I’ve wanted to pen this Dear John letter for a while now, but bit my tongue (fingers?), hoping my instincts about you were wrong. Besides, I didn’t want to be the one to tell my friend his significant other had eyes for someone else.
I’d heard whispers that you didn’t really want to be here, that you fantasized about Boston Garden, that you were making goo-goo eyes at Agganis Arena, Conte Forum, or anyplace else in the big city that’d take you, for that matter.
To borrow from the Gin Blossoms, I’d heard “whispers at the bus stop, I’ve heard about nights out in the school yard, I found out about you.”
But you were still here, still putting on the act, still ours, even though you wouldn’t even deign to take our name. And the people of Lowell thought that if they showed you enough love, you might just love us back.
So I didn’t say (write?) boo. I didn’t want to be the one to break it to a community that loved you that you not only weren’t returning the love, you weren’t even deserving of it.
But then you went and did it. You showed your true colors, bad mouthed us to strangers and it got back to us, confirming all of my suspicions. I can’t stay quiet any longer.
The “you,” for those wondering, is the Professional Women’s Hockey League. That’s the league whose PWHL Boston hockey team, or the Boston Fleet, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, plays its home games at the Tsongas Center.
Less than three weeks after the league dropped the puck on its second season, a headline in Wednesday’s The Hockey News screamed The PWHL Has Another Market Mess on Their Hands in Lowell.
The opinion piece by Ian Kennedy, more than likely spurred by discussions with league officials, tried to pin the team’s weak attendance on Lowell and its commuting distance from Boston. Despite a good chunk of the narrative highlighting significant marketing and scheduling mistakes made by the infant league, the article’s headline and its final sentence makes it clear the attendance failures are being pinned to Lowell.
“Perhaps it’s time for the Fleet to look for a harbor that is not a two hour drive from the ocean.”
Perhaps it’s time for PWHL ownership, which owns all of the league’s teams, to spend a little less time admiring itself in the mirror and a little more time reflecting. You see, despite strutting around with a major league ego, PWHL has been minor league in every sense of the word, especially when it comes to an alarming lack of effort to connect with the city in which its games are played.
Where is the community outreach? What local schools have been visited? The team’s social media pages show players skating with kids in Boston, but what about Greater Lowell. Off the top of my head, I can think of one public appearance by anyone from the team, that occurring when a couple of players showed up to last February’s Winterfest for about an hour.
Contrast that with the other professional Mill City team which made its debut last year, the Massachusetts Pirates.
On November 6, 2023, we reported the Indoor Football League team was relocating to Lowell. On November 8, team owner Jawad Yatim met with Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce President Danielle McFadden and I at a local coffee shop, spending more than an hour learning about the community, asking questions and seeking guidance on what types of outreach they should do.
“Can you think of any events we should participate in,” Yatim asked that day.
“Well, the City of Lights Parade is coming up, but that’s only two weeks away,” replied Danielle.
On November 23, the Massachusetts Pirates were marching alongside community partners who had been participating in the annual holiday celebration for decades.
In the ensuing year, they’ve been more visible than a drone in the Jersey sky; schools, events, organizations, randomly tossing footballs to my son and other cheering children at Chelmsford’s Independence Day Parade. On November 30, there they were again, marching through downtown Lowell’s streets on a frigid evening for City of Lights 2024.
The name may say Massachusetts, but the Pirates consider Greater Lowell their home. I hope Greater Lowell remembers that when the next Indoor Football season kicks off in March.
But back to our friends in the PWHL. Toward the end of The Hockey News article, it asks “why would the PWHL be playing in Lowell on a Tuesday evening, instead of at TD Garden in Boston?”
Allow me to answer that; because Boston doesn’t want you!
If it did, you’d have already been there. I knew that early on in your tenure. Now, thanks to The Hockey News, everyone else knows it, too.
Getting back to our play list and Linda Ronstadt, “You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, baby you’re no good.”
I hope some day, Boston opens its arms to you the way UMass Lowell and the Tsongas Center did, the way over 6,300 fans did that May night when you played for the Championship in the arena and the community that have created a so-called “market mess.”
If that ever does happen, please be sure to take all of your stuff, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Oh, and I want me records back!
