‘A responsibility, privilege’: Sarah Nurse helps grow PWHL Vancouver

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Get used to seeing Sarah Nurse more and more.

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The expansion PWHL Vancouver club had the Canadian national team veteran forward doing the media rounds Friday, with both individual interviews as well as a press conference with forward Jenn Gardiner and goaltender Kristen Campbell.

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PWHL Vancouver will begin to play sometime in the fall, and will be based out of the Pacific Coliseum. The now eight-team league — Seattle is coming on board as well — hasn’t announced its schedule for its upcoming third season, but this past campaign began on Nov. 30.

Nurse was one of PWHL Vancouver’s first players, signing on after playing the league’s initial two years with the Toronto Sceptres. She will undoubtedly continue to be front and centre in the new club’s bid to add to its profile and fan base.

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She remains one of the more recognizable players in the sport. Her picture has appeared on boxes of Cheerios cereal. She was on the cover of the NHL 23 video game alongside then Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras.

She appreciates the promotion piece is part of the gig for her. She’s obviously aided by her marketing degree from Wisconsin, and she also has a big-picture view of things as vice-president of the PWHL players union.

“It’s a responsibility but it’s also a privilege,” Nurse, 30, said over a quick breakfast at the Hard Bean Brunch Co. downtown on Friday. “I look at it more as we get to share what we love and what we’re doing and it’s not necessarily just for us. It’s for us, but it’s also for the next generation of women’s hockey players.

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“That clicked for me a very long time ago. I look at the women who played before me. They were playing for nothing (financially). You see the sacrifices they made and what they accomplished, and now we get a league to play in, we get some media coverage. We have so many more opportunities.

“To be able to leave the game in a better place than we got it in is the most important thing. If we can pass that along to the next generation, imagine where we’ll in two or three generations?”

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The league’s teams played 30-game regular seasons last year. No word yet on what the 2025-26 campaign will bring. PWHL Vancouver has begun selling season tickets, and, while team brass won’t say exactly how many have been purchased, they would say that they’re selling packages in the Coliseum’s upper bowl now. Team brass was quick to point out that there will be single-game seats available in the lower bowl, and that they haven’t left that simply for season tickets holders.

The PWHL build overall feels methodical and structured so far. Its main predecessor was the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, and it folded in 2019, so time was taken to put this all together. Minnesota was the lone team of the original six that wasn’t in the northeast region, so travel the first two years was kept compact.

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The league has played some games in NHL buildings — a Jan. 8 Takeover Tour game at Rogers Arena between the Sceptres and Montreal Victoire drew an announced crowd of 19,038, which was the fourth-highest single-game attendance in league history — but they’ve played the majority of the first two years in smaller venues, keeping costs down while creating urgency for tickets and adding to the atmosphere.

According to the league, announced attendance among the six teams jumped 27 per cent this past season from their inaugural campaign, going from 5,689 to 7,230.

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Travel costs in the circuit will increase dramatically obviously with the addition of Vancouver and Seattle. The Coliseum is also a bigger venue, with hockey capacity listed at 16,281. The WHL’s Vancouver Giants departed the Rink on Renfrew for the Langley Events Centre after the 2015-16 season to make their finances work out.

The PWHL did do it best to set up both Vancouver and Seattle to start. The teams will be instant contenders. The original six were allowed to protect just three players apiece initially.

“Any time you go into a new place there’s pressure,” Nurse said Friday. “But I think it’s also very exciting. This community has already embraced us and we haven’t even hit the ice. I know that when they get to meet us as people, get to see us on the ice and see the product we are able to bring they’re going to follow up even more.

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“When we came here for the Takeover game, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have super high expectations. We don’t get out here often, and neither of us were a hometown team. But the response we got in Vancouver — not only the 19,000 at the game but people stopping us on the street that day, saying they were excited for the game — made me think ‘wow, this could be a real thing.’”

Nurse suffered a lower body injury during a Canada-USA Rivalry series game last season and wound up missing nine games with Toronto. Her numbers, by her standards, were pedestrian, with six goals and 14 points in 21 games.

She was named top forward at the Beijing 2022 Olympics after setting records for most points (18) and most assists (13) in a single seven-game tournament. Canada won gold, and she was also part of the silver-winning team at Pyeongchang 2018. She has five world championship medals on her resume, highlighted by three gold.

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The fact she comes from an athletic family is well documented. Her relatives include cousins Darnell Nurse (Edmonton Oilers defenceman) and Kia Nurse (Chicago Sky point guard).

“My family is all very excited for me, because they know that this was something for my hockey career that I needed,” Nurse said. “I’ve have had so much and success with a lot of players and a lot of the staff in Toronto, and I think this is such a new, fresh perspective that I’m very excited about. My dad especially thinks that this could be the best thing for me.”

@Seveves

SEwen@postmedia.com

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