Deachman: PWHL Ottawa has turned TD Place Arena into a dream factory

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Nellie Green keeps a game-used Team Canada goalie stick displayed on her bedroom wall. It is signed by her favourite player and the stick’s former owner, PWHL Ottawa goalie Emerance Maschmeyer. Nellie, 13, used her own money, $250 of it, to successfully bid on the stick as part of a fundraiser at a December tournament in Montreal hosted by four-time Olympic gold-medallist Caroline Ouellette. Nellie has twice taken part in that tournament, and for the past three years has attended Ouellette and Marie-Philip Poulin’s summer hockey camp in Montreal.

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Like Maschmeyer, Nellie is also a goalie, one of two female netminders on the otherwise all-boys’ Peewee AA Outaouais Dragons 1. The team just returned from this past weekend’s provincial championships in Trois-Rivières with silver medals.

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And although provincials kept Nellie from attending PWHL Ottawa’s Saturday game against Minnesota, she’ll be at Wednesday’s tilt against Boston, just as she’s been to a half dozen other games at TD Place Arena this season.

As a youngster, Nellie watched women’s international hockey and imagined that, like her Team Canada role models Ouellette and Poulin, she might one day compete in the Olympics wearing a maple leaf on her sweater. But with the success of the nascent Professional Women’s Hockey League, she has added another goal to her bucket list: to play pro hockey for a living.

“I’ve always wanted to play on Team Canada,” she says, “but now I also want a job playing hockey with the PWHL. Just going to the games and seeing all the fans made me really want to play more. That would be pretty cool.”

I’d learned of Nellie’s love of the game following a column I wrote in December, on the eve of PWHL Ottawa’s season- and franchise-opening game. I’d been to one of the team’s practices and was impressed by the calibre of play, and recognized in the group the potential to inspire so many fans, especially — although not exclusively — young girls, who for the first time for many could see some future version of themselves reflected on the ice.

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On Saturday, I attended my first game to see how that was all playing out.

It turns out you can barely swing a cat in there without hitting someone with starstruck eyes. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that when PWHL Ottawa players are on the ice, TD Place Arena is transformed into a dream factory.

Like sisters Ryleigh and Abby Kennedy, 14 and 10, respectively, who brought signs to Saturday’s game promIsing bags of candy for their favourite players — Daryl Watts and Maschmeyer — in exchange for hockey sticks. (Abby’s bag of Lifesavers Gummies instead netted her a puck from Maschmeyer.)

“I was really excited when they started a women’s league,” said Ryleigh, a ringette player. “I feel there’s not enough girls’ things; there’s a lot of men’s stuff.”

Abby, a goalie with the boys’ A-level Ottawa West Sting, hopes to play professionally someday. “When I watch the women play, I think that I can maybe do that when I get older and get better.”

Also at Saturday’s game was 9-year-old Johanna Malton, one of the Stittsville Rockets players who scrimmaged on the ice during Saturday’s first intermission. With a poster claiming her to be Maschmeyer’s No. 1 fan, Johanna similarly said that watching women play professionally inspires her to believe that one day she can do the same.

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Another nine-year-old, meanwhile, Savannah Cosby, drove with her parents from St. Catharines just to attend Saturday’s game and cheer on her namesake, Ottawa defensewoman Savannah Harmon. The pair, she explained, share the same first name, hair colour and birthday, and they both shoot left and play D — the younger Savannah with the U11-A Brock Badgers. “I really want to be a PWHL player when I’m older,” she said.

Beyond simply inspiring youthful dreams, though, the PWHL is clearly satisfying a need. It is, as thirtysomething fan and season-ticket-holder Marie-Pier Thibault said, “the best game in town.”

If last Saturday’s match was any indication, it’s hard to argue with Thibault. The 8,000+ fans who filled the arena brought a palpable enthusiasm and an intimate and organic sense of community to the game. It was fun to be there. The hockey itself, meanwhile, was fast-paced and exciting. It doesn’t hurt that the Ottawa squad (would someone please give the team a nickname already?) has been playing extremely well lately and, with four games remaining in the regular season, is currently in the playoff mix.

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The PWHL checks all the boxes and will hopefully remain here for years to come, inspiring future generations to display sticks used by Nellie Greene, Abby Kennedy, Johanna Malton, Savannah Cosby and others on their bedroom walls.

Born in Fort William, Ont., a city that no longer appears on maps, Bruce Deachman has called Ottawa home for most of his life. As a columnist and reporter with the Citizen, he works at keeping Ottawa on the map. You can reach him at bdeachman@postmedia.com.

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