'Breakaway,' the 1st book about the PWHL, goes inside the creation of the league

This is an excerpt from the book, Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women Who Changed the Game by Karissa Donkin, published by Goose Lane Editions . It's available now wherever you buy books.

April 20, 2024

Montreal, Quebec

You could feel the excitement pulsing through the arena even before the Montreal players took the ice.

With a capacity of more than twenty-one thousand, the Bell Centre is the largest hockey arena in North America, and it’s typically home to the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens. But this day was all about PWHL Montreal, the team that had been the hottest ticket in town since the Professional Women’s Hockey League launched in January.

It was Montreal against Toronto on a Saturday afternoon, and even though these two teams had existed for only four and a half months, the rivalry already felt deep. Montreal had yet to beat Toronto in four games head-to-head, and this was the last regular-season meeting between them.

On this day, their audience was the largest crowd to ever watch a women’s hockey game in person, breaking a record set just two months earlier when these two teams faced off inside Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. Beyond attendance records, playoff positions in the six-team league were at stake.

The league was so new that neither team had a logo or even a name yet, things that got put aside in the rush to get players on the ice as fast as possible in January. But none of these fans seemed to care. Tickets to this game sold out in twenty minutes. The crowd was full of maroon-and-cream jerseys that simply read Montreal, an ode to their team and city. Those jerseys had been sold out online for months, and lines to get one at a rink could be long.

The arena glowed maroon mixed with tiny purple