Women's hockey is on rise in Pacific Northwest

SEATTLE (AP) — Elly Garcia-Dudek can't help but gaze out toward the ice during hockey practices at the Kraken Community Iceplex. The 12-year-old Garcia-Dudek is a big fan of women's national team stars like Hilary Knight, who starred for the Boston Fleet of the Professional Women's Hockey League last season. Pretty soon, Garcia-Dudek – who started playing through the Seattle Kraken's Learn to Play program — won't have to look across the country for role models like Knight. The PWHL is expanding to Vancouver and to Seattle next season, which was music to Garcia-Dudek's ears. She and her family are Kraken fans and have already put down deposits for PWHL Seattle season tickets. Luckily for Garcia-Dudek, Knight has agreed to play in Seattle. "It's really inspiring and cool to watch them play because it's different from the men's game because women aren't used to playing with contact, but they get to with the PWHL, which is really cool to watch," Garcia-Dudek said. "It inspires me personally like, 'Oh, I can be one of them when I grow up.'" Seattle's lineup should feature plenty of offense from the outset, especially with Knight — a four-time Olympian and PWHL MVP finalist last season — on the scene. "Hillary is a superstar in every way, right?" Seattle GM Meghan Turner said of Knight after the PWHL expansion draft. "Like she plays the way she plays, the way she carries herself in the locker room, the way that she carries herself outside the rink. She's just really got at all." The Pacific Northwest expansion will give the PWHL eight teams and its first two west of Minnesota. The moves are expected to spur even more interest across the region in hockey, which has steadily grown especially in Seattle since the arrival of the Kraken in 2021. Pacific Northwest hockey When Martin Hlinka began his tenure as director of the Kraken Youth Hockey Association in April 2021, they had just 72 players across six teams. The KYHA now has 39 boys and girls teams, including a 14U Jr Kraken team that Garcia-Dudek will play on this year. Hlinka credits this growth in large part to the Kraken's presence. "The growth was great because more kids watch games on TV or in-person," Hlinka said, "and they have a better interest and they're excited to be part of it." The expectation on Hlinka's end is that the addition of PWHL Seattle will only further increase Seattle's intrigue in hockey at the youth level. The sport has already taken sizable steps forward, though, over the last few decades. Since 2014-15, there's been an increase of 1,744 more youth hockey players in Washington. And since 2021-22, when the Kraken began play, an additional 268 kids have started playing in the state. The growth has been observed by Julia Takatsuka, a goalie coordinator for the Jr Kraken who grew up playing hockey in the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood. When she was a kid, Takatsuka said, she had to travel to Canada every weekend for tournaments, and that practice rinks were relatively spartan compared to the Iceplex, which boasts three rinks and was built in September 2021. "I would have loved to train at a place like (KCI) where we have all of the actual things we need," Takatsuka said. "I was a goalie, so we need pegs to hold the nets down. I didn't have that. We have that now. We have ice that has real creases for the goalies. Didn't have that growing up, either." The Seattle area requires more work and time to become a women's hockey hotbed, though. As Hlinka pointed out, there is only so much ice time to go around, and there aren't nearly as many rinks in Seattle as there are in cities like Vancouver or Toronto. Seeds for growth Still, there's clear evidence women's hockey has already grown in Seattle. The women's club hockey team at the University of Washington played its inaugural season in 2021. This has allowed Regan Thomas, a West Seattle native and student at Washington, to continue playing the sport she adores. It wasn't until she went to boarding school in New Hampshire that Thomas even became aware she could play hockey. Soccer was Thomas's spot of choice as a kid, and she had quite the role model in Megan Rapinoe, the national team standout who starred for Seattle Reign FC for a decade. Though Thomas wishes Seattle could have had a pro women's hockey team when she was a kid, such won't be the case for countless young girls in the Pacific Northwest moving forward. "I think having those role models is incredibly important," Thomas said. "I find myself even now like 'Ugh, I wish this was around 10 years ago.' Because not that I would have ever made it, but just kind of the dream of making it – you figure out how to push yourself harder." Lindsay Skogmo's son, Otto, already has plenty of role models whenever he shows up to KCI for practice with the 8-and-under Jr Kraken team. When Skogmo was recently at her son's school, she heard rumblings from girls about how hockey wasn't for them. Skogmo hopes pro women's hockey in Seattle will inspire young girls like Garcia-Dudek to keep dreaming big. "I feel like in this world right now, in our country, a lot of females feel like it's not going good for us, or it's going against us," Skogmo said. "So, for us to be able to get a professional female team here really gives a lot of girl power." ___ AP women's hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey