'Bigger than hockey': Poulin, PWHL Montreal hope to inspire at home opener

MONTREAL — Captain Marie-Philip Poulin believes it’s “bigger than hockey,” veteran forward Ann-Sophie Bettez calls it the “arrival of everything,” and general manager Danièle Sauvageau can’t even put it into words.

After road games in Ottawa, Minnesota and New York to start the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s inaugural season, Montreal finally plays its first game at home Saturday afternoon against Boston at Verdun Auditorium.

It's a moment Sauvageau has been working toward for decades.

"If you could invent a word for me, I'd like that,” an emotional Sauvageau said Friday. “Because I'm not sure I can put tomorrow into words.

"I'm born in Montreal, raised in Deux-Montagnes, but this is home, and we're receiving the world, with the best hockey players."

Montreal’s season-opener in Ottawa on Jan. 2 drew a record women’s professional hockey crowd of 8,318 fans at TD Place, only to be broken four days later when Montreal visited Minnesota in front of 13,316 at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn.

Records won’t be broken at the 4,114-capacity Verdun Auditorium, but the facility will be packed to the brim with spectators watching Montreal’s team hit the ice at home in the first-of-its-kind women’s league.

Poulin, a 32-year-old from Beauceville, Que., is coming off scoring a hat trick in Montreal’s 5-2 win over New York on Wednesday. She’ll be a main attraction Saturday as one of the all-time greats with a “Captain Clutch” moniker thanks to her three gold-medal winning goals for Canada at the Olympics.

But when Poulin looks up at the crowd, she’ll be thinking about the generations that came before her, and the ones she hopes to inspire in the years ahead.

"I cannot wait to wake up tomorrow morning and come into this rink,”