OTTAWA — Minutes after her team lost a 3-2 overtime decision in their home opener, Ottawa head coach Carla MacLeod took her spot at the postgame press conference podium.
Instead of wallowing in the aftermath of a heartbreaking loss as most coaches would, MacLeod looked out to the assembled media with a gleam of excitement in her eyes.
“I don’t know what to say. This is incredible,” MacLeod said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
MacLeod was awestruck by the crowd of reporters who packed the tiny room adjacent to her team’s locker room at The Arena at TD Place. MacLeod is accustomed to only seeing a small handful of reporters covering the teams she’s played for or coached. But on Tuesday, she was speaking in front of seven television microphones and roughly two dozen reporters on hand to document a piece of hockey history.
An announced crowd of 8,318 attended Tuesday’s Ottawa-Montreal PWHL game, marking the largest crowd ever to watch a professional women’s hockey game. It surpassed the previous mark of 7,765 people on hand to watch a professional women’s game in Sweden in 2021-22.
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So with a historic evening serving as the backdrop, MacLeod wasn’t interested…
