By: Zach Nolan
The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has touched down in Winnipeg for a historic game between the Montréal Victoire and the Ottawa Charge on Mar. 22, at the Canada Life Centre.
The league consists of eight teams but those aren’t the only cities that can watch games. Since the league was created in 2024, they’ve made a concentrated effort to grow women’s hockey by travelling to other cities like Winnipeg in their “Takeover Tour.”
The Takeover Tour has been a mainstay since the second season of the league. Prior to that the PWHL had two specialty games played in Detroit and Pittsburgh.
For the first official tour in 2024-25, the league visited nine locations including two that have since gained expansion franchises in Seattle and Vancouver. This year, the league is travelling to 11 separate cities across North America.
For Daniella Ponticelli, the PWHL has been an absolute rollercoaster from applying for a play-by-play announcer role in December 2023 to calling the first-ever game on Jan. 1, 2024.
One of the biggest impacts of the PWHL is its inclusivity as Ponticelli points out in women’s hockey culture.
“There’s always been out players, queer players and trans players in these leagues and it’s just part of the fabric. It would be very strange to think of having a women’s hockey league that wasn’t just inherently inclusive when you consider how many of the athletes themselves, are members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community,” said Ponticelli.
Prominent members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ in the PWHL include American all-star forward Hilary Knight, and Canadian married teammates Marie-Phillip Poulin and Laura Stacey.
Poulin and Stacey will travel with the Victoire to Winnipeg, but Poulin’s status is up in the air because she’s been battling a nagging lower body injury since the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games.
Hometown heroes
For two Manitobans on rival teams, this game is something they’ve been waiting for a long time. Kati Tabin, defenceman for the Victoire will face off against Jocelyne Larocque, defenceman for the Charge.
“I was so pumped,” said Tabin, adding she knew the PWHL was coming to Winnipeg before the league officially announced it. “I’ve been wanting this to happen for so long and never knew if it was.”
Tabin grew up in Oakbank, Manitoba, spending most of her youth on the boys’ team before moving over to playing with the women at Balmoral Hall. She eventually played at Quinnipiac University in the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) before moving to the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF).
When the PHF folded in 2023, she was one of several women immediately picked up by the PWHL for their inaugural season. She and Larocque represented Canada at the the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games winning silver in women’s ice hockey event in 2026.
“Getting chosen to go to Milan to play for your country was a dream come true,” said Tabin.
Tabin said she felt the gravity and enjoyed everything from the opening ceremony to just representing her nation and wearing the maple leaf. Canada fell short in the finals to USA 2-1, earning them a silver medal.
“It obviously wasn’t the outcome we wanted but what a special group and what a cool experience.”
For Larocque, a four-time Olympian and two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ste. Anne, Manitoba, the chance to play in her home province is a unique opportunity for her family.
“I’m so excited to play in Winnipeg,” said Larocque adding this will be her first time playing in Winnipeg since 2018 and her first time as a player in the PWHL in front of her friends and family.
“As a kid I would watch the Winnipeg Jets live. So, for young women to be able to see us in person live is exciting, it would still be fabulous to be able to watch it on TV,” said Larocque.
“I’m really excited for the young girls in the stands. I know there’s going to be a ton of them.”
PWHL rules
Ponticelli has spent several years calling and said the PWHL has done a fantastic job to never show favouritism.
“The way our broadcast works is all on essentially a world feed. It’s all done in the spirit that there’s no home broadcast.”
This means that teams don’t have their own broadcasters as the league employs all the broadcasters. Sometimes in other league you see broadcasters who are team specific, so they tend to see the game from a certain narrative. By having neutral broadcasters, it allows the game to write its own narratives.
In the NHL, wins are worth two points, while overtime losses are worth one and regulation losses are worth zero. In the PWHL, a regulation win is worth three points, while an overtime win is worth two, an overtime loss is worth one and a regulation loss is zero points which has heavy implications on the overall standings.
The games are physical and hitting is allowed. If a player is in pursuit of playing the puck, a hit is perfectly legal though some body contact is subject to receiving a penalty. Theres no huge open ice hits, but hits are present and they are a recorded stat for players.
A popular rule adopted by the PWHL is the ‘jailbreak goal,’ if a team scores while shorthanded, their penalized player is allowed to leave the penalty box. There are also subtle changes such as when a penalty occurs, the four remaining players on the ice for the offending team must remain on the ice for the first shift of the penalty kill.
The top four teams in the league make the playoffs. The Victoire sits in a playoff spot currently, while the Charge are narrowly on the outside and is in fifth place.
Ponticelli said she won’t be calling the Winnipeg game but is excited to see how the game goes. The PWHL in addition to the game on Sunday will be hosting a weekend full of events for fans.
