In the PWHL’s inaugural season, the club now known as the New York Sirens split its home games among three arenas in Bridgeport, Conn., Elmont, N.Y., and Newark, N.J.
This season, in addition to the newly announced rebrand that saw the team dubbed the Sirens, women’s hockey in the area has a more permanent home at Prudential Center.
“We had two games there last year; they both did very well,” Amy Scheer, the league’s senior VP of business operations, told The Post. “We were very pleased, we loved our relationship with the Prudential Center, and so it made the most sense for us to go there full time and understand what the market looks like, have a full year of learning as we really look to determine what the best arena and best home is for the PWHL.”
The 2024-25 PWHL schedule has yet to be announced but will feature a 30-game slate for each of the league’s six teams.
The Sirens will play 12-15 games at The Rock, with the exact number depending on how many neutral-site games they are assigned, with any playoff home games also to be played in Jersey.
They will also use Essex County Codey Arena as their practice facility, taking possession of the West Orange venue formerly used by the Devils.
The club finished in last place last season, missing the playoffs with a 9-12-3 record, something the team is looking to change this time around.
“It’s exactly six months ago when we played one of our games at [Prudential Center] that I went into the dressing room, mentioning to the players we wouldn’t be waiting ’til next November to start the season,” Sirens general manager Pascal Daoust told The Post. “Things had to change at that moment, that specific moment, and we turned things around already. I would say [since] end of April, beginning of May. We are making huge steps every single day, and we look forward to November [wanting it] to be now.”
After using its inaugural season to create a foothold within the hockey landscape, the PWHL rolled out new names and logos for each of its teams, which had played last year with generic city names.
Settling on the Sirens — who join the Ottawa Charge, Minnesota Frost, Boston Fleet, Montreal Victoire and Toronto Sceptres — was particularly difficult, according to Scheer.
“How do you encapsulate the grandeur and the beauty and the attitude of this city into a single name? It’s impossible,” she said. “And we went through a lot of names for New York, and I think, probably, it was the toughest one because it’s my home. It was a lot easier for me to be like, ‘No, no, no, no,’ on this market more than any other. But when we got to Sirens, we felt it was a really fun one that has a nod to hockey but also, in a way, encapsulates what this area is all about, what the people are all about.
“I always talk about the fact that no New Yorker will ever sneak up on you. You will always hear us coming.”
From all the way across the Hudson, New York will hear the Sirens.
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