By Scott Lowe – MYHockeyRankings.com

Yet another year has passed, with a new one just beginning.

And as always, the first day of a new year brings with it a mixture of excitement, anticipation and even fear. Those emotions often combine with a sense of accomplishment, fondness and sadness as we remember the year that is now behind us.

It’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but shouldn’t it be?

After all, life provides us with a series of ups, downs, twists and turns daily, so as we look off into the horizon and back into the rear-view mirror, our hopes and memories should paint a similar picture.

From a hockey perspective, we almost always look back on the year that was and talk about how great it was. The sport seems to get faster and more exciting each year, and players today are bigger, stronger, faster and more skilled than ever before.

A new pool of young talent enters the National Hockey League annually, and it seems like more players under the age of 20 make an immediate impact on the sport than ever before. Having an opportunity to watch the next wave of NHL superstars competing at the World Junior Championship each year during the holidays provides us with a glimpse of what lies ahead and an injection of hope and energy entering the new year.

Veteran players such as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin seem to establish new milestones every time they step on the ice, allowing us frequent opportunities to reflect on their careers and how lucky we have been to watch them compete and lead their teams for more than half of this century.

Other younger veteran players such as Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon and Auston Matthews have firmly established themsleves as the current superstars and ambassadors for the sport, while other young stars such as Jack Hughes, Martin Necas, Karill Kaprizov and Cale Makar appear ready to move into that stratosphere if they haven’t already.

Next in line we have precocious up-and-coming stars like Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini, Luke Hughes, Tim Stuzle, Lucas Raymond, Cole Caufield, Matvei Michkov, Marco Rossi, Brock Faber and Owen Power emerging as go-to players for their teams.

The game is in good hands at the highest level; there’s no doubt about that.

There even is some new blood among the National Hockey League coaching ranks such as Scott Arniel in Winnipeg and Spencer Carbery in Washington, both of whom appear to have their teams on the fast track to success despite some doubts entering the season. And a new face in a new place, Dan Bylsma in Seattle, hired the first woman to be a full-time NHL assistant coach when he brought Jessica Campbell along with him from Coachella Valley of the American Hockey League.

Veteran longtime superstars chasing records. Younger superstars taking their place as faces of the game. Plenty of skilled, exciting young players entering the league via the draft annually. And more diversity on and off the ice; in addition to Campbell, there are six female assistant general managers in the NHL, and every NHL team employs at least one woman working in hockey operations.

There is much to be excited about as far as the NHL is concerned as we head into 2025. While it’s great that so many women are getting opportunities to work in hockey at the absolute highest level of the sport, that’s not even the best news for girls and women who play hockey and aspire to earn a living or make a career by staying involved with the game they love.

No doubt the most positive hockey news to come out of 2024 was the success enjoyed by the Professional Women’s Hockey league in its inaugural season. No one could have guessed that a brand new North American women’s professional hockey league that went from being a dream to reality in a span of about six months would become the enormous success that the PWHL proved to be in 2024.

Met with nervous, yet hopeful excitement after several previous failed attempts at creating a financially viable North American women’s pro league, the puck dropped on the inaugural PWHL season amid great fanfare on Jan. 1, 2024. The league hit the ground running with a successful initial splash and built upon the momentum throughout its initial campaign.

Between January and the end of May, the PWHL established six women’s hockey attendance records, exceeded its internal attendance projections by more than 4,000 fans per game, played games that were viewed by millions worldwide and crowned its Minnesota franchise as the first Walter Cup champion.

Along the way the league compiled and eye-popping list of successes:

• The PWHL set six women’s hockey attendance records, including the world and American records. More than 21,000 fans attended a game at Montreal’s Belle Centre April 20.
• An average of more than 10,000 fans attended neutral-site games in Pittsburgh and Detroit.
• The PWHL brought on more than 40 corporate sponsors.
• More than 238-million social-media impressions were generated by the league along with better than 1-millon social-media followers and 10,000 YouTube subscribers.
• Fans from 88 different countries viewed PWHL games online.
• The total regular-season attendance was 392,259 for 72 games, an average of 5,448 per contest.
• Sports Business Journal named the PWHL its “Sports Breakthrough of the Year.”
• The PWHL earned recognition as the most trusted and reputable business in Canada, according to the Harris Poll 50.

And the PWHL showed no signs of slowing down as its 2024-25 season, featuring an expanded schedule, got underway in November.

To seize upon the momentum created in Year 1, the league made headlines throughout the offseason by unveiling team nicknames, logos and uniforms: announcing plans to expand for the 2025-26 season; establishing a new in-house media entity to promote its teams and players; announcing a nine-city “Takeover Tour” that would expose the product to new established hockey markets; partnering with Electronic Arts to have PWHL teams and players included in its popular NHL 25 video game; and building upon its broadcast and streaming partnerships to ensure that fans around the world would be able to easily view PWHL games.

By the time the puck dropped on Season 2 during American Thanksgiving weekend, it was clear that the league was going to pick up right where it left off the previous spring. With the addition of 48 world-class rookies – including 34 from the college ranks – the PWHL opened its second season with a game between host Toronto and Boston Nov. 30. There were 159 total rostered players as the season got underway, including 22 international players – eight more than in Year 1.

Toronto welcomed 8,089 fans to its new, Coca-Cola Coliseum home as the Sceptres knocked off the Fleet, 3-1, in their November home opener. Later that day, more than 10, 000 jammed into Montreal’s Place Bell for the hosts’ 4-3 shootout win against Ottawa. More than 8,000 fans turned out to see the Minnesota Freeze raise their 2023-24 championship banner, prior to a 4-3 overtime loss to New York.

For the season’s first week, with each team playing twice, the PWHL drew nearly 42,000 fans for an average of 6,970 per contest. Then on Dec. 6, Montreal traveled to Ottawa for a rematch against the Charge at Canadian Tire Centre, home of the NHL’s Senators. More than 11,000 showed up to watch the visitors earn a hard-fought 2-1 victory that night.

Through the season’s first nine games, the PWHL drew a total of 64,473 spectator, an average of 7,163 per game, with the average attendance during Week 2 surpassing the Week 1 number. One month into Season 2, with 19 games having been played, the league is averaging better than 6,500 spectators with nearly 125,000 total fans attending games.

While the PWHL is far from perfect, the league is well on its way to becoming the first successful professional women’s hockey circuit in North America. There still is work to be done as far as closing the salary gap between top players and the others, providing a full-time livable wage for all players, negotiating true national broadcast partnerships and finding common ground between the players and league ownership for the next collective-bargaining agreement.

One question facing the PWHL is how much the league can expand under its current business model, which has the league owning and operating all six teams. That’s a high-class problem, however, because it means there is enough demand among hockey fans and interest among potential host cities for the league to grow quickly. Maintaining a high level of play as the league expands also will be a concern for the PWHL going forward.

There were some Season 1 hiccups as well.

Despite winning the first Walter Cup, the Minnesota franchise faced some off-ice issues that had to be addressed, and the organization opened itself up to public criticism because of some potentially inflammatory and insensitive social-media posts by one of its high draft picks.

The New York franchise was the only one to underachieve on the attendance front even as the PWHL’s largest market. The team played its home games at alternating venues in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey during Season 1, so the hope is that moving the Sirens full time to the New Jersey Devils’ home in Newark, N.J., will help attendance improve and stabilize. Thus far, New York has drawn an average of close to 3,000 fans for its three 2024-25 home dates in a 16,500-seat home arena.

No one expected the PWHL’s first year to be easy – in fact, may skeptics probably thought it would fail – but given the numerous challenges presented by trying to organize, administer and launch a professional league in just six months, the number of obstacles that had to be overcome and the potential for so many things to go wrong, there is no other way to describe the inaugural season other than by labeling it an overwhelming success.

Between the NHL bringing more women into the fold and the emergence of the PWHL as a viable professional league, there are more opportunities than ever for girls who grow up playing and loving hockey to stay involved in the sport as players or in some other capacity.

Nothing hockey-related that happened in 2024 can top that

Every year in hockey there are Cinderella stories, incredible team accomplishments and amazing individual plays and performances to celebrate at all levels of the sport; 2024 was no exception.

The Panthers finally brought a Stanley Cup to South Florida and made a first-time champion out of their respected coach Paul Maurice. Maurice won the coveted trophy in his 26^th season as an NHL coach, the most seasons ever coached by a first-time champion.

On the women’s side, Minnesota capped the successful inaugural PWHL campaign by winning the Walter Cup, 3-0, in a deciding Game 5 at Boston. Team USA and former University of Minnesota star Taylor Heise, the league’s first-ever top draft pick, was named playoff MVP.

Canada captured the IIHF Women’s World Championship, defeating the United States on an overtime goal by budding star Danielle Serdachny. While Serdachny would go on to be the second player selected in the second PWHL Draft, the WWC in Utica, N.Y., served as the official coronation of University of Wisconsin forward Laila Edwards as the next American superstar. Edwards earned tournament MVP honors by recording six goals and two assists in seven contests.

Czechia’s men captured the nation’s first IIHF World Championship in 15 years thanks to a roster comprised of more than a dozen current and former NHL players. Meanwhile, Denver upset a loaded Boston College team to claim the NCAA Division I men’s championship, and Ohio State beat Wisconsin, 1-0, to win the women’s title a year after the Badgers had handed them a 1-0 loss in the championship game. Either OSU or Wisconsin has won the last five women’s NCAA titles.

The year in hockey opened Jan. 1 with the first-ever PWHL game as Toronto hosted New York in front of a sold-out crowd and with nearly 3 million people watching live via various platforms. New York’s Ella Shelton potted the league’s first goal, and Corinne Schroeder recorded a 29-save shutout in the 4-0 victory.

As usual, the Winter Classic also was played Jan. 1, with Seattle hosting Vegas, but for the first time two Winter Classics were held in the same year as the Blackhawks faced St. Louis Dec. 31 at Chicago’s Wrigley Field to close the year.

Of course, the World Junior Championship 2024 gold-medal game was held not long after those Jan. 1 tilts, with the United States knocking off host Sweden, 6-2, in the finals. And it was back to the future for the WJC on Jan. 31 in Ottawa as the U.S. and Canada renewed their New Year’s Eve rivalry in the final game of pool play for the 2025 event. The Americans won, 4-1, but hopefully that was just a prelude to another meeting between the two international hockey juggernauts in the playoff round.

We’ll let you know how that goes exactly a year from today.

On top of all that, 2024 saw Utah get an NHL team. Kucherov outlasted MacKinnon to win the league scoring title, 144-140. Austin Matthews buried 69 goals. The Edmonton Oilers almost did the impossible, rallying from a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Final only to fall to the Panthers in a deciding Game 7. Crosby scored his 600^th goal. McDavid recorded his 1000^th point. And Alex Ovechkin found the fountain of youth, closing the year within 25 goals of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL-record 894 tallies.

So, yeah, 2024 was another great year for hockey.

But there are things we can’t and shouldn’t forget.

Hockey fans worldwide mourned the tragic and unnecessary deaths of Johhny and Matthew Gaudreau. We only can hope this tragedy will serve as a lesson to us all and possibly save a life in the future by keeping someone under the influence from getting behind the wheel.

CTE and other mental-health issues continue to impact the hockey community. Hopefully, through continued education and awareness hockey can become part of the solution instead of a source of the problems.

While the sport has made tremendous progress in terms of increased opportunities for girls and women, hockey still has a long way to go when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Too many coaches and organizations look the other way when it comes to off-ice issues, locker-room culture, bullying and racism. We like to say that hockey is for everyone, so now is the time to really start proving it.

Hockey still is too expensive, and there still are way too many people involved with the sport looking to take advantage of that for their own personal and financial benefit instead of trying to make it better. It would be great if the “adults” and “leaders” in the hockey world started behaving more like adults and leaders by looking out for the best interest of the kids and families they are supposed to be serving.

While it’s fun and important to celebrate everything that’s great about hockey, it’s equally import for those of us who love the sport and have gleaned so much from it over the years to be able to take an objective look at it and try to figure out what we can do to make it better.

Look at how incredible the product continues to be on the ice at the highest levels and imagine what it might become if we could manage to get hockey’s leadership and those who truly can make a difference all pulling on the rope in the same direction.

Happy new year to the entire North American Hockey community from all of us at MHR!

Now, here is our annual tribute to those in the hockey world who helped make the past year memorable and are likely to do so again in the future – as well as those who unfortunately have been taken from us.

 

Happy New Year to:

Billie Jean King, Mark Walter, Stan Kasten and Jayna Hefford

Paul Maurice, Aaron Ekblad, Sergei Bobrovsky and Aleksander Barkov

Chucky, Brady and Walt

Hilary and Kendall, Marie-Philip and Natalie

Taylor Heise and Laila Edwards, Sarah Fillier and Danielle Serdachny

Ovie and the Great One

Syd the Kid, Geno, Tanger and Flower

Peter Laviolette, Jacob Trouba and Matt Rempe

 

Kevin Shattenkirk, Joe Pavelski, Marc Staal, Alex Goligoski, Antti Raanta, Kyle Okposo, Bryan Little and Justin Schultz

Gigi Marvin and Melodie Daoust

Thanks for the memories

 

Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, Tim Eccelstone, Chris Simon, Stephen Peat, Dave Forbes, Wally Harris, Bob Cole, Mark Wells, Sergei Berezin, Bill Hay, Connor Kasin, Al Shaver, Konstantin Koltsov and Blaine Lacher

RIP – you will be missed

 

Will Smith, Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault

David Carle and Nadine Muzerall

Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard

Quinn, Jack and Luke Hughes

Matthews, McDavid, MacKinnon and Kucherov

 

David Pastrnak, Martin Necas, Dominik Kubalik, Radko Gudas, Lukas Dostal, Pavel Zacha, Ondrej Palat, Petr Mrazek, Jan Rutta, David Kampf and Karel Vejmelka

Czech-mates

 

Seattle Kraken, Utah Hockey Club and Vegas Golden Knights

Sceptres, Sirens, Charge, Victoire, Frost and Fleet

Cale Makar, Adam Fox and Evan Bouchard

Craig Berube and Adam Keefe, Brad Treliving and Kyle Dubas

Luke Richardson, Drew Bannister, D.J. Smith, David Quinn, Dave Hakstol, Don Granato and Derek Lalonde

 

Lindy Ruff, Jim Montgomery and Todd McClellan

Welcome back!

 

Toronto Maple Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers

It’s been a while ... 

 

Natalie Darwitz, David Poile, Pavel Datsyuk, Shea Weber, Krissy Wendell, Colin Campbell and Jeremy Roenick

You’ve earned your place in hockey history!

 

Buffalo Sabres, Vancouver Canucks, San Jose Sharks, Utah Hockey Club, Ottawa Senators, Nashville Predators, Minnesota Wild, Winnipeg Jets and Columbus Blue Jackets

Who’s next?