The Fleet will play the first PWHL game at Boston’s marquee hockey venue on Saturday, and tickets have been sold out since February. It’s a huge milestone in just the third year of the league, and the Fleet are pulling out all the stops to make it an unforgettable experience for fans.
But at the end of the day, Davey wants to make sure the team’s identity — and the product on the ice — doesn’t get lost in the spectacle.
“We still want it to feel like a Fleet game,” Davey said. “Yes, it’s on a larger scale, but this is the Fleet personality from beginning to end.”
Garden officials are calling it “hockey day in Boston,” as the 7 p.m. Fleet game against the Montreal Victoire follows a Bruins matinee against the Lightning at 12:30.
Bruins legend Zdeno Chara will drop the ceremonial puck for the Fleet game, and Patrice Bergeron will be among the celebrities in the crowd. The Fleet and Bruins logos will be printed on the stairs leading into the Garden, and DJ Rico Suave will perform outside between the games.
The Fleet will bring their usual playlist — which includes a number of Chappell Roan hits, ‘HOT TO GO!’ among them — and plan to use all the bells and whistles that TD Garden offers to create a party-like atmosphere.
“It’s going to be a hockey celebration,” said Glen Thornborough, chief operating officer of the Bruins and president of TD Garden.
Saturday’s game is a signifier of growth for the PWHL in its third season.
The league’s average attendance this season is 9,246, a 25 percent jump from 7,245 in 2024-25. The average attendance across Boston’s two home venues, Agganis Arena and Lowell’s Tsongas Center, jumped from 4,587 last season to 4,948 this season, with five games remaining.
The PWHL sold out Madison Square Garden last weekend as well, the New York Sirens and Seattle Torrent setting the American attendance record for women’s hockey with 18,006 fans.
Across the league, teams have seen a boost in interest following the Olympics. The Fleet are no exception, particularly given Boston’s Megan Keller and Alina Müller scored the winning goals in the gold- and bronze-medal games, respectively.
But the Olympics are not the only reason for the sellout. Even prior to the Games, sales were trending in that direction, Davey said.
The team initially considered selling a joint ticket that would give fans admission to both games of Saturday’s doubleheader with the Bruins, Davey said, but the Fleet scrapped the idea after seeing promising early returns on single-game tickets.
Selling out the 17,850-seat venue is proof, Thornborough said, that there should be more Fleet games at TD Garden down the line. But he declined to say whether the venue could be a primary home.
Between Bruins and Celtics games, concerts, and other events, the Garden is booked more than 200 nights a year, leaving little room for the Fleet’s current slate of 13 in-market home games per season.
“The goal is to play in front of this many people on a regular basis,” Davey said. “We’ll get there.”
The Garden has hosted a number of marquee women’s sporting events in recent years, including two sold-out WNBA games and three consecutive women’s Beanpot championships.
“We see this as the next step, our continuation of support,” Thornborough said. “I don’t think [a sellout] is a surprise to anybody.”
There isn’t a lot of overlap between the Bruins and Fleet fan bases, but Davey and Thornborough said they expect some fans will go to both games.
They also anticipate that Saturday will be the first time many fans have attended a hockey game in person, which makes the fan experience even more important. In the lead-up to Saturday’s game, both the Fleet and the Garden have focused on determining what they need to do to make sure first-time fans want to come back.
The biggest draw, of course, will be the product on the ice. Boston and Montreal are locked in a battle for the No. 1 playoff seed, and the matchup features lineups packed with Olympians, including the two best goaltenders in the league — Aerin Frankel (1.16 GAA, seven shutouts) and Ann-Renée Desbiens (1.13 GAA, six shutouts).
“Seeing these athletes — some of the best in the world — competing,” Thornborough said, “the product alone is going to attract the attention and get them to return for future games.”
Emma Healy can be reached at emma.healy@globe.com or on X @ByEmmaHealy.
Comments are closed.