Friday Insider: Penguins working to expand Lemieux Complex in hope of getting women’s team

ST. PAUL, MINN. — The Penguins will be hosting Toronto and Montreal of the Professional Women’s Hockey League for a game at PPG Paints Arena on March 17.

Penguins management and Fenway Sports Group are hoping that it’ll be a step toward getting a team of their own.

The PWHL is in its inaugural season, with teams in Minnesota, Boston, New York, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. The Penguins had hoped to have Pittsburgh be one of those founding cities, but as Penguins president of business operations Kevin Acklin told me in September after the initial cities were announced, they “didn’t have an opportunity to be part of that conversation for the inaugural six teams.”

The Penguins are making sure that they get into the discussion whenever the PWHL does expand. Even before the league began play in January, the Penguins spoke with leaders from the NHL and PWHL and immediately expressed interest in hosting a neutral-site game like the one happening in March, and finalized those plans in the last six weeks.

“It’s consistent with our long-standing efforts to grow the game of hockey,” Acklin told me this week. “We think Pittsburgh is ripe and ready to have more professional women’s hockey here. And ultimately, if there’s an opportunity to do an expansion, that’s something we’d like to do here in Pittsburgh. In the meantime, we’re going to spend a lot of time and effort toward making this game on March 17 a success.”

A major hiccup in bringing a team to Pittsburgh is that there just isn’t a great place for them to play yet. The league is averaging just about 5,000 fans per game, with some teams limited by small home rinks — Toronto, for instance, only sits around 2,500 fans at their usual Mattamy Athletic Centre, but have already sold out the 18,800-seat Scotiabank Arena for a single game there later this month. A good setup would perhaps be something like what Boston has, playing in the 6,500-seat college rink of UMass Lowell. But there just isn’t anything like that in the Pittsburgh area.

The current best option would be the main rink at the Lemieux Complex. But with a seating capacity of only 1,500, that’s just not sufficient for the PWHL, given the numbers the rest of the league draws.

That’s why the Penguins are looking to expand the Lemieux Complex, whether PWHL expansion is imminent or not. They want to be ready for when the time comes.

“I have drawings and plans for potential expansion in Cranberry,” Acklin said. “We’ve had conversations with everybody from the governor’s office down to the authorities in Cranberry about a potential expansion, building out a third sheet of ice with sufficient stands.”

The Penguins think that even without a women’s team, that extra sheet of ice could benefit the NHL club, as well as serve as another home for the various other events and games hosted in Cranberry throughout the year. They’re working on the application process to build out that building and aren’t waiting on the PWHL to move ahead.

Acklin also acknowledged the likelihood of a potential PWHL team playing some games at PPG Paints Arena, as other teams in the league already are doing with the NHL arenas in their cities from time to time.

The Penguins are also already investing money in the people needed to make a future PWHL team a success. They’ve been working with Caroline Fitzgerald and GOALS, a marketing and sponsorship consultancy group that is dedicated to growing women’s sports. Acklin also built up an internal working group that focuses on women’s hockey. It’s led by Shannon Webster, who was hired as the Penguins’ senior director of youth hockey but played the game herself in college and is an advocate for growing the women’s game. Then there’s Amanda Kessel, whose main role is as a special assistant to Kyle Dubas but is involved in the women’s hockey effort as well (and hasn’t officially retired as a player yet, either).

“What we can control is what we’re doing,” Acklin said. “That is getting ready for that opportunity, investing in infrastructure, proving out the business case for it. We think it is a good business model as well. Ratings, the fan bases in the cities has been positive. When and if there’s an expansion opportunity, we’d like to be at the table.”

Beyond just the business aspect of bringing a team to Pittsburgh, the Penguins just think that growing the game is the right thing to do. Fenway Sports Group is a huge driver behind that, with creating equity being the main goal.

“You know, the men’s league has had 100 years of a head start,” Acklin said. “If you think about it in terms of privilege, we’re in effect lending our privilege that we have as a professional men’s sport to support the women.”