Women's hockey returns to Mass. Wednesday in Lowell

Professional women's hockey will return to Massachusetts Wednesday night, as a Lowell-based team takes to the ice at the Tsongas Center.

The unnamed team, part of the new Professional Women's Hockey League, will face off against a Minnesota squad at 7 p.m. Though the team is based in Boston, it will play its home games in Lowell's 6,500-seat Tsongas Center.

"Being such a great sports city, [Boston is] certainly a market that, you know, it was a priority market for us," said Jayna Hefford, the league's senior vice president of hockey operations. "And so we know there's not a lot of women's professional sports there and we hope we can really break into that demand and create a really strong following in Boston for this team."

Jefford said the league is still developing names and mascots for each of its six teams. In addition to Boston, the league has squads in Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa and Toronto.

Several of Boston's players have local ties to New England and several played college hockey in the region. Amanda Pelkey, from Montpelier, Vermont, who's won a gold medal playing for the U.S. at the 2018 Winter Olympics; Alina Müller, who's won Olympic bronze for the Swiss national team and played for Northeastern University; Sammy Davis, from Pembroke; and Taylor Wenczkowski, from Rochester, New Hampshire.

Women's professional hockey isn't new to the region. From 2015 until last year, the Boston Pride skated and brought championships to Warrior Arena in Brighton.

The team was part of the Premier Hockey Federation league, previously known as the National Women’s Hockey League. That league was established in 2015 and was North America's first women's hockey league to pay players a salary. But it had trouble meeting what some players deemed to be professional standards. The new league bought out the premier league last year.

PWHL principal owner David Walter — who also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers — committed hundreds of millions of dollars to establish a league featuring an eight-year business plan. Tennis legend Billie Jean King is a minority owner and was on-hand for the organization's inaugural game in Toronto Monday night.

"Today I think is really the birth of women’s professional ice hockey. This is the moment," King said to players Monday before faceoff. "We’ve had it in other sports. In my sport, tennis, we had it in 1970, and we will never forget that day ever. And it will bring you so close together for the rest of your lives today. Relationships are everything."

Tickets for Wednesday night's game at the Tsongas range from $17 to $49 for premier-level. NESN has retained the rights to broadcast all 24 of the team's home games.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.