Place Bell to Serve as PWHL Montréal's Primary Venue

On Wednesday, PWHL Montréal announced that the team will play its regular-season home games at Place Bell during the 2024-2025 season. The Laval, QC arena, which is also home to the AHL’s Laval Rocket, can seat 10,172 for hockey games. This will be a meaningful increase over their 2023-2024 home venue, Verdun Auditorium, which has a capacity around 4,000 for hockey.

The move is an appropriate one for the Québec team, which averaged 3,209 fans in six games at Verdun and 9,105 in six games (regular season and playoffs) at Place Bell. PWHL Montréal also set a new record for fans in attendance at a women’s professional hockey game when they hosted PWHL Toronto at the Bell Centre on April 20. The home rink of the Montreal Canadiens was sold out, with 21,105 in attendance. PWHL Montréal proved that they could attract enough fans to warrant the move to a larger venue in year two.

However, the team will continue to use Centre 21.02, where Verdun Auditorium is located, as a training site. The facility was the first High Performance Hockey Centre for women athletes in Canada. In a release on Wednesday, Montréal’s General Manager Danielle Sauvageau called the opportunity to play at Place Bell and train at Centre 21.02 “the best of both worlds.”

All six PWHL teams will play 30 games in the 2024-25 season, which will include neutral site games. PWHL Montréal will communicate information regarding season tickets, with priority given to 2024 Season Ticket Members and to fans who have joined the waitlist or subscribed to the team’s e-newsletter.

PWHL Montréal is the second team to move to a new, bigger venue for the upcoming season after Toronto announced they will play at the Coca-Cola Coliseum yesterday.