on Saturday afternoon, Stecklein met two different families who told her they’d come from Alaska for the game, and then another family Sunday morning on her walk to get coffee.
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“To know that the Kraken supported the event and the reach that they had … it just stuns you a bit to know that people are getting on a flight and buying a ticket to come watch us play,” said Stecklein. “We all know that we would like more visibility for our sport, so to be in front of all these people, we know it’s going to be really big for the growth of our game and we’re really excited and really appreciative of the people who have come together to make that happen.”
For all the effort put into the planning, the end result was a game with more than 14,000 people and a mostly full lower bowl. The Kraken said they sold their lower-bowl tickets out before opening up the upper-level seating, which they ultimately did with hundreds seated up higher.
And they were all there for a Canada-USA matchup that delivered — as it historically does.
Before Harmon could open the scoring less than a minute into the game, fans were treated to a ceremony for Hilary Knight who was honored on home ice for setting the all-time scoring record at the women’s world championships in Denmark in September and given a golden stick for the accomplishment.
Legend. #RivalrySeries | @Symetra https://t.co/JBRIQHr3lV pic.twitter.com/EI3nf4Apky
— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) November 21, 2022
Only minutes later, the puck was coming off Knight’s stick and onto the blade of Harmon. It was the first of three points for Knight in the game, including two goals and the eventual game-winner, the third-straight Team USA win over Team Canada in the Rivalry Series. She knew the game was going to be a big moment for the women’s game on a massive platform and Knight, for her part, delivered too.
“What a storybook, right?” said Wroblewski after the game. “It’s just another chapter in the story of the legend of Hilary Knight.”
The in-game atmosphere was excellent. There were some fans in Kings gear, perhaps still in town from the night before, and plenty of Kraken gear. But also a lot of people with women’s hockey jerseys, hats and signs. A nice mix of new women’s hockey fans and those who came to the game to see their favorite team and/or player. The crowd was loud and engaged in the game with constant “USA” chants — and some Canada cheers from the opposing fans — and they erupted at the end of the game following the U.S. win.
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The Kraken game operations team blasted “Party in the USA” for the occasion.
“What an exciting game,” added Wroblewski. “I thought Canada really brought it … but our crowd was right there the whole time. It felt great to be an American today, to be an American hockey player. I think there’s going to be a lot of young girls in Seattle who wanna be Hilary Knight or Kendall Coyne after that game.”
That, from the U.S. coach, is why events like this matter. Most national team players will tell you a similar story about the impact of seeing the U.S. women’s national team for the first time. Knight and Coyne Schofield didn’t realize other girls played hockey until they each signed up as kids for Cammi Granato’s hockey camp after the 1998 Olympics. They’ve each explained that as part of their origin story.
Hensley was eight years old the first time she saw women playing hockey.
It was 2002, just before the Salt Lake City Olympics, and Hensley was at a pre-tournament game between Team USA and Team China. After the game, a U.S. victory, Granato and her teammates signed Hensley’s American flag.
It was then that Hensley decided she wanted to go to the Olympics for women’s hockey. And she has that autographed flag tucked away to this day.
“We know how powerful (these games are),” she explained. “Because we’ve lived it as kids.”
The hope from the Kraken, and the players, is that the game in Seattle will achieve something similar. That, down the line, a young girl from the area will go to the Olympics and say she went to the game and thought, “I want to do that.”
“To continuously grow the game is so important, because you never know who your next Hilary Knight is going to be,” said Parker. “She could come from Seattle or she could come from a small town right outside the city but if they don’t have an area to experience the game or try it, we might miss out on that next great hockey player.”
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That’s part of the motivation behind the Kraken’s efforts — as well as promoting and supporting the current crop of national team players — when it comes to hosting the Canada-USA game and their other events over the last 10 days.
During the U.S. training camp at the Kraken facility, young fans were able to watch the skates and meet some of the players. Hensley said she’d never seen so many people at a practice before. There was also a panel chat on Friday night, a girls hockey skills clinic on Saturday afternoon, autograph sessions and an appearance at the Kraken vs. Kings game on Saturday night.
“We spent a lot of time with the girls at the clinics this week and doing a lot of community outreach,” said Hensley. “Hopefully it was a really inspiring week and I can’t wait to see all the hockey players that come out of this area.”
Of course, the current players are also beneficiaries of the game in Seattle. They got to experience the “NHL standard” when it came to the atmosphere, facilities and marketing power. Something “nobody took for granted,” said Wroblewski. This is the kind of level of professionalism many of the women in Sunday’s game are hoping to get on a full-time basis through their work with the PWHPA — which is working to create a new women’s professional league with the help of Billie Jean King, her partner Ilana Kloss (the CEO of BJK Enterprises) and Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the LA Dodgers, among other teams. It’s the kind of crowds they want to be working toward getting more consistently. Something that could be achievable with consistent exposure, visibility and marketing power.
With women’s hockey, it’s rarely a question of the product, especially where the Canada-U.S. rivalry is concerned. It’s more about whether people are aware that an event is happening. The fans knew about Sunday night in Seattle, thanks to the Kraken. And now there’s a blueprint of how that could work moving forward.
“I think this is only scratching the surface of the crowds that we can have,” said Knight. “The game (demonstrated) that if the women at the elite level are coming to play, people are going to show up. We saw that tonight.
“If people know we’re there, they’re coming.”
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(Top photo of Team Canada and Team USA shaking hands: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
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